By Stephen Nellis
SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - Arm Holdings, the semiconductor technology firm owned by Softbank Group Corp (T:9984), still plans to return to the public markets by 2023, its chief executive said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a press conference at Arm's annual user conference in San Jose, California, CEO Simon Segars said "a lot of things need to fall into place" before the company can return to the public markets but that the 2023 goal date for a relisting set by Softbank chief Masayoshi Son remains unchanged.
The Japanese telecommunications carrier acquired the British chip firm for billion in 2016. Last year, Son said it aims to re-list Arm within five years. The returns on Softbank’s Arm investment have taken on increasing importance as some of the investments made by Softbank's Vision Fund, such as Slack Technologies (N:WORK) and Uber Technologies (N:UBER), have performed poorly on the public markets. For its part, Arm, the dominant supplier of technology for mobile phone chips, has seen slow revenue growth with the declining smart phone market while new fields such as automotive chips have not yet begun growing quickly.
Segars said Arm has purposely taken steps like boosting headcount that have increased costs to pursue opportunities that will pay off years later, rather than in the next quarter.
“We’ve been investing our profits in growing the company,” Segars told reporters.
