July 19, 2004 – Motorola chipmaking spinoff Freescale Semiconductor completed its initial public offering on July 16, finishing the day at $14.02/share, up 7.8% from its initial price, on 121.6 million shares.

The company had lowered its selling price from $17.50-$19.50 earlier in the week $1.58 billion. The IPO raised an estimated $1 billion for the company, which had initially projected a range of $1.7-$2.25 billion.

The cut in per-share pricing was due to a negative outlook on chipmakers including Intel (which posted rising inventories in 2Q04 and lowered profit margin estimates), as well as price dips in mobile phones.

Freescale posted a $366 million loss on roughly $4.9 billion in sales in 2003; it’s projected sales of $1.4-$1.5 billion in 2Q04, up from $1.1 billion in 2Q03.