Japan's JSR acquires US photoresist company Inpria for more than US$500 million

On September 17, Japanese semiconductor material manufacturer JSR announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire US semiconductor material manufacturer Inpria Corp for US$514 million (approximately RMB 2.446 billion).

Currently, JSR holds 21% of Inpria. Through this transaction, JSR will acquire the remaining shares of Inpria, making Inpria a wholly-owned subsidiary of JSR. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of October 2021.

Established in 2007, Inpria has been committed to the development of metal-based EUV photoresist. Its main product is mainly composed of tin oxide. The EUV exposure system has achieved the world's highest resolution. In addition, the metal-based photoresist is superior to traditional photoresist in the pattern transfer performance during the dry etching process, and is very suitable for semiconductor mass production processes.

It is reported that the Japan Synthetic Rubber Company (JSR) was established in 1957, focusing on four main businesses: synthetic rubber (38% of revenue), digital solutions (31%), plastics (20%) and life sciences (11%) ), where digital solutions cover lithography materials, chemical mechanical polishing CMP materials, etc. At present, the global market share of JSR photoresist is 13% (with ArF photoresist ranking first), and the compound growth rate of JSR revenue and net profit in fiscal year 2000-2019 is 3.9% and 12.7%.

With the completion of this acquisition, JSR will add Inpria's metal-based photoresist to JSR's photoresist product portfolio to further increase the photoresist market share.