IPO-pedia | Chipmaker giant GlobalFoundries seeks $25 bln in IPO

According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Chipmaker GlobalFoundries is marketing 33 million shares while Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co., its major shareholder, plans to sell 22 million shares.

Mubadala currently owns 100% of the company and “continue to have substantial control after this offering.”

GlobalFoundries plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol GFS. It plans to raise as much as $2.6 billion in a U.S. initial public offering. At the top of that range,it would have a market value of $25 billionbased on the outstanding shares listed in its filing.

The offering is being led by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Credit Suisse.

According to Gartner,in 2020, the company was the third largest foundry in the world based on external sales.

GlobalFoundries previously gave up on the kind of leading-edge production that would match the capabilities of Taiwan Semiconductor or Samsung.Instead,it's serving the market for less advanced chips, which are increasingly critical to carmakers and other industries.

GlobalFoundries has over50ecosystem partners spanning IP, electronic design automation, outsourced assembly and test and design services. Building on an existing library of more than4,000IP titles, it currently has more than950IP titles in active development across26process nodes and34IP partners.

The company has built deep strategic partnerships witha broad base of more than 200 customers as of December 31, 2020, many of whom are the global leaders in their field.

In the first six months of 2021, the top ten customers, based on wafer shipment volume, included Qualcomm, MediaTek, NXP Semiconductors, Qorvo, Cirrus Logic, Advanced Micro Devices (“AMD”), Skyworks Solutions, Murata Manufacturing, Samsung Electronics and Broadcom.

The company attracted a large share of single-sourced products and long-term supply agreements. As of the date of the company's prospectus,the aggregate lifetime revenue commitment reflected by these agreements amounted to more than $19.5 billion.

A key measure of GlobalFoundries's position as a strategic partner to the customers is the mix of wafer shipment volume attributable to single-sourced business (Single-sourced products are defined as those that can only be manufactured with GlobalFoundries's technology and cannot be manufactured elsewhere without significant customer redesigns).It represented approximately61% of wafer shipment volume in 2020, up from 47% in 2018.

Revenue at GlobalFoundries dropped last year by 17% to $4.85 billion. GlobalFoundries said the reason is that it divested a business that brought in $391 million in 2019, and more broadly the company shifted contractual terms with most of its customers, changing how and when it recognizes revenue.

In the first half of 2021, revenue climbed by 13% from a year earlier to just over $3 billion.