A chip-cooling technology company is the hottest stock in Oslo.
Oslo-listed shares of Asetek A/S, an Aalborg, Denmark-based company that delivers liquid cooling systems for personal computers and servers, have risen 136 percent so far this year, making it the biggest gainer on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
Now it is targeting a bigger chunk of the data center cooling business to ensure lasting returns.
“The data center is where the biggest potential is long-term,” Asetek chief executive Andre Eriksen said by telephone.
“In the longer perspective, I believe that data centers will be liquid cooled,” he said.
Asetek’s cooling systems are used in products by Dell Inc, HP Inc, Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) and Intel Corp, and are in high demand from do-it-yourself enthusiasts and gamers eager for high-performance computers.
The growth of e-sports, where professional competitors play video games before audiences of fans, has seen a resurgence in personal computers after lagging gaming consoles in the past few years.
The company raised its outlook in August for this year’s desktop sales growth to between 10 and 20 percent from the single-digit percentage growth it saw earlier.
“It’s difficult to say how big e-sports can be,” Eriksen said.
“It’s outgrowing everything we could believe five years ago. It’s still growing pretty fast. There is solid demand in the desktop space,” he said.
Technology stocks have been among the leaders in the STOXX Europe 600 Index this year as companies start to reinvest in computer systems and consumers take up new services that require more and more data.
The STOXX 600 Europe Technology Index is up 21 percent year-to-date compared with 8.3 percent for all sectors.
Eriksen started building data chip cooling systems “just for fun” when he studied at Aalborg University to help his gamer friends speed up their computers.
Two decades later, he now runs a 3.2 billion krone (US$400 million) company.
With 91 percent of revenue coming from the desktop business, data center cooling certainly has room to grow.
Asetek was selected by an undisclosed partner for a new data center product to be unveiled next month, it said earlier this year.
Eriksen estimates the total data center cooling market is worth about US$5 billion to US$10 billion.
This new partnership will be the “next important trigger” for the stock, said Danske Bank analyst Johan Murer, who rates the stock a “buy.”
With Intel as the most likely partner, there is more room for the shares to advance if Asetek “lives up to expectation on the data center partnership,” he said.
However, high expectations might also open the door to disappointment.
“Asetek has indicated that it will be a game-changer for the company,” Murer said in an e-mail.
“The stock could fall back if the partner isn’t Intel,” the analyst said.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
RSS