FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Shares in the semiconductor sector, which have been battered recently, received some tailwind again on Wednesday. This was due to hopeful signals for the Chinese business of the supplier ASML as well as strong business figures from Samsung Electronics and AMD. These brightened the gloomy mood somewhat.

On the German stock market, this was reflected in price gains by Infineon and Elmos Semiconductor, which rose by 2 and 1.4 percent respectively. The shares of optoelectronics specialist Aixtron gained 1.4 percent and those of microprocessor supplier Süss Microtec even 4.5 percent. In Paris, STMicro recorded gains of 1.7 percent.

Samsung, an industry giant, increased its net profit to a level last seen in 2010. The South Koreans also want to double sales of chips for artificial intelligence applications. This caused the share price on the Seoul stock exchange to rise by 3.6 percent. It was the share's biggest daily gain since the beginning of June.

On the Amsterdam stock exchange, ASML rose by 6.3 percent. The Reuters news agency had reported that the USA wanted to exempt chip industry suppliers from the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea from a next round of export restrictions to China. Concerns about trade restrictions in the global chip industry had recently weighed heavily on share prices.

The previous evening after the US stock market closed, another semiconductor heavyweight, AMD, had impressed with its quarterly results. On Wednesday, the share price shot up by 9 percent in pre-market trading. The company intends to significantly increase its share of chips for artificial intelligence /bek/ajx/jha/.