Target prices for CXMT diverge eightfold — Nomura at 116 yuan vs. Morningstar at 14.90 yuan

Analysts are split by as much as eightfold on where CXMT's share price should be headed, even as the Chinese memory chipmaker made a splashy market debut Monday, instantly vaulting to the top of China's market-cap rankings.

CXMT listed Monday on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Star Market — a technology-focused board — and surged as much as 535 percent above its IPO price of 8.66 yuan ($1.20) to 55.03 yuan shortly after the open, instantly displacing Industrial and Commercial Bank of China as the country's most valuable listed company, Bloomberg reported.

Nomura analyst Donnie Teng issued a buy rating on CXMT with a target price of 116 yuan in an investment note — 1,239 percent above the IPO price.

Teng arrived at that target by applying a price-to-earnings multiple of 20 times CXMT's projected earnings per share for fiscal year 2028, arguing the stock could trade at twice the valuation multiple of Micron Technology. "Given that global memory supply is unlikely to ease for now, CXMT's pace of market share expansion will accelerate," Teng said.

Analysts broadly agree that even if CXMT channels its IPO proceeds into expanding production facilities, the memory supply crunch will not be resolved quickly and intensifying competition among chipmakers will not push prices lower. Teng projected that demand driven by AI agents will more than septuple global memory consumption by 2030, and forecast that CXMT's memory shipments will grow 40 to 45 percent annually through 2030, with its global DRAM market share rising from roughly 10 percent now to 18 percent by end-2028.

Morningstar analyst Yu Jingjie took a far more cautious view, placing CXMT's fair value at 14.90 yuan per share in a report published July 24 — 72.1 percent above the IPO price but well below where the stock is currently trading.

Yu said CXMT's technology gap would be difficult to close given its lack of access to EUV lithography equipment, and that the resulting valuation discount would persist for the foreseeable future, making a price much above 14.90 yuan hard to justify.

"Given CXMT's technological lag, it will likely sell DRAM at lower prices than pure-play memory peers, and its valuation multiples will clearly remain at a depressed level," Yu said.

Bloomberg said the eightfold divergence in target prices starkly illustrates how sharply market views on CXMT's growth outlook are divided, even as the company rapidly emerges as a threat to global memory leaders Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron.