Xinhua Finance, Beijing, October 11 (Ding Jing) As consumer demand continues to decline, terminal manufacturers clear inventory, the global semiconductor industry's prosperity is declining, and the semiconductor sector enters a pullback period. Specifically, downstream customers in the wafer foundry industry are in a difficult situation of high inventory, thus continuing to reduce orders. Global semiconductor companies are experiencing a bleak sales outlook, a sharp drop in stock prices and a evaporated market value. In particular, TSMC's stock plunged on the 11th, plummeted 8.3%, setting a record for the largest decline, which also pushed semiconductors' "winter is coming" to the forefront.
PC and mobile phone shipments have both declined sharply since this year, which has made the development of the semiconductor industry worse. During the National Day, some U.S. chip giants released financial reports and performances lower than expected. Chaowei Semiconductor (AMD) had revenue of approximately US$5.6 billion in the third quarter, significantly lower than AMD's expectations of US$6.7 billion in early August. Micron Technology 's fourth-quarter revenue fell 19.71% year-on-year to US$6.643 billion, the lowest revenue since the second quarter of fiscal 2021, and its net profit fell 45.15% year-on-year to US$1.492 billion.
According to statistics from Xinhua Finance , from the performance of the US stock secondary market, among the US stock semiconductor companies with a market value of more than 10 billion yuan, 13 companies fell by more than 40% from their highest point this year. Chaowei Semiconductor has the largest retracement, up to 62%, and Nvidia, Maywell Technology, Terida , Intel , TSMC and others also have a deep decline. It is worth noting that since TSMC's stock price hit a record high on January 13 this year, the stock price has been halved so far, with a drop of as high as 53.49%.
Figure: Some semiconductor stocks in the US stock market
The weak trend of the global semiconductor sector has also affected A shares semiconductor. As of the close of the 11th, the semiconductor sector fell by more than 1%, ranking among the top in the industry's decline. Since the beginning of this year, the stock prices of 8 A-share semiconductor stocks have fallen by more than 60%, namely Guokewei, Weier Co., Ltd., Wingtech Technology , etc., of which Weier Co., Ltd.'s market value evaporated by 182.734 billion yuan this year. There are also 11 html stocks that have retreated in the range of 50%-60%, namely Xinpengwei, Shengong Co., Ltd., Huiding Technology, etc.
Figure: Some semiconductor stocks in A-shares
However, the market still has differences on the future trend of the chip sector.
Take Northern Huachuang , one of the heavyweight stocks in chip semiconductors, as an example. The company expects net profit in the first three quarters to be approximately 1.555 billion to 1.795 billion yuan, and has increased by 136.16% to 172.62% year-on-year, and its operating performance has maintained continuous growth. However, the good performance has not reversed the previous day's limit down trend. Northern Huachuang closed at the limit down price again on the 11th, at 225.5 yuan per share. For other A-share semiconductor stocks, the stock prices of Haiguang Information, Shengmei Shanghai and Tuojing Technology fell by more than 30% in just two trading days after the holiday. Dragon Tiger List shows that institutional funds have fled. Shenzhen Stock Connect bought Northern Huachuang for 177 million yuan and sold 483 million yuan. The four institutions have a net sale of 238 million yuan in total. Haiguang Information was net sale of 505 million yuan by five institutions; Shengmei Shanghai was net sale of 121 million yuan by three institutions; Tuojing Technology was net sale of 282 million yuan by five institutions. That is, the institution fled a total of more than 1.1 billion yuan from the above four companies.
But on the other hand, the large inflow of chip ETFs also indicates that some investors are optimistic about the chip sector in the long run. On October 10, the net inflow of chip ETF exceeded 200 million yuan. Statistics found that the chip sector has been in adjustment since August 19, but the share of Huaxia Guozheng semiconductor chip ETF has continued to increase, from 15.274 billion shares at the time of adjustment to 17.972 billion shares on October 10, an increase of more than 17%, and the net inflow inflow in the range was 3.281 billion yuan.
Figure: The scale of various chip ETF funds
From a macro perspective, the country has successively issued a package of policies to support the development of the semiconductor industry. For example, Shenzhen recently released the draft for comments for the semiconductor and integrated circuit industry , and the reward for R&D of multiple chips has increased to a maximum of 10 million yuan per year. On the one hand, technological breakthroughs and equipment autonomy in domestic semiconductor advanced processes are expected to be launched in sequence. On the other hand, emerging application scenarios such as new energy, smart cars, and industrial robots have strong demand for non-advanced process semiconductor products, thereby promoting technological independence and iterative innovation in the domestic semiconductor industry.
Huaxin Securities analyst Fan Yiming also pointed out that according to the interim report, the new orders signed by many semiconductor listed companies have increased year-on-year, fully laying the foundation for the growth of performance for the whole year and the next year. At the same time, the profitability of semiconductor equipment companies has increased in the first half of the year, and domestic semiconductor equipment companies are entering a period of accelerated profit release. It is expected that domestic manufacturers will have relatively clear plans for future expansion of production. This may mean that there is no need to be pessimistic about the future market changes of domestic chip companies, and the opportunity for domestic substitution is the key to breaking the situation.
Editor: Carrie Lam
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