ASMPT (00522) saw its shares rise more than 7% again. At the time of writing, the stock was up 6.98% to HK$174.7, with a turnover of HK$243 million. The move follows news that Applied Materials will acquire ASMPT's NEXX large-area advanced packaging deposition equipment business for a total cash consideration of $120 million. ASMPT stated that the group has decided to divest the target company from its Semiconductor Solutions segment through the sale, which will help the group focus more on its back-end packaging operations. Huaxin Securities noted that it is optimistic about ASMPT capitalizing on the domestic trend towards supply chain autonomy and its leadership in advanced packaging technologies like thermal compression bonding (TCB). The firm believes ASMPT can address the high-precision interconnection challenges faced by domestic chip manufacturers, such as Huawei's Ascend and ChangXin Memory Technologies, during mass production, thereby benefiting from the substantial equipment procurement opportunities arising from China's self-sufficiency efforts in computing and storage power.