HK Stock Market Move | ASMPT (00522) rises more than 7% to reach a new high, South Korea unveils a massive AI industry investment plan, equipment manufacturers are expected to benefit first

ASMPT (00522) surged more than 7%, reaching a high of 233.6 Hong Kong dollars, setting a new historical high for the stock price. As of the time of reporting, it rose by 6.91% to 232 Hong Kong dollars, with a trading volume of 4.6 billion Hong Kong dollars. On the news front, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung chaired a meeting at the Blue House on the 29th, announcing a government investment plan and support program for semiconductors, physical artificial intelligence (AI), and AI data centers totaling over a trillion South Korean won. South Korea will invest 80 trillion South Korean won (about 3.52 trillion Chinese yuan) to establish four memory chip wafer manufacturing factories in the southwest Gwangju and Jeolla regions, creating the second largest semiconductor industry cluster in the country after the capital region. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will invest a total of 81 trillion won in building an advanced packaging base in Chungcheong Province to meet the demand for AI high bandwidth memory (HBM) expansion. Huatai pointed out that ASMPT's first quarter orders are strong, with AI demand continuing to spread from advanced packaging to mainstream back-end processes, and Silicon Photonics (SiPh) and Chip-on-Substrate (CoPoS) expected to open up long-term growth opportunities. EB SECURITIES also stated that as TCB and HB equipment progress smoothly, the launch of HBM4 and 16-layer/20-layer HBM shipments will further strengthen the outlook for TCB demand. The company actively expands its customer base for storage and logic advanced packaging, optimistic about the long-term boosting of performance and valuation in the advanced packaging business.