Elpida Memory Inc. said Tuesday its two largest shareholders, NEC Corp. and Hitachi Ltd., will sell part of their stakes in the sole supplier of dynamic random access memory chips in Japan by March 31.
NEC will reduce its stake to 13.89 percent from 23.84 percent by selling 9.6 million Elpida shares to Daiwa Securities SMBC Co., which plans to sell them to institutional investors.
Hitachi's stake will fall to 19.70 percent, also from 23.84 percent, according to the firm.
After the two deals, Hitachi and NEC will still be the No. 1 and No. 2 shareholders in Elpida. Both will stop treating the DRAM maker as an equity-value affiliate, but their business ties will remain unaffected, Elpida said.
Other details, such as the value of sales by NEC and Hitachi, were not disclosed.
Elpida's stock closed at 3,330 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Tuesday, which means NEC stands to make about 32 billion yen and Hitachi 13.3 billion yen from the deals.
Tokyo-based Elpida was created through the 1999 merger of the DRAM divisions of NEC and Hitachi.