Samsung Electronics sold all of its remaining stake in ASML Holding in the December quarter as part of its desire to expand into new areas of chip manufacturing.
The world’s largest chip maker sold about 1.58 million shares, or 0.4%, of ASML, according to its latest quarterly financial filing with regulators. The share is estimated at about 1.26 trillion KRW (930 million USD) by the end of September, the company’s earlier reports showed.
Samsung bought a 3% stake in the Dutch chip equipment maker for about 700 billion KRW in 2012. Four years later, the South Korean company sold half of its stake. Samsung has been gradually shrinking its share since the second quarter of last year.
A Samsung representative declined to comment on the matter.
Samsung is making serious efforts to catch up with rival SK Hynix in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are used to help Nvidia’s accelerators train artificial intelligence. It is also looking to narrow Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s lead in contract chip manufacturing.
