Semifive, a semiconductor design company seeking to list on the KOSDAQ market, set its offering price at 24,000 won.
On the 17th, Semifive said it conducted book-building for five trading days from the 10th through the previous day with domestic and overseas institutional investors and finalized the offering price at 24,000 won, the top end of the desired price range (band).
Earlier, together with lead underwriters Samsung Securities and UBS Securities, Semifive presented a price band of 21,000–24,000 won using the average estimated net profit for 2026 and 2027 (22.8 billion won).
All 2,159 domestic and overseas institutional investors that took part in the book-building submitted prices at or above the top end of the band (including no-price bids). A total of 1,769,415,084 shares were requested on a quantity basis, with a competition ratio of 436.9 to 1.
In particular, about 60% (1,230 institutions) of the participants in the book-building committed to lockups. Based on order volume, 43.9% was subject to lockup commitments.
A Samsung Securities official in charge of the listing said, "With demand rising for artificial intelligence (AI) application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), the sharp increase in Semifive's new orders appears to have been rated highly by investors."
Semifive, a company specializing in AI ASIC development, was founded in 2019. Chief Executive Cho Myeong-hyeon, an alumnus of MIT, started the company with the goal of "making system semiconductors cheaper and faster."
Leveraging its own design platform, Semifive has technology that shortens ASIC design time by more than up to 60%. It also earned a spot as a Samsung Electronics Design Solution Partner (DSP).
With growing demand in the AI ASIC market, Semifive's order value has been increasing rapidly each year. New orders, which stood at 5.7 billion won in 2020, surged to about 123.9 billion won last year.
Cho Myeong-hyeon, CEO of Semifive, said, "We thank the institutional investors who highly evaluated our competitiveness and growth potential," and added, "We will continue technology development with the offering proceeds and grow as a global AI ASIC company."
Meanwhile, Semifive will take retail investors' subscriptions for two days on the 18th and 19th. After payment, it plans to list on the KOSDAQ market on the 29th.
The expected number of listed shares is 33,716,419, putting the market capitalization after listing at an estimated 809.2 billion won.