A Chinese flag is displayed next to a “Made in China” sign seen on a printed circuit board with semiconductor chips, on this illustration picture taken February 17, 2023.
Florence Lo | Reuters
Major Asian chip stocks outside of China rose Tuesday, shrugging off a latest round of U.S. semiconductor export curbs aimed toward impairing Beijing’s capability to provide certain high-end chips.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — the world’s largest contract chip supplier — saw shares rise 2.4%.
Several Japanese chip-related stocks also gained. Tokyo Electron rose 4.7%, Lasertec climbed 6.7%, Advantest gained 3.9% and Renesas Electron advanced 2.2%.
Japanese technology conglomerate Softbank, which owns a stake in British chip designer Arm, saw its shares rise 3.6%.
The Biden administration’s latest chip curbs may also goal sales of high-bandwidth memory chips, which could affect the world’s two largest memory chip makers — South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung.
Shares of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, nonetheless, rose 0.9% and 1.8%, respectively.
Derrick Irwin, portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia,” on Tuesday that the high-bandwidth memory controls would impact South Korean players to a level.
“Although our belief is that the impact and sales of high bandwidth memory chips into China are reasonably small from these players within the scheme of things, they usually’ll probably have the opportunity to shift that demand into the U.S. and other markets,” he said.
The Department of Commerce announced on Monday that it was curbing semiconductor exports to 140 latest firms in its latest effort to limit China’s ability to access innovative chip technology that could possibly be used for advancing its military capabilities.
Naura Technology Group, Piotech and ACM Research were amongst the biggest Chinese firms to be included within the export controls list.
Shares of Naura Technology and ACM Research fell 3% and 1%, respectively, in China while Piotech rose 1%. China’s largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, fell 1.5% in Hong Kong.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said Monday that the brand new export controls were the “culmination of the Biden-Harris Administration’s targeted approach to impair the PRC’s ability to indigenize the production of advanced technologies that pose a risk to our national security.”
Along with the entities added, the most recent U.S. restrictions include latest controls on 24 sorts of manufacturing equipment and three sorts of software tools used for developing semiconductors.
Last month, the effectiveness of U.S. chip restrictions had been thrown into query when it was reported that a chip made by TSMC had been present in a Huawei product.
The most recent export restrictions include a latest “red flag guidance” to handle compliance concerns, and a number of other “critical regulatory changes” to boost the effectiveness of existing controls.
