If You Can Only Buy 1 Chip Stock in 2025, It Should Be This

ASE Technology (ASX) is a semiconductor company involved in providing packaging, assembly, and testing services. Formed through the merger of ASE Inc. and Siliconware Precision Industries back in 2018, the company uses advanced packaging technologies like system-in-packages (SiP), fan-out wafer-level packaging (FO-WLP), and 2.5D/3D integration. It also provides electronic manufacturing services to its clients and has taken major environmental strides to ensure eco-friendly manufacturing processes.

The company has global operations and its headquarters is in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

About ASX Stock

Shares of the chip company are little changed in the year to date, up just over 0.6%. However, they remain down almost 11% from their 2025 highs and are down nearly 9% in the past 52 weeks. ASE Technology has a market capitalization of $22 billion. 

ASE Technology’s First-Quarter Results

ASE Technology posted its first-quarter results on April 30, recording a profit of 1.64 NTD, up from 1.27 NTD in the year-ago quarter.  Revenue for the quarter increased 11.6% year-over-year to 148.2 billion NTD. 

Revenue from packaging operations came to 68 billion NTD, or 46% of total revenue, testing operations revenue was 11% of total revenue or 16.3 billion NTD, EMS operations revenue stood at 42% or 62.2 billion NTD, and other sources made up 1% or 1.48 billion NTD.

During the quarter gross margin came to 16.8%, a slight 0.4% increase sequentially, while operating margin decreased to 6.5% from 6.9% reported in Q4. ASE Technology ended the quarter with a cash reserve of 77.1 billion NTD.

ASE Technology’s Impact

When we think about semiconductor companies, names like Nvidia (NVDA), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) come to mind, but companies like ASE Technology also play a pivotal part behind the scenes. ASE Technology is one of the world’s largest independent semiconductor packaging and testing service providers.

Its work can be easily explained if we think of it like a backstage crew that ensures all your devices from smartphones to servers run smoothly and efficiently without any hiccups.

While market leaders like TSMC and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) dominate the chip designing and fabrication line, ASE leads in outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services.

ASE has more than 30% of the market share, making it one of the go-to partners for chip design companies. 

Analyst Ratings on ASE

ASE Technology’s stock has received a unanimous “Strong Buy” rating from three analysts with a mean price target of $12.05, reflecting upside potential of 18% from the current market price. While this consensus makes it the top-rated chip stock tracked by Barchart, investors should note that it has received very few ratings compared to Nvidia, AMD, and others.