Major chipmaker Kioxia Holdings Corp. is expected to go public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in early October, with its market capitalization seen reaching about ￥3 trillion, it was learned Tuesday.

The company, formerly known as Toshiba Memory Holdings Corp., is about 40 percent owned by machinery and electronics giant Toshiba Corp. It had been Toshiba’s semiconductor division.

Kioxia has already filed for its listing to the TSE. The exchange is expected to give its approval within this month, informed sources said.

This will be the largest initial public offering in Japan in terms of market capitalization since the stock listing of mobile phone carrier SoftBank Corp. in 2018.

Toshiba’s chip business had been the mainline operations for the company. But it was sold to a consortium led by a U.S. investment fund in 2018, after Toshiba fell into financial trouble due to huge losses from its nuclear power plant business in the United States. Toshiba Memory Holdings was renamed Kioxia in 2019.

Kioxia is believed to have decided on its stock listing because demand for memory chips has been robust although the novel coronavirus continues spreading.

The company logged a group net profit of ￥1.7 billion in April-June, a sharp turnaround from the year-before net loss of ￥95.2 billion. It plans to use the proceeds from the IPO for capital investment needed for business expansion, according to the sources.

Toshiba plans to sell its holdings of Kioxia shares in stages and use the gains to buy back its own shares as part of efforts to ease tensions with activist shareholders, including a fund that invested in the company during its financial hardship.