The moment of truth for Montage Technology has arrived.
Lead: Same day sees performance pre-increase and overseas investigation.
On July 16, for Montage Technology $MONTAGE TECH(06809.HK), it was destined to be an eventful day.
In the evening, a striking performance forecast once again focused market attention on this core enterprise in the AI industry chain.
According to the performance forecast, the company expects to achieve operating revenue of approximately 3.335 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, an increase of about 26.6% compared to the same period last year; it is expected that the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company in the first half of 2026 will be 1.90 billion to 2.10 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 63.9%~81.2%.
With revenue growth and profit increases, the dividends brought by the new round of AI infrastructure construction are still being continuously realized.
Later that evening, another piece of news instantly cooled down market sentiment.
The company announced that the Fair Trade Investigation Department of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in South Korea conducted on-site searches and evidence collection at its Korean office regarding potential violations of anti-monopoly regulations. The company has not currently received any accusations from the prosecutor's office or any government agency regarding improper conduct by the company, its directors, or employees, and operations remain normal.
On one hand, performance continues high growth; on the other, uncertainty suddenly appears.
The capital market's reaction was very direct.
On July 16, Montage Technology's stock price plummeted by 16.44%, with rough calculations showing a single-day market value evaporation of over 50 billion yuan.
Subsequently, the company's chairman and CEO, Yang Chonghe, proposed a share repurchase plan worth 300 million to 600 million yuan, attempting to release confidence to the market.
Within one day, performance, investigation, and repurchase intertwined as three key themes.
Montage Technology faced a severe test.
01 Success due to AI
Over the past two years, Montage Technology's biggest label has been just one: AI.
In the AI industry chain, NVIDIA provides GPUs, TSMC handles advanced manufacturing, while Montage Technology stands in a position that is easily overlooked yet indispensable: high-speed interconnection for servers.
The company's core products are memory interface and memory module companion chips. Simply put, inside servers, data transmission between CPUs, GPUs, and high-speed memory relies on high-speed interconnection interfaces to complete.
With the rapid growth in demand for AI large model training and inference, servers have higher requirements for memory capacity, speed, and data throughput capabilities, making DDR5 an important direction for industrial upgrading.
And Montage Technology happened to hit this wave of technological migration.
Data shows that in 2024, the company achieved operating revenue of 3.639 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 59.2%; net profit attributable to parent company shareholders was 1.412 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 213.1%. In 2025, the company continued to maintain high-speed growth, achieving operating revenue of 5.456 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 49.94%; net profit attributable to parent company shareholders was 2.236 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 58.35%.
If excluding the impact of share-based payments, the company's net profit attributable to parent company shareholders reached 2.647 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 81%, which is a sufficiently impressive report card. The core driving force behind the growth comes from: increased penetration rate of DDR5, growing demand for AI servers, and increased volume of high-speed interconnection chips.
The company disclosed that in 2025, the interconnection chip product line achieved sales revenue of 5.139 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 53.4%, becoming the company's most core source of income.
By the first half of 2026, Montage Technology's performance growth still stemmed from the same logic.
On one hand, with the increasing penetration rate of DDR5 and continuous iteration of sub-generations, the shipment volume of the company's DDR5 RCD chips increased significantly, among which the shipment proportion of third and fourth-generation RCD chips further increased; on the other hand, the revenue of new products including MRCD/MDB, PCIe Retimer, CKD, and CXL MXC chips grew noticeably.
Over the past two years, Montage Technology enjoyed a typical industrial chain dividend: more and more AI servers were built, server memory demand continued to rise, and DDR5 rapidly replaced DDR4.
As a key supplier, Montage Technology naturally became one of the biggest beneficiaries.
02 Questions That Must Be Answered Eventually
Montage Technology's business model is very similar to "selling shovels" in the semiconductor industry.
In a gold rush, those who make stable money are often not the gold diggers, but those selling tools.
The same applies to the AI era.
The market pays attention to NVIDIA GPUs, as well as server units, optical modules, and other links.
But within the vast AI infrastructure system, there are still many key components, with memory interface chips being one of them.
However, unlike GPUs, which determine computing power limits, memory interface chips mainly play a connecting role, and their importance is unquestionable.
But the growth space is still affected by industrial cycles.
NVIDIA sells more GPUs, cloud providers increase capital expenditures, AI server demand rises, server memory demand grows, and finally transmits to Montage Technology.
This is a complete industrial chain; if the growth rate of any link declines, it will affect final demand.
Therefore, the questions truly concerned by the market have changed.
Previously, the focus was on whether there was demand for AI; now, the focus is on how long AI demand can continue to grow at a high speed.
There is a rule in the semiconductor industry: in the early stages of technological upgrades, leading enterprises often enjoy high-speed growth, the market expands rapidly, the competitive landscape has not yet stabilized, and profit margins remain at relatively high levels.
As technology matures, the growth rate will gradually return to normal, and DDR5 is no exception, fortunately, it is still in the stage of increasing penetration.
But in the future, when DDR5 gradually becomes the standard configuration for servers, can the company's growth maintain the current speed? This is a question that Montage Technology must eventually answer.
03 Seeking a Second Growth Curve
For growth-oriented technology companies, the greatest risk is not declining growth, but having only one growth curve.
Over the past two years, Montage Technology's first growth curve was very clear: DDR5.
But the company also realized that relying solely on a single technological cycle makes it difficult to support long-term growth.
Therefore, new directions are emerging: MRCD/MDB, PCIe Retimer, CKD, CXL MXC.
Behind these products lies the increasingly complex high-speed interconnection needs of AI servers.
As AI server architectures continue to upgrade, the scale of data exchange between GPUs, between GPUs and CPUs, and between chips and storage continues to expand, and the importance of high-speed interconnection is rising.
If these products can generate scale revenue, Montage Technology's future development logic will change: from a company benefiting from the DDR5 cycle to a platform enterprise for high-speed interconnection in AI infrastructure.
This is also the core reason why the market gives the company a growth valuation.
But problems also exist.
A large market space does not mean a company will definitely occupy it.
Ultimately, competition in the chip industry is about: technology, customers, ecosystem, scale, and continuous iteration capability.
04 Re-examining
For the capital market, the greatest pressure on excellent enterprises is often not poor past performance, but too good past performance.
When a company achieves high-speed growth for consecutive years, the market will continuously raise expectations.
At this time, what investors care about is no longer: is there growth, but whether the growth can still exceed expectations.
Montage Technology is currently in this stage.
Over the past two years, the company enjoyed: the AI wave, DDR5 upgrade, server demand growth, and valuation increase.
But in the future, the company needs to answer three questions.
First, how long can the DDR5 dividend last?
If DDR5 continues to increase its penetration rate, the company is still expected to maintain growth; but if the industry enters a mature stage, the growth rate may decline.
Second, can new products take over?
If products such as PCIe Retimer and high-performance bandwidth chips continue to see increased volume, the company has the opportunity to open up new growth spaces; otherwise, the market may redefine it as a cyclical semiconductor company.
Third, can global operations withstand the test?
This incident is still in the investigation stage, and the company also stated that operations are normal, but for a global chip enterprise, changes in overseas regulation could still affect market sentiment.
05 Signals Behind the Repurchase
Facing a significant adjustment in stock price, Montage Technology chose to repurchase.
On July 16, the company's chairman and CEO, Yang Chonghe, proposed a share repurchase plan worth 300 million to 600 million yuan.
For a company with a market value exceeding 260 billion yuan, the scale of this fund does not determine the company's value.
But what the market cares about is not the amount, but the signal.
After the rapid pullback in stock price, management expressed recognition of the company's long-term value through repurchases.
But repurchases can only improve short-term sentiment; what truly determines valuation is still future fundamentals.
If in the next few quarters, the company can continue to prove: AI demand remains strong, DDR5 upgrades are still progressing, and new product revenues continue to grow, then this adjustment might just be a fluctuation in the cycle of growth stocks.
Conversely, if the AI industry enters a slowdown phase and new product relay is insufficient, valuation pressure remains.
06 Major Exam
Over the past two years, Montage Technology proved one thing: it seized the AI wave.
But in the future, it needs to prove another thing: even if the industrial wave changes, it can still grow.
If products like MRCD/MDB, PCIe Retimer, and CXL successfully take over, the company may grow from a beneficiary of the DDR5 era into an important chip platform enterprise in the AI infrastructure era.
But if growth mainly depends on the DDR5 cycle, the company may return to the logic of semiconductor cyclical stocks.
And the uncertainty brought by the Korean investigation becomes an additional variable in current market sentiment.
For investors, what truly needs to be observed is not a specific number in the first quarter or semi-annual report.
It is how much AI dividend can still be released in the coming year? Can the second growth curve form? Can global competition continue?
The semiconductor industry never lacks windfalls; what is truly scarce is enterprises that can continue to grow after the windfall passes.
From the DDR5 era moving towards the AI high-speed interconnection era, Montage Technology is undergoing an important transformation.
As for whether the transformation will succeed? The answer will gradually be revealed in the performance of the next few quarters.
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