Unisem is showing strength. It appears that securities firms' analyses, which suggest that Unisem will benefit as the U.S. government has confirmed semiconductor production support subsidies not only for Intel and TSMC but also for Samsung Electronics, are influencing the stock price.
As of 10:12 AM on the 16th, Unisem was trading at 9,570 KRW, up 180 KRW (1.92%) compared to the previous trading day.
SK Securities stated that Unisem is expected to turn the tide starting with the resumption of U.S. investments. The investment opinion is Buy, and the target price was raised from 9,000 KRW to 13,000 KRW.
Researcher Dongju Lee of SK Securities said, "Performance improvement is expected compared to the previous year due to memory migration and the supply of chillers and scrubbers for domestic clients’ HBM TSV," adding, "Considering the aggressive TSV expansion plans of front-end customers, the back-end process will partially fill the gap left by front-end investments this year."
SK Securities forecasted Unisem’s first-quarter sales to increase by 12% year-on-year to 57.9 billion KRW, and operating profit to rise by 28% to 5.5 billion KRW.
Lee said, "Following Intel and TSMC, Samsung Electronics has also confirmed U.S. production support subsidies, which will likely trigger a resumption of investments," and added, "Domestic new investments are on hold until the first half of this year, but new investments for Samsung Electronics’ P4 and SK Hynix’s M16 lines are also being considered for the second half."
He continued, "The front-end new investment movement, which had stopped due to deteriorating front-end performance, is expected to reverse starting with the resumption of U.S. investments in the second half." He noted, "This is a point where a bottoming logic can be formed for equipment companies following front-end materials and parts," and predicted, "Given Unisem’s product lineup characteristics, the reflection in performance will appear the fastest."
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