The setup
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is China's leading domestic maker of DRAM — the dynamic random-access memory that sits next to every CPU and AI accelerator. Founded in 2016 and controlled by state-owned capital (Hefei municipal and Anhui provincial funds, plus the China National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund "Big Fund II," together >50%), it runs three 12-inch wafer fabs across Hefei and Beijing. On its STAR Market IPO cleared the Shanghai Stock Exchange's listing-review committee — taking just 148 days from acceptance to approval, the first project under the exchange's IPO pre-review pilot — and moved to "Submitted for Registration" with the CSRC. Once registration takes effect, it can price and list, potentially as early as late June.
This is the rare pre-IPO that doubles as a macro signal. The world's three DRAM giants — Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron — have had their capacity absorbed by North American AI-datacenter demand, opening room for a domestic Chinese supplier to take share and, just as importantly, to come to market at the top of an up-cycle.
The numbers
The turnaround is violent. CXMT booked net losses of ¥8.33B, ¥16.34B and ¥7.14B across 2022–2024 — over ¥31.8B cumulatively — and only reached its first annual profit in 2025, on revenue of ¥61.8B (+155.6% YoY) and net profit of ¥1.88B (~$277M). Then 2026 detonated: Q1 2026 revenue of ¥50.8B (≈US$7.5B, +719% YoY) and net profit of ¥24.76B (≈US$3.7B, +1,688% YoY) — a single quarter larger than the entire prior year. Management guides H1 2026 revenue to ¥110–120B and net profit to ¥50–57B, with full-year profit potentially approaching ¥100B.
Two cautions belong next to those figures. First, the revenue line is amplified by super-cycle pricing: CXMT's reported global DRAM bit-share was 7.67% at end-2025, so the revenue scale reflects price as much as volume. Second, the balance sheet still carries the legacy of the build-out — roughly ¥118.8B of debt and ~¥36.6B of accumulated losses per Caixin's read of the filing. This is a company earning its way out of a deep capital hole at exactly the moment the cycle turned in its favour.
The rest of this dive is for paid subscribers.
The headline numbers are above. The 6 sections below carry the mechanism, the peer read, the valuation work, and the dated tests that decide it.
- What's actually driving it
- How peers read this
- Valuation reality check
- What we'd watch from here
- Listed-market read-through
- Bottom line
Already a subscriber? Sign in.