Vicor Corporation's stock jumped 10.6% after the company revealed plans to acquire two New Hampshire properties to house additional chip fabrication sites. The purchases comprise a 334,000-square-foot building on 66 acres in Merrimack and a separate 54-acre parcel in Hooksett, New Hampshire. Vicor said the two locations will be developed as ChiP Fab-2 and ChiP Fab-3, with a combined footprint approaching one million square feet.
Those facilities will add capacity beyond the company's existing ChiP Fab-1, which was built out to 320,000 square feet on 16 acres in Andover, Massachusetts. Vicor reported that Fab-1 utilization is nearing capacity, prompting the expansion to the two New Hampshire sites.
According to the company, Fab-2 is expected to have a one-year lead time to initial deployment. Vicor framed the expansion as intended to support original equipment manufacturers and hyperscalers that require power delivery solutions tailored for advanced artificial intelligence applications.
Vicor also said the build-out is intended to address supply chain preferences among customers seeking U.S. sourcing and what the company described as "Freedom to Operate." In that context, Vicor referenced that certain computing systems from leading manufacturers were barred from importation on the grounds that they used power suppliers the company characterized as infringing.
On its business model, Vicor designs, manufactures and markets modular power components as well as complete power systems. The company is headquartered in Andover, Massachusetts, and it licenses patents that cover high-density power components and power distribution architectures.
The announcement lays out exact property details and the intended use cases for the new fabs but does not disclose additional timing milestones, capital expenditure amounts or projected output metrics beyond the stated one-year lead time for Fab-2 to initial deployment. The company also did not provide updated utilization figures for the planned Fab-2 and Fab-3 once brought online.
Investors reacted to the property acquisitions and the stated rationale for increasing domestic capacity with a notable intraday share-price move following the announcement.