(Bloomberg) -- China's memory-chip bellwether CXMT Corp. can extend its blockbuster stock market debut to rally 1,239% from its initial public offering price as it wins market share over time, according to Nomura Holdings Inc.
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The stock jumped as much as 535% to 55.03 yuan in its first day of trading in Shanghai, making the company China's largest listed firm onshore. Formerly known as ChangXin Memory Technologies, the firm sold shares at 8.66 yuan apiece via the IPO.
"We expect CXMT's market share gain to accelerate considering that the global supply of memory is unlikely to ease in the coming years," analyst Donnie Teng wrote in a note, assigning a buy rating and a 116 yuan target. "Strong demand for agentic AI will drive a more than sevenfold increase in global memory usage" by 2030, he wrote.
Teng projects CXMT's memory-chip output will grow at 40% to 45% a year through 2030, lifting its global market share for dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, from about 10% now to 18% by the end of 2028.
Meanwhile, Morningstar Inc. analyst Jing Jie Yu wrote in a note on Friday that he estimates fair value for CXMT at 14.90 yuan per share, much lower than Nomura's target and where the stock traded on Monday. Without access to extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV, conventional DRAM advancement will become increasingly difficult for the firm, according to Yu.
"Multiples remain strictly under pure-play memory leaders in our coverage given CXMT's lagging technological capabilities, translating into lower DRAM prices versus its peers," he wrote. "We do not expect this pricing gap — and the corresponding valuation discount — to narrow unless CXMT can overcome the EUV constraint while maintaining economic profitability."
The price target differences underscore how analysts are still divided over CXMT's growth prospects even as it is fast becoming a threat to global rivals such as Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc., as well as Micron Technology Inc. in the US.
Nomura's Teng assigned a price-to-earnings multiple of 20 times to CXMT on the company's expected earnings-per-share for fiscal year 2028, saying the stock can trade at double the valuation of its major US competitor Micron.