ASR Microelectronics issued 41.83 million shares at CNY 164.54 apiece in its Shanghai STAR Market IPO. In 2020, the company's revenue was CNY 1.08 billion, an 172% year-on-year increase.

ASR earlier acquired the mobile business unit from Marvell Technology Group (MRVL), the US semiconductor company, taking over Marvell's baseband R&D team, baseband-related IP, as well as its clients. In its IPO prospectus, ASR has revealed that its 5G chips are scheduled for volume production in early 2022.

Photo by Brian Kostiuk on Unsplash

As an essential component of a mobile phone, baseband chips are key to determining the quality and the speed of communication. Due to the extremely high technical threshold, only the top-tier chipmakers like Qualcomm (QCOM), HiSilicon, MediaTek and UNISOC can sell commercial multi-mode cellular baseband chips.

ASR focuses on three types of chip products: cellular baseband chips, non-cellular IoT chips and AI chips. At present, it has mass-produced more than 25 commercial chips and has entered the supply of sizeable national power grid enterprises, ZTE, TP-Link and other enterprises' supply chain systems.

In the past three years, its R&D investment accounted for 202.74% of its revenue, with a total investment of CNY 3.23 billion. It has mass-produced more than 25 new chips, and the cumulative sales of cellular baseband chip products have exceeded 80 million sets. The incremental sales of chip products exceeded 40 million.