China's top flash-memory chipmaker YMTC begins pre-IPO coaching with investment bank

Reuters

Tue, May 19, 2026 at 4:28 AM EDT 1 min read

BEIJING, May 19 (Reuters) - China's top flash memory chipmaker YMTC has begun the so-called "tutoring" process for a potential ‌initial public offering, where a company receives formal pre-IPO ‌guidance from an investment bank, a regulatory filing showed on Tuesday.

Yangtze Memory ​Technologies Co (YMTC) has hired CITIC Securities, a Chinese state-owned investment bank, to guide its IPO preparation ahead of a potential stock market listing.

YMTC's IPO preparations follow that of Hefei-based Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), ‌which revealed in an ⁠updated prospectus on Sunday that it was profitable for the first time in its history last ⁠year, while its first quarter revenue jumped more than 700% year on year.

YMTC and CXMT are seen as China's best hopes ​for establishing ​a foothold in a global ​memory chip market long ‌dominated by South Korean and U.S. players such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron.

Despite being added to a U.S. trade blacklist in late 2022, which curtailed its access to foreign chipmaking tools, the Wuhan-based company has expanded its use of ‌domestic equipment suppliers such as Naura ​and is aggressively adding capacity.

The China's ​largest maker of NAND ​flash memory chips--that store data in smartphones and ‌computers--has two factories with a ​combined monthly output ​of 200,000 wafers.

YMTC's third factory in Wuhan should start operations late this year, and has capacity to produce 50,000 ​wafers per month ‌by 2027, Reuters has reported previously.

(Reporting by Pan Che, ​Eduardo Baptista, Shi Bu and Ryan Woo; Editing by ​Bernadette Baum and Kate Mayberry)