Astera Labs surges 50% in strong debut

Astera Labs,

20/03/2024 16:41

(Updates with opening price)
    ** Chip firm Astera Labs  ALAB.O  pops 50% in public debut
on Weds, as co cashes in on fervor for artificial intelligence
    ** ALAB opens at $52.56 vs $36 IPO price, trades as high as
$54 early on
    ** Astera and shareholders sold 19.8 mln shares above an
already upwardly revised deal size and range of $32-$34, for
~$713 mln gross raise
    ** Co achieved valuation about $5.5 bln valuation at IPO
price and a fully diluted value of around $6 bln
    ** It was valued at $3 bln in co's last funding round in
2022
    ** Astera provides vital data center components to customers
including large cloud service providers
    ** Its Aries product, which generates the majority of co's
revenue, helps CPUs and GPUs scale their data input/output
bandwidth (Click here for SEC prospectus filing)
    ** Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan leading 12-firm underwriting
group on the IPO
    ** The offering comes as Nvidia  NVDA.O  chief Jensen Huang
kicked off his firm's annual developer conference this week

 (Lance Tupper is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed
are his own)
 ((lance.tupper@thomsonreuters.com
lance.tupper@tr.com 1-646-279-6380))