SkyWater, Minnesota's largest chipmaker, will jump into the IPO frenzy

SkyWater Technology Inc. plans to go public, becoming the second Minnesota company this year to join the surging number of initial public offerings as investors continue driving U.S. stock markets to new highs.

Last week, Sun Country Airlines issued shares worth $200 million that soared 52% on the first day of trading.

Bloomington-based SkyWater filed notice with securities regulators late Monday to issue shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the market symbol SKYT. The firm and its underwriters have not determined the precise number of shares nor the price. However, the document showed that SkyWater aims to raise $75 million to be used for working capital and general purposes.

The decision shows that SkyWater executives and its principal owner, the St. Louis Park-based investment firm Oxbow Industries LLC, are confident enough in their strategy to sell it to institutional investors and the public.

The company, which has its roots in the Minnesota high-tech pioneer Control Data Corp., has flourished in recent years as a maker of chips designed by other firms that don't need the huge output and latest chipmaking technology offered by the industry's largest fabricators.

Amid a sharp fluctuation in the broader chip industry because of the pandemic and recession, SkyWater's revenue rose about 3% last year to $140.4 million, the listing notice said. It posted a net loss of $19.7 million, widening from a loss of $16.4 million in 2019.

Factories like SkyWater that were on the cutting edge in the 1980s and 1990s have been running at full strength again in recent years, when capacity at the industry's leaders was consumed by chips for smartphones, tablets and PCs.

Because of its history in the mainframe era in which Control Data was a leader, SkyWater's factory, built in the 1980s, has long been certified as a trusted producer by the U.S. government and military. The plant has been expanded a few times, most recently last year after SkyWater received an investment from the Department of Defense to be able to make chips that are known as rad-hard because they stand up to radiation and other rigors.

The company also works with university researchers on nanotube technology and other ideas to move past silicon as the foundation material for semiconductors.

SkyWater will become the second legacy company of Control Data, the maker of mainframes and supercomputers that dominated the Minnesota technology scene from the late 1950s through the 1980s, to go public in recent years. That company's software unit, now called Ceridian HCM Inc., listed on the Nasdaq in 2018. Its office is in a former Control Data site just a mile or so from SkyWater's fabrication plant.

For about 20 years, the SkyWater plant was owned and operated by Cypress Semiconductor, a Silicon Valley-based firm that specializes in certain types of memory chips, microcontrollers and analog chips.

Production for Cypress, which was acquired last year by the German chipmaker Infineon Technologies, now represents about 29% of SkyWater's revenue, the company said in the stock filing.

Separately, SkyWater on Tuesday announced the hiring of John Spicer, currently fabrications chief for ON Semiconductor, as executive vice president of operations.

With Oxbow maintaining majority stake after the IPO, SkyWater would be considered a "controlled company," one in which an individual, group or company owns more than 50% of its outstanding shares. Loren Unterseher, managing partner of Oxbow, sits on the SkyWater board of directors. And a real estate affiliate of Oxbow last year acquired the land where the SkyWater plant sits and leased it back to the manufacturer.

Nasdaq listing rules allow and grant to a controlled company some exemptions from governance issues if they choose.

Those exemptions would include the number of independent directors on the board and certain types of board committees. The structure may make it less attractive to certain investors. When the company no longer meets the controlled company definition, it will have to restructure its board to comply with market rules.

Staff writer Patrick Kennedy contributed to this report.

Evan Ramstad • 612-673-4241