South Korea’s leading printed circuit board (PCB) maker Simmtech Co. has become a red-hot stock, with its value doubled in just a month on multiple upsides – high-performance chip demand for gaming and big data and releases of high-end smartphones in the second half.

Shares of Simmtech jumped 95 percent on the secondary Kosdaq in the past month. They fell 3.58 percent to 20,200 won ($17.6) on Thursday.

Foreign and institutional players swarmed over the stock on high expectations from strong earnings in the second half.

Simmtech is estimated to deliver an operating profit of 107.8 billion won for full 2020, reversing from a loss of 17.9 billion won last year, with sales up 26 percent to 1.26 trillion won, according to Seoul-based financial data provider FnGuide.

The company already surprised the market with much better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter, with an operating profit of 30.8 billion won on revenue of 321.8 billion won.

“Simmtech will gain further in the latter quarters on increasing demand for graphics double data rate type six (GDDR6) memory chips ahead of launch of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X coming out later this year. Smartphone shipments also are expected to rise and draw more orders for multi chip packages,” said Kim Rok-ho, an analyst at Hana Financial Investment.

Simmtech claims the largest share of 30 percent in the global memory module PCB market. It supplies its products to Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron.

“Simmtech achieved an operating margin of above 9 percent in the second quarter for the first time in eight years. Demand for its memory module PCBs will continue to rise until next year,” said Lee Jong-uk, an analyst at Samsung Securities.

By Kim Jung-beom and Lee Ha-yeon

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