Kioxia Falls With Chip Peers as S&P Lifts Credit Rating to BBB

Kioxia stock slid 5.6% to EUR 86.99 amid Asian chip selloff, even as S&P raised its rating to BBB on NAND and SSD earnings momentum.

Kioxia's equity took a hit on Tuesday, sliding 5.6% to EUR 86.99 in European trading as a selloff across Asian semiconductor names dragged the Japanese memory maker lower. The stock led AI-related decliners on the Tokyo exchange, according to Reuters.

The retreat came amid reports of progress by Chinese memory manufacturer CXMT on a new chip architecture, compounded by mounting investor unease over future artificial intelligence spending. Those competitive worries overshadowed the operational signals Kioxia has recently generated.

S&P Upgrades on NAND and SSD Strength

The market turbulence coincided with a notable vote of confidence from the credit side. S&P Global Ratings raised Kioxia's long-term issuer rating to "BBB" from "BBB-", attaching a positive outlook to the assessment.

The agency pointed to earnings momentum in the memory business as the rationale. S&P projects Kioxia will post EBITDA in a range of JPY 7 trillion to JPY 8 trillion for fiscal 2026, which ends March 31, 2027. For the following fiscal year, the agency envisions roughly JPY 9 trillion. Robust market conditions for NAND and SSD products, alongside sustained AI-driven demand, were cited as the engines behind that trajectory.

The upgrade also reflects a net cash position that underpins the company's financial profile, and it signals that operating conditions have stabilized fundamentally after the sector's earlier downturn.

Data-Center Push Continues

Kioxia is pressing ahead with efforts to deepen its footprint in storage solutions for large-scale customers. On Friday, the Kioxia Corporation unveiled its first SSD in the E1.L form factor. The drive uses eighth-generation BiCS FLASH memory with QLC technology and targets hyperscale data-center operators specifically.

At the OCP Global Summit, running October 12–15, the company demonstrated storage technologies for AI data centers, including GP-series SSDs delivering random-read performance exceeding 20 million IOPS. The earlier-introduced LD4 series — Kioxia's first E1.L SSDs built on BiCS FLASH generation 8 QLC — offers capacities of 15.36 and 30.72 terabytes, with samples going to select customers while the architecture is designed to scale up to 122.88 terabytes.

Ownership Shift and Valuation Watch

Kioxia's shareholder structure has also been in flux. Toshiba disclosed that its stake in the company fell from 12.84% to 11.80%. According to the mandatory filing, Toshiba still holds 194,193,100 Kioxia shares, with the reportable event dated October 1.

Against a 52-week high of EUR 207.00, the stock now trades at a 58% discount — a level that keeps it firmly on investors' radar.

Market participants will get a clearer read on the current fiscal year's financial performance at the end of the month. That reporting date is likely to serve as a checkpoint for assessing how data-center demand is actually translating into margins and cash flow amid the intensifying competitive landscape.