Memory chipmaker passes IPO coaching review

Chinese flash memory chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co Ltd has passed its initial public offering coaching review, marking a significant step toward a potential stock market listing, according to a disclosure on the China Securities Regulatory Commission website on Wednesday.

The company, advised by CITIC Securities and China Securities Co Ltd, completed the coaching process after filing its IPO coaching report in May.

Founded in Wuhan, Hubei province, in July 2016, YMTC is the Chinese mainland's sole 3D NAND integrated device manufacturer, or IDM. The company has achieved remarkable growth over the past decade, evolving from a startup into a global industry player.

According to Counterpoint Research, YMTC captured 14 percent of global NAND flash memory shipments in the second quarter of 2026, ranking third worldwide behind Samsung's 25 percent and SK Hynix's 22 percent while surpassing Kioxia, Micron and SanDisk.

YMTC's Q2 shipments grew 22 percent year-on-year and 5 percent quarter-on-quarter, benefiting from tight global NAND supply and expanding domestic supply.

The company has commenced mass production of 267-layer 3D NAND chips based on its proprietary Xtacking 4.0 architecture and is developing products beyond 300 layers, according to Counterpoint.

Revenue exceeded 20 billion yuan ($2.97 billion) in the first quarter of 2026, up 100 percent year-on-year.

On March 27, YMTC unveiled three new products targeting high-performance, high-security and high-capacity artificial intelligence storage scenarios.

Industry experts said that as AI workloads shift from model training to inference applications, the surging demand for dataset storage is driving a paradigm shift from capacity-driven competition to performance-and-capacity parity.

Zhang Lin, deputy dean of Fareast Credit Rating Co's research institute, said: "The next two years represent a window of opportunity for China's memory industry, with clear 'volume and price advantages' — not just for market share expansion but also for product mix upgrading and customer loyalty enhancement."

With its IPO coaching now completed, YMTC is poised to leverage capital markets to accelerate technology iteration and capacity expansion, positioning itself strategically in the next phase of global memory industry growth, experts added.

Market researcher TrendForce's latest memory pricing survey said the DRAM market will see extremely tight supply in the third quarter of 2026, with contract prices expected to rise 13 to 18 percent quarter-on-quarter. NAND flash contract prices are likely to increase 10 to 15 percent quarter-on-quarter.

masi@chinadaily.com.cn