OCTOBERASIA BUSINESS OUTLOOK9Floadia Corporation, a Japan-based embedded flash memory developer, has raised roughly JPY 1.05 billion ($7.04 million) in a Series D investment. Inabata & Co., Ltd., headquartered in Chuo-ku, Osaka, and Cypress Capital, a Hong Kong investment firm, underwrote an allotment of capital for a total of JPY 850 million ($5.7 million), according to Floadia. The finance also comprises JPY 200 million ($1.34 million) raised from Japan Finance Corporation through venture debt (credit with equity acquisition rights) in March 2023.Floadia has received approximately JPY 3.9 billion ($26.15 million) in funding to date from INCJ (Japanese government fund), UMC Capital (Taiwan), a subsidiary of major foundry UMC, Faraday Technology (Taiwan), a cutting-edge semiconductor design firm, and Teijin Limited, a major Japanese chemical firm. When the amount raised in this round is added together, the total amount raised to date is roughly JPY 4.95 billion ($33.19 million).Floadia stated that the funds raised would be used to boost sales activities promoting its current primary business, embedded flash memory intellectual property (IP) cores, to semiconductor manufacturers, as well as to improve the development of ultra-low power consumption artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator chips that use flash memory devices. Foreign investors sold heavily in Japanese stocks this week as concerns about rising US interest rates and rising Treasury yields depressed risk appetite. Foreign investors sold a net 1.64 trillion yen ($11.00 billion) of equities in the week ending September 29, according to data from Japanese exchanges, the most weekly net selling since March 17.They sold around 1.56 trillion yen in futures and extracted 77.62 billion yen from cash equities. The Topix index fell 2.3 percent last week, its worst weekly loss since Aug. 18, while the Nikkei fell nearly 1.7 percent for the second week. Foreign investors have poured about 5.51 trillion yen into Japanese shares so far this year, compared with about 4.63 trillion yen worth of net selling last year.Meanwhile, overseas investors secured a minimal $25.8 billion yen of long-term Japanese bonds last week, following approximately $2.02 trillion yen of net selling in the previous week, according to Japan's Ministry of Finance statistics. However, they withdrew almost 1.05 trillion yen from short-term debt securities, extending outflows for the third week in a row.During the same time period, Japanese investors invested approximately 721 million yen in foreign stocks, marking their largest weekly net purchase in four weeks. FLOADIA CORPORATION SECURES JPY 1B IN SERIES D INVESTMENT ROUNDFOREIGN INVESTORS SELLING JAPANESE STOCKSNEWSROOM
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