By Milana Vinn and Amy-Jo Crowley
NEW YORK/LONDON, March 13 (Reuters) - BE Semiconductor Industries has attracted takeover interest as its chip-packaging technology becomes increasingly strategic for semiconductor equipment manufacturers, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The Amsterdam-listed chip equipment maker, known as Besi, which has a market value of 14 billion euros ($16.20 billion), has been working with investment bank Morgan Stanley to evaluate the approaches, two of the people
said, requesting anonymity as the discussions are confidential.
U.S. chip-equipment maker Lam Research is among the suitors that have held discussions with the Dutch company, one of the people said. Other potentially interested parties include U.S. equipment manufacturer Applied Materials, which acquired a 9% stake in Besi in April last year and became its largest shareholder, that person and a fourth one said. All four people spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.
Besi declined to comment on "market rumours," adding that it remained committed to executing on its strategy as an independent company. Morgan Stanley and Applied Materials declined to comment, while Lam Research did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SHARES RISE
Besi shares jumped as much as 14% to a record high in early trading on Friday after the news, and were last trading 6.7% higher. Applied Materials shares were up 0.8% in premarket U.S. trading, and Lam rose 0.95%.
Besi, currently valued at 46 times its 12-month forward earnings, according to LSEG data, competes with an array of rival packaging firms including ASMPT and Kulicke & Soffa. But it is prized for its strong position in hybrid bonding - a technology that is expected to enable new generations of chips used in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.
"A take-over has been one of the scenarios for Besi in recent years, as no plan of succession has ever been presented for CEO/Founder [Richard] Blickman" analysts for Degroof Petercam said in a note on Friday.
POLITICAL HURDLES
Analysts said the tech rivalry between the United States and China has made mergers in the chips industry difficult to complete. The acquisition of a Dutch firm with strategic technology would be subject to a national security review in the Netherlands, and Besi also has operations in China.
"This is not only about antitrust (scrutiny), but also about geopolitics," said analyst Marc Hesselink of ING.
The talks, which started in mid-2025, hit a pause earlier this year after rising tensions between the U.S. and the European Union over U.S. President Donald Trump's attempts to control Greenland, one of the people said. However, bidders including Lam Research remain interested in Besi and have held talks recently, this person said.
While chip-packaging has historically been a low-margin business, advanced packaging is currently a key bottleneck for the industry.
Besi and Applied Materials formed a partnership in 2020 to commercialize hybrid bonding, which is essentially a way of sticking two chips together, or sticking chips on silicon wafers. The technology directly links chips with copper-to-copper connections, allowing for faster data transfer and lower power consumption in advanced semiconductors.
In April, Degroof Petercam analyst Michael Roeg said Besi shareholders "assume that Applied Materials will eventually want to buy the entire company."
Besi shares fell sharply in February, on reports that memory chipmakers might delay the adoption of hybrid bonding in favor of a rival technology, thermal compression bonding, for the upcoming generation of chips.
($1 = 0.8639 euros)
(Reporting by Milana Vinn in New York and Amy-Jo Crowley in London, additional reporting by Toby Sterling, Stephen Nellis, Nathan Vifflin; Editing by Anousha Sakoui, Echo Wang, Aurora Ellis, Stephen Coates, Susan Fenton and Pooja Desai)
