Chinese chip firm Montage Technology surges 57% in its Hong Kong debut

By Donny Kwok and Yantoultra Ngui HONG KONG/SINGAPORE, Feb 9 (Reuters) – China's Montage Technology jumped 57% in its Hong Kong trading debut on Monday after the world's biggest memory interconnect chip supplier raised HK$7.04 billion ($900 million) in a share sale to mainly fund research and development. The shares opened at HK$168 compared to their offer price of HK$106.89, and climbed further to HK$171. Shanghai-listed Montage offered 65.9 million shares in Hong Kong at a maximum offer price of HK$106.89 each. Besides R&D, the proceeds will be used to fund commercialisation, strategic investments and or acquisitions and working capital, according to its prospectus. The retail portion of the offering was more than 700 times oversubscribed and the international tranche more than 37 times, according to the company's allotment results announcement on Friday. The offering garnered 17 cornerstone investors who committed $450 million, including JPMorgan Asset Management, UBS Asset Management and Yunfeng Capital. Chinese artificial intelligence and semiconductor companies are tapping a resurgent Hong Kong equity fundraising market, spurred on by the AI boom and Beijing's push to build up China's technology capabilities in response to U.S. curbs on high-end chips and chipmaking equipment. ($1 = 7.8142 Hong Kong dollars) (Reporting by Donny Kwok in Hong Kong and Yantoultra Ngui in Singapore; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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