lithography machine ?
Starry Sky Jun thinks that the word lithography is very accurate and in place.
The first difficulty is light, that is, the light source, the EUV (extreme ultraviolet light) used by the top lithography machines. There is only news about R&D related in China, but there is no news about commercial applications. However, there are many news about relatively low-end DUV (deep ultraviolet light) light sources, such as Maulai Optics is a supplier of DUV light sources.
The second difficulty is to move the light source to operate, which is the so-called dual workpiece table. This technology Huazhuo Jingke has achieved a breakthrough.
In the first half of 2022, the sales of lithography machines of ASML to mainland China accounted for about one-third of its total sales. Such rapid shipments show that the Chinese market has strong demand for lithography machines, and on the other hand, it shows that China's lithography machine technology breakthrough is just around the corner. If it is not sold, no one will buy it. Wen Genning, president of
ASML, said that if the United States continues to make a decision to cut off the supply of chip , it will force China to accelerate its technological independence. In less than 15 years, China will have everything.
Faced with the difficulties and obstacles in the chip industry, Starry Sky has always been an optimistic person. We have all the market, capital and talents, but we just lack a little time.
According to Wengening, before you have everything, let’s have DUV lithography technology first!
01
Maulai Optics, a DUV lithography machine optical perspective mirror provider
Maulai Optics was established in 1999. It was mainly engaged in optical lens business in the early days, mainly exporting. With the continuous innovation of technology and the increasing demands of customers, the company's fields are becoming more and more dedicated and deeper.
Currently, the company's products are mainly customized industrial-grade precision optical products, and the downstream application fields are mainly semiconductors, life sciences, AR/VR detection and other fields. Compared with consumer-grade application fields such as smartphones, digital cameras, projectors, and security monitoring lenses, industrial-grade precision optics puts higher requirements on the process parameters and technical performance that can be achieved by the product, and pays more attention to applications in special scenarios, and the market scale is also relatively small.
Until one day, Shanghai Microelectronics placed an order with the company.
says a "thriller" fact that China's lithography machine technology is among the top in the world and ranks in the top five.
companies that can produce lithography machines. In the entire Blue Star, there are only a few companies such as , Dutch , Japanese Nikon, Japanese Cannon, American Ultratech and Shanghai Microelectronics. Among them, ASML is not built by itself, but by gathering the common forces of top technology companies in the world.
is still quite different from the world's top lithography machines, which does not mean that one is better than the other. China has solved the gap from scratch, so be patient and give Chinese companies a little time.
Data source: Tonghuashun iFind, Map: Poetry and Starry Sky
Although it has achieved "mastering core technology", the shortcomings of the company's too small scale are also very obvious.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the global market size of industrial-grade precision optics in 2021 is 13.57 billion yuan, and it is expected that the market size will grow from 15.94 billion yuan in 2022 to 26.76 billion yuan in 2026, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 13.8%; Zeiss , Nikon , Canon , Newport, Jenoptik, Leica, Olympus and other international companies occupy more than 70% of the market and are in the leading position in the industry.
At this stage, Maulai Optics' global market share is about 2.4%.
This means two points. First, the entire industry space is very limited (the world will only have tens of billions of yuan in the future); second, the company is a relatively small brand and cannot compete with industry giants.
In other words, Maulai Optics can only solve the problem of whether the key nodes of domestic semiconductors can be topped by the independent and controllable , and its own development space is not large.
02
More confusing revenue classification
According to the company's prospectus book, the company's most important products include life sciences, semiconductors, AR/VR detection, etc.
, life sciences
Among them, life sciences accounts for more than 36%.
What is life science?
is actually a dental application. is mainly used for optical scanning heads in oral scanning instruments, etc., optical devices
2, semiconductor
If dentistry is described as life sciences, the company's prospectus guides readers to focus on DUV lithography machine accessories, which is somewhat misleading.
Because the company provides DUV accessories for Shanghai Microelectronics, the sales volume is very small, and it is not even reflected in the top five customers.
The company's semiconductor business is not all DUV accessories. Most of them are 3D detection lenses used in the semiconductor industry to detect whether products have defects.
Frankly speaking, this type of product is not essentially different from the microscope eyepieces used in traditional industries. It is easy to cause misunderstandings from investors in classification into semiconductor business.
03
Risks of overseas business
The company was established to do the export business.
To this day, the company has developed a large number of domestic users, but it is still mainly overseas business. ALIGN, a US dental equipment manufacturer, is the company's largest customer, accounting for more than 15% of sales.
From 2019 to 2021, the company's overseas sales revenue was RMB 154.6619 million, RMB 179.1151 million, RMB 254.4982 million and RMB 165.0344 million, respectively, accounting for 69.70%, 72.74%, 76.78% and 79.79% of operating income, respectively.
Under the current uncertain international situation, the company's performance also has certain uncertainty.
In addition, it is important to pay attention to: from 2019 to 2021, the company's sales amount exported from the United States from China was RMB 43.8284 million, RMB 47.5359 million, RMB 53.4041 million and RMB 28.6579 million, respectively, accounting for 19.75%, 19.31%, 16.11% and 13.85% of the sales revenue of each period, respectively. The company's procurement amounts of US suppliers were RMB 3.955 million, RMB 6.6653 million, RMB 9.204 million and RMB 2.9109 million, respectively, accounting for 4.90%, 5.62%, 6.66% and 3.44% of the total procurement amount, respectively. Why is
mentioned in the United States alone?
On the one hand, the company's core export products are all within the tax increase scope in the United States; on the other hand, the company is engaged in an industry that is relatively sensitive.
Relatively speaking, the company's products are in a very segmented field and are also highly dependent on high-end customers.
If the company cannot maintain good cooperative relationships with leading customers in these downstream segmented industries in the future, or fails to expand other new customers in segmented markets, it may lead to the company being unable to find new alternative customers in a segmented application scenario for a short time, which will have an adverse impact on the business development of a certain segmented market.
