“Japan’s Kioxia Has Lost Half Its Value—Sell or Buy More?” Overseas Institutional Investors Flock to Meet

【Financial News Tokyo = Correspondent Hye-jin Seo】Overseas institutional investors have been making a steady stream of requests to meet with Kioxia Holdings, a Japanese memory semiconductor company whose stock has plunged more than 54% from its peak in just over two months, Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on the 3rd. Existing investors are reconsidering whether to hold their shares, while new investors are assessing whether the decline has been excessive.
On the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Kioxia shares stood at 51,310 yen (approximately 440,000 won) as of 11:30 a.m. that day, up 310 yen, or 0.61%, from the previous trading session. Compared with the year-to-date high of 112,700 yen (approximately 970,000 won) recorded on June 22, the stock had fallen by 61,390 yen, or 54.5%. However, it remained 4.7 times higher than the year-to-date low of 10,945 yen (approximately 94,000 won) recorded on January 6. Kioxia’s market capitalization was approximately 28.1411 trillion yen (approximately 242 trillion won).

According to Nihon Keizai Shimbun, AI-related stocks dominated the top 20 companies that received the most meeting requests from overseas investors at the Japan equity conference hosted by Bank of America (BofA) in Tokyo through the 4th.
At the UBS conference held in Osaka late last month, more than 100 one-on-one meeting requests were submitted for Kioxia, Ibiden, Murata Manufacturing, ROHM, Kokusai Electric, and TDK. Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that interest in Kioxia was particularly strong.
Investors’ requests for meetings do not necessarily mean they will immediately buy shares. Shinichiro Yamagami, head of Japan equity sales at BofA Securities, said, “Investors who bought AI stocks during the rally that continued through June are deciding whether to sell or continue holding them. For now, the mood is that more investors intend to hold on.”
Kioxia’s stock rose nearly tenfold from its year-to-date low in January to its June peak before losing half its value, making investors’ calculations more complicated. A sales representative at a foreign securities firm said, “Investors are deeply concerned that Kioxia’s share price has failed to recover.”
On the other hand, some investors believe the decline has been excessive and are looking for their next buying opportunity. Ryosuke Nakatomi, head of equity sales at UBS Securities, stated, “Kioxia’s popularity remains overwhelming.”
Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that investors are also seeking stocks that have fallen excessively during the correction, given the solid performance of AI-related businesses.
Kioxia’s lower valuation than those of overseas competitors is one basis for considering a purchase. As of the 2nd, Kioxia’s forward 12-month price-to-earnings ratio (PER) was 4.2 times, below approximately 6 times for Micron Technology in the United States and approximately 7 times for SanDisk.

The key to a rebound in earnings is demand for NAND flash memory used in artificial intelligence (AI). As AI applications expand from “training,” which involves learning from massive datasets, to “inference,” which generates answers based on learned information, demand for enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs) is growing rapidly.
According to market researcher Gartner, the global NAND market is expected to grow 4.7-fold, from $68.1 billion last year to $321.6 billion this year. Data center operators are also increasingly signing long-term contracts lasting two to three years to secure a stable supply of memory.
In response, Kioxia and SanDisk will invest a total of 5 trillion yen (approximately 43 trillion won) in production facilities in Japan over the next six years. Kioxia plans to spend 1.8 trillion yen (approximately 15.5 trillion won) of that amount to build a third building at the Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture and begin mass production in fiscal 2029.
Kioxia President Hiroo Ota recently stated that the company had brought forward the planned start of operations at the new plant building “by a matter of years” as memory demand has grown faster than expected. Addressing concerns about overinvestment, he explained, “This investment is not aimed at excessively increasing our market share; it is intended to keep pace with the market’s growth.”
The possibility of cooperation with SK hynix is also drawing attention. According to The Asahi Shimbun, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won recently cited joint production with Kioxia as one option and said that cooperation could take various forms, including sharing research and development (R&D) and supply chains.
The possibility that large-scale capacity expansion could lead to oversupply is a risk factor. Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are pursuing production increases, while Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) is also expanding its production capacity with government support. If supply growth outpaces demand, NAND prices could fall again.
Overseas investors now have greater capacity to buy Japanese stocks. According to Goldman Sachs, hedge funds’ allocation to Japanese equities has recently fallen by about 4 percentage points from approximately 13% in June. Overseas investors have also been net sellers of more than 1.4 trillion yen (approximately 12 trillion won) worth of Japanese stocks since the end of June.
Nakatomi said, “Hedge funds believe they can increase their holdings once macroeconomic uncertainty is resolved.” Nihon Keizai Shimbun forecast that investors would find it easier to move again after the monetary policy meetings in the United States and Japan conclude this month.

[email protected] Hye-jin Seo Reporter