In the world of high-tech components, it’s all about your customer list. Things like nuts and bolts and optical lenses rarely excite investors, even though they are critical components for a wide range of products. But when someone like Apple chooses your components for use in its iPhones or other products, that’s quite another story.
Newly listed ZJK Industrial Co. Ltd. (ZJK.US) was well aware of that fact when it announced a potential major expansion of its existing partnership with cutting-edge chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.US) on Dec. 3. What it probably didn’t expect was the huge round of applause it would get from investors after that announcement, reflecting the power of a company’s name that has come to represent the huge potential of artificial intelligence (AI).
Shares of ZJK, which listed at the end of September, nearly tripled the day of the announcement, briefly transforming this otherwise-mundane maker of fasteners used in a wide range of electronics into a “unicorn” by lifting its value past the $1 billion threshold to $1.1 billion. The stock has come down since then, notably dropping 12.5% on Tuesday after China unveiled what looked like a politically motivated anti-trust investigation into Nvidia.