[Featured Stock] Eobove, MCU Price Soars 6x, Premiums Added Yet Still Unavailable... From MCU Development to Production

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyungsoo Park] ABOV Semiconductor is soaring. Due to the semiconductor shortage, the price of MCU, which was $8 per unit in the distribution market last year, has recently risen more than sixfold, and the news that it cannot be obtained even at high prices seems to have influenced the stock price.

At 9:38 a.m. on the 19th, ABOV Semiconductor was trading at 16,250 KRW, up 16.49% from the previous trading day.

Founded in 2006, ABOV Semiconductor develops MCU (Micro Controller Unit), driver ICs, sensors, and other chips that mainly serve as the "brain" of home appliances and electrical products among non-memory semiconductors. It is a fabless company that outsources manufacturing to foundries and backend process companies. By possessing its own NVM (Non Volatile Memory) technology, which is core to MCUs, it secures the most important technological competitiveness in chip design.

ABOV Semiconductor has secured its own probe test and final test production lines at its Ochang headquarters, which are difficult for other fabless companies to have, striving to reduce costs. It holds proprietary design technology for various analog IPs, which are core to MCU companies, securing competitiveness compared to other fabless competitors that use foundry’s off-the-shelf IP. It is strategically expanding its technological base by making early investments in promising startups developing the latest high-performance analog or digital IP technologies and forming a domestic fabless industry 'ABOV Umbrella' alliance.

As of the end of 2020, it has nine affiliates and subsidiaries. Greenchips manufactures and supplies MCU electronic components, with ABOV Semiconductor’s largest shareholder holding a 90% stake. Kotek Semicom supplies electronic components such as TTL and is a subsidiary wholly owned by Greenchips. Kotek Plus supplies electronic components and is 100% owned by ABOV Semiconductor’s largest shareholder.

Its subsidiary ABOV HK is a corporation established through 100% equity investment. Finechips, in which it has invested, designs MCUs, while Davinchips, Gwanak Analog Technology, Auto Silicon, and Skychips design and sell semiconductor products and IP. All these companies have joint product development relationships with ABOV Semiconductor.

Recently, ABOV Semiconductor has also entered the MCU semiconductor market, known as the brain of automotive semiconductors. It aims to 'transfer' from a domestic top-tier non-memory design fabless company focused on home appliance and mobile MCUs to an automotive semiconductor design and manufacturing fabless company. The automotive semiconductors developed by ABOV Semiconductor and ready for market release include ▲Lidar MCU (A31Q213) ▲Parking Assist System (PAS) MCU (A94Q216) ▲Mobile device charging MCU (A94Q427).

Yesterday, an economic newspaper reported that due to the semiconductor shortage, the MCU price in the distribution market, which was $8 per unit last year, recently jumped to $50, more than six times higher, but it is so difficult to secure the required quantity. MCU is a chip that acts as the brain of information technology (IT) devices, and small and medium IT companies purchase it through overseas semiconductor companies’ agents. The chip shortage, which started with automobiles, appears to be spreading across the entire IT industry, including smartphones, TVs, home appliances, PCs, and small electronic devices. Although prices have risen more than 30 times for some products, it is not easy to secure them even by paying premiums.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.