Arm Holdings rose another 6% in premarket US trading on Friday, extending its rally after its Nasdaq debut this week.
Shares of the British chip designer were trading at just over $67 around 6:10 a.m. ET, implying a valuation of more than $72 billion. Arm shares were even higher earlier, but eroded some of those gains.
This comes after Arm shares rose nearly 25% in their first day of trading on Thursday. Shares for the blockbuster IPO were originally priced at $51 each, valuing the company at around $54.5 billion.
As the rally continues, Arm continues to trade at a premium to chip giant Nvidia, even as the company faces headwinds to its growth. Some analysts expressed concerns about the valuation.
“The pricing is expensive…I think a lot of investors are thinking outside the box…and waiting to see how they execute on these drivers,” Ben Barringer, equity analyst at Quilter Cheviot, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
Softbank, which acquired Arm in 2016, took about 10% of the company public, with the Japanese giant holding 90% of the shares.
SoftBank has faced criticism over its investment strategy as its giant technology investment arm Vision Fund posted a massive loss in its last financial year. This was enough to deter some investors from the Arm IPO.
William de Gale, portfolio manager at BlueBox Asset Management, said he has not invested in ARM.
“Ultimately, we concluded that we were too worried about corporate governance because Softbank still controls the company and has a questionable asset allocation record,” de Gale told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Friday .
“So we wanted to watch from the sidelines for a while as the company operated as an independent company.”
Still, there was huge demand for shares, and several reports this week ahead of the IPO suggested the listing was many times oversubscribed.
Arm, whose chip architecture powers 99% of the world’s smartphones, has managed to attract strategic investors such as Apple and Nvidia to buy shares in the listing.
This week, the focus has been on some of the risks surrounding the company, including its exposure to China and increasing competition from a rival semiconductor architecture supported by some of Arm’s largest customers.
Arm CEO Rene Haas told CNBC on Thursday that the company’s China business is “doing well” and has great potential in data centers and automotive applications.
Arm’s strength has typically been in smartphones and other consumer electronics. But the company is now looking into new areas, including artificial intelligence, to expand its business.
“We have diversified our business. We have seen significant growth in the cloud data center and automotive sectors,” said Hass.
Source : www.cnbc.com