"I Thought Semiconductors Would All Be Fine"...Retail Investors Cry Out as Stock Plunges 30% in 3 Days

\r\n
[Financial News] HANMI Semiconductor's first-quarter results, which came in at a shockingly weak level, dealt a direct blow to the returns of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that hold the stock. In particular, the sharper the decline in HANMI Semiconductor's share price, the more severely it dragged down the performance of ETFs with a 20% to 30% weighting in the company.
According to the Korea Exchange (KRX) on the 20th, HANMI Semiconductor shares closed at 288,000 won on the previous day, down 9.15% from the prior session. The stock fell by around 10% for three straight trading days. From its closing price of 409,500 won on the 14th to 288,000 won the previous day, it plunged 29.67% in just three trading days. Its market capitalization also shrank from 39.03 trillion won on the 14th to 27.45 trillion won the previous day, wiping out nearly 12 trillion won.
As HANMI Semiconductor's share price tumbled, ETFs with large holdings in the stock were also hit hard. The SAMSUNG KODEX AI Semiconductor Core Equipment ETF fell 16.86% from the 15th to the 19th. Over the same period, the TIGER AI Semiconductor Core Process ETF dropped 16.09%. Both products have the highest exposure to HANMI Semiconductor, with weights of 28.33% and 26.22%, respectively.
Similarly, the SOL AI Semiconductor Materials & Equipment ETF fell 14.86% during the same period. It also has the largest HANMI Semiconductor weighting in its portfolio at 20.54%. The Mirae Asset TIGER Fn Semiconductor TOP 10 ETF, which holds HANMI Semiconductor as its third-largest position after Samsung Electronics and SK hynix with a 13.86% weighting, declined 12.99%.
HANMI Semiconductor's stock began its sharp decline after the company announced first-quarter results on the 15th. The company disclosed that its operating profit on a consolidated basis for the first quarter came to 8.456 billion won, down 87.9% from 69.6 billion won a year earlier. Given that securities firms had expected operating profit of around 100 billion won, the results were widely seen as an earnings shock.
Market watchers attribute the weak performance to delayed revenue recognition from domestic customers for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) TC bonders. HANMI Semiconductor's Asia sales fell 65.8% year on year, from 14.8 billion won in the first quarter of last year to 4.98 billion won in the first quarter of this year.
Still, securities analysts expect HANMI Semiconductor to post strong earnings growth again starting in the second quarter. On the 18th, CGS International Securities raised its target price for HANMI Semiconductor from 213,000 won to 400,000 won.
Researcher Lee Yong-hwan of CGS International Securities said, "After passing the lowest point in orders from 2020 through last year, customer orders began rising again in March, driven by strong demand for the largest client's HBM TC bonders and new memory bonders." He added, "As of last month, the order backlog for the largest client had already exceeded HANMI Semiconductor's total sales to that customer last year."
He continued, "This will drive year-on-year revenue growth for HANMI Semiconductor in the second through fourth quarters." He also forecast that orders from the client will continue to increase through 2028, growing at an average annual rate of 29% on the back of the customer's aggressive plan to expand its share of the memory market and its solid factory expansion plans.
nodelay@fnnews.com Park Ji-yeon Reporter