KIOXIA Rebounds 15.66% Off the Viasat-Verdict Washout

The Perp Is Tracking the Stock This Time

The last time this market moved this hard it was plumbing — a thin weekend book marking the perp down while Tokyo sat closed. This move is the opposite. Tokyo's 285A shares reopened Tuesday, July 21 after Monday's Marine Day holiday and rebounded hard, reported up around 17% into the low ¥60,000s after the prior session closed near ¥52,110. The KIOXIA perp is doing its job: +15.66% over 15 hours to $385. Back out FX at roughly ¥160 to the dollar and $385 implies about ¥62,000 a share — sitting right on top of the Tokyo rebound rather than diverging from it. With only ~$5.7M of 24-hour volume this HIP-3 book can still be pushed around, but this print has a real cash market behind it.

The $229 Million That Broke It

To read the bounce you need the crash. Kioxia had roughly halved over the prior month, bleeding out of a crowded AI-memory long as the whole complex pulled back from its June peak. The cap on it came July 16, when a federal jury in Texas found Kioxia liable for $229 million — precisely $229,025,021 — for infringing a Viasat flash-memory patent covering error-correction technology (Claim 16 of U.S. Patent 8,615,700), a running royalty for past use through March 30. The stock went limit-down the next session, closing near ¥52,110. Kioxia called the verdict "completely unacceptable" and said it will pursue post-verdict motions and, if needed, an appeal. In context it is a one-time hit — real money, but small against a company guiding to record quarterly revenue — which is why the market treated it as an excuse to puke an extended position, not evidence the story broke.

Why the Dip-Buyers Came Back

The bull case never actually changed, and the sell-side said so out loud. On the same day as the verdict, Nomura raised its target to ¥126,000 from ¥115,000, lifting its FY2028 operating-profit forecast to ¥10.7 trillion and its NAND bit-price growth assumptions to +70% quarter-on-quarter for April–June and +25% for July–September, citing a supply shortage and ADATA's 87% jump in SSD sales as confirmation the market is tight. Kioxia's own exec has said 2026 NAND supply is already sold out. The average analyst target now sits around 130% above the price — the widest gap among the top 100 TOPIX names, which tells you positioning got washed out, not that the thesis died. Underneath it, 10th-generation BiCS FLASH sample shipments began July 3 and the company is guiding to record ¥1.75 trillion in quarterly revenue, up 410% year-on-year. That is the setup buyers stepped into. The real test is earnings on July 31 — a bounce off an oversold, holiday-thinned reopen is one thing; confirming the NAND-pricing story with actual numbers is another.