An employee showcases a semiconductor integrated circuit at an industry expo on October 31. Photo: VCG

China Resources Microelectronics Limited (CR Micro), a semiconductor and electronic information enterprise, saw its share price rise by 298.35 percent as of Tuesday since it was listed on Thursday.

Analysts say CR Micro is only one of the examples of semiconductor enterprises that saw a climb in share price because the market is optimistic about the prospects of China's semiconductor industry.

"China's semiconductor industry still lags behind that of the US and Japan, but China leads the global second tier and is seeing rapid growth in exports of semiconductor components," Tian Yun, director of the China Society of Macroeconomics Research Center, told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

"Based on such expectations, the stock price rise for semiconductor companies is bullish investment behavior, especially amid the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), which trapped people at home, so they killed time by doing some investment," Tian noted.

The share price of CR Micro ended at 50.99 yuan ($7.30) on Tuesday, up 3.58 percent, and its market value reached 59.759 billion yuan. The offering price was 12.8 yuan per share on Thursday.

CR Micro is the first red-chip company, incorporated outside the Chinese mainland and listed in Hong Kong, to be listed on China's sci-tech innovation board (STAR market) on the Shanghai stock exchange. And its stock was added to the MSCI China all shares index on Saturday, effective from March 12, according to MSCI.

As of February 25, there are 89 listed companies on the STAR market, mainly including enterprises in the semiconductor, biological medicine, electronic component, new materials, robotic and other fields, according to public data. 

By the end of Tuesday trading, the share prices of 89 companies listed on the STAR market had all risen, with Montage Technology having the highest market value.

Shares in Montage Technology ended at 91.82 yuan on Tuesday, with a total market value of 103.74 billion yuan. The company is a chip design company and is one of the few companies in the world that can provide memory interface solutions in the server memory market.

"Chinese semiconductor companies are still catching up with US and Japanese companies. Because Chinese companies are latecomers to the industry, they will certainly not be as profitable as the semiconductor giants are today," said Tian.

Net profit attributable to the parent company of Montage Technology was 933 million yuan, up 26.6 percent from the previous year, read the 2019 annual report for the company on February 26.

The profit of Montage Technology is nearly five times less than that of chip giant Qualcomm, though the net income of Qualcomm in fiscal year 2019 dropped 13 percent to $4.4 billion, according to the earning report from Qualcomm on November 6, 2019. 

According to customs data, China's imports of integrated circuits totaled $305.55 billion in 2019, down 2.1 percent year-on-year, while the trade deficit was over $200 billion.

"The semiconductor industry is capital-intensive and knowledge-intensive, and the talent gap in China is very large. China still has a long way to go," Tian noted.

China's current advantage is still in mid- and low-end semiconductor components. Whether or not can China break through the technical barriers depends on education and talent introduction, Tian added.