CXMT, China's largest DRAM manufacturer, became the country's most valuable listed company on 13 August, seventeen days after going public.
The crossover
CXMT's market capitalisation reached about RMB 3.54 trillion (roughly $524bn), passing Tencent at about RMB 3.45 trillion (HK$4.01 trillion). Intraday trading above RMB 55 briefly took it near RMB 3.7 trillion.
How fast
The company listed on Shanghai's STAR Market on 27 July at RMB 8.66 a share and closed its debut up 471.59% at RMB 49.50. Seventeen trading days later it sits at the top of the Chinese market — a speed that says as much about the STAR Market's pricing mechanics as about the business.
The two sides of the same trade
Tencent fell in the same window after disclosing that AI capital spending rose 176% year on year. Tencent is also a CXMT customer, through a reported $3bn server DRAM agreement signed in June. One company's memory bill is the other company's revenue, and the market repriced both accordingly.
What it buys CXMT
A capitalisation of this size is a currency for capacity. CXMT has been scaling domestic DRAM under export controls that keep it away from the newest lithography, and its ambition to move into HBM is a capital problem before it is a technical one. This mark gives it a balance sheet to fund fabs against Samsung, SK hynix and Micron.
The caution
Debut valuations on the STAR Market are notoriously volatile, and a 471% first-day move is not a settled price. What is not in doubt is the direction of the demand: memory scarcity, not consumer platforms, now sets the leadership of the Chinese market.