What a day for Oppstar Bhd.

The counter saw the steepest jump in a single day since its listing, jumping 16% to close at RM1.45 on Apr 30.

This was after the company revealed its tie-up with the world’s second-largest foundry owner, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Oppstar reached a five-month high, touching an intraday high of RM1.55 on active trade.

Not bad for the integrated circuit (IC) design service provider, which lost some 30.6% in value over the past year.

Despite the great run, the counter is still trading below its 52-week high of RM2.11 in May last year.

On April 29, Oppstar announced its collaboration with Samsung to produce industrial IC, which will be manufactured using Samsung’s 14 nanometre (nm) FinFET technology foundry process.

South Korean electronics giant, Samsung, is the largest memory chip manufacturer as well as the second largest foundry business company in the world.

Such collaboration did not come as a complete surprise as in February, there were talks of it close to establishing a direct partnership with a world-renowned wafer fab.

According to independent market researcher, Counterpoint Research, Samsung holds a 14% market share in the global foundry market, as of the fourth quarter of 2023.

Semiconductor sales stood at US$46.2bil In February 2024, signifying a 16.3% year-on-year growth from US$39.7bil a year ago.

Investors are also anticipating Oppstar to land some design jobs in Japan as it has bid for such jobs via its newly-acquired Japanese unit.

This is one of the group’s strategies to broaden its regional presence and Japan is prioritised due to a healthy number of enquiries from Japanese companies seeking to leverage Oppstar’s expertise, in line with the Japanese government’s initiative to revitalise its semiconductor industry.

There are number of factors for investors to like Oppstar as an investment case.

The company has a strong foothold and growing presence in the front-end semiconductor space with high entry barriers, specifically, stringent qualification requirements.

It also has strong design capabilities in leading-edge process nodes.

There is also less risk on single customer dependency as it has a diverse customer base from the East and the West given its strong working relationships with various foundries.