(Yicai) May 25 -- Tianshui Huatian Technology’s shares climbed by their daily trading limit after the Chinese company set out a CNY3 billion (USD442.2 million) investment plan to expand memory chip packaging and testing capacity at its Nanjing plant.

Shares of the major semiconductor packaging and testing firm [SHE: 002185] closed 10 percent up at CNY16.97 (USD2.48) each in Shenzhen today. The stock is up 55 percent since the end of last year.

The project, to be funded, built, and run by Huatian Technology Nanjing, will give the Nanjing production base the capacity to handle another 430 million memory chips a year, the parent company said after the stock market closed on May 22.

Construction will kick off next month and be completed in May 2028. Once at full capacity, Huatian Tech expects the new facility to bring annual net profit of CNY126 million (USD18.6 million) on revenue of CNY2.2 billion (USD317 million).

The new facility’s output will be mainly used in artificial intelligence computing, servers, consumer electronics, smart devices, vehicle electronics, and data centers, the company said, adding that it will help reinforce Huatian Tech’s technological edge and support the creation of a domestically controllable semiconductor supply chain.

The first phase of the Nanjing chip packaging and testing base cost CNY1.5 billion and commenced operations in 2020. It handles the packaging of memory, computing, sensor, and power management chips.

The first stage of the CNY7 billion second phase, still under construction, will handle high-end computing chips, while the just announced CNY3 billion second stage will deal with memory chips.

Huatian Tech returned to profit in the first quarter of this year because of strong orders for memory packaging and government subsidies. Net profit was CNY86.8 million (USD12.5 million) in the three months ended March 31 on a 35 percent jump in revenue from a year earlier to CNY4.8 billion.

Editor: Futura Costaglione