The Zhitong Finance App learned that Bank of America believes that the current stock price of Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer BE Semiconductor Industries (BESIY.US) does not fully reflect the potential competitive threat from ASML.US (ASML.US). The bank downgraded BE Semiconductor Industries' rating from “buy” to “neutral” and cut the target price by nearly half. Affected by this, the stock price once fell by more than 6% on Tuesday.
BE Semiconductor Industries is currently leading the hybrid bonding (hybrid bonding) equipment market. Hybrid bonding is an emerging advanced packaging technology that can directly connect two chip surfaces, eliminating traditional metal bumps, thereby improving chip interconnection density and heat dissipation efficiency. As demand for advanced packaging technology for products such as AI chips and high-bandwidth memory continues to increase, this technology has also become an important pillar of the company's future growth prospects.
Bernstein analysts expect that by 2028, about three-quarters of the hybrid bonding equipment shipped globally may come from BE Semiconductor Industries. The company itself also has high expectations for this market. Under an optimistic scenario, the company expects to ship more than 2,000 units of hybrid bonding equipment by 2030, while by the end of 2025, its cumulative order volume will only exceed 150 units.
However, Bank of America analysts led by Didier Scemama pointed out that BE Semiconductor Industries' leading edge is facing new uncertainties, the most notable of which is that Asmack has publicly expressed its intention to enter the hybrid bonding market.
Bank of America said that companies like Asmack may enter BE Semiconductor Industries' most important growth market. In addition, BE Semiconductor Industries may need to increase investment in R&D in the future. These risks are currently not fully reflected in stock prices. Until Asmack's specific plans are more clear, this factor may continue to weigh on BE Semiconductor Industries' valuation. Despite this, Bank of America is currently not assuming that Asmack will eventually seize a large share of the market.
Asmack delivered its first advanced packaging product last year. In April of this year, Asmack CEO Christophe Fouquet said in an earnings conference call that the company will continue to study how to use hybrid bonding technology to support customers.
Bank of America believes that Asmack's potential advantage is related to the technical bottlenecks currently faced by hybrid bonding. Currently, an important problem hindering large-scale application of this technology is low production yield, and it is still difficult for manufacturers to continue to produce a sufficient number of qualified chips in a stable manner. As multiple logic chips or memory chips are stacked, the requirements for equipment accuracy also increase, and Asmack's accumulated technical capabilities in the field of high-precision and high-speed lithography may create opportunities for it to enter this market.
BE Semiconductor Industries' stock price has been clearly under pressure recently. Due to investors' concerns that memory chip makers may delay adopting hybrid bonding technology and other factors, the stock fell by about one-third cumulatively in the third quarter, making it the worst-performing component stock in the European Stoxx 600 index during the same period. However, even after experiencing a sharp correction, BE Semiconductor Industries has accumulated a cumulative increase of about 45% since this year.