By Nathan Vifflin
Jan 8 (Reuters) – Semiconductor wafer maker Soitec has appointed Laurent Remont as its new chief executive officer, to replace Pierre Barnabe from April, the French company said on Thursday.
Shares of Soitec were up 9.4% at 0826 GMT, at the top of the SBF 120 index of Paris’ most traded equities.
“On paper, this looks like a very good hire for Soitec,” Bernstein analyst Aleksander Peterc said in a note to clients. “Most investors we spoke to were hoping precisely for a strong semiconductor pedigree outsider nomination,” he added.
Remont, 54, is currently the senior vice president of Germany’s largest chipmaker Infineon and has previously worked at Kontron and STMicroelectronics.
“We were particularly impressed by his innovative mindset, his strategic vision and his proven ability to design and deploy transformative roadmaps,” Frederic Lissalde, chairman of Soitec’s board of directors, said in a statement.
The wafer maker is grappling with weakness across its main markets of mobile, automotive, industrial and smart devices, which has led its share price to collapse more than 80% since Barnabe became CEO on July 26, 2022.
Peterc said the new CEO has tough quarters ahead of him, as chipmakers continue to destock their wafer inventories, which could result in poor sales throughout 2026.
In October, Soitec said Barnabe would leave the company on March 31 due to personal reasons.
(Reporting by Nathan Vifflin in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)
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