October 25th news, according to Taiwan media "Feng Media", after conveying the message of the downward economic prosperity of the semiconductor market at the Fascist meeting not long ago, TSMC President Wei Zhejia sent another employee letter yesterday (October 24th) afternoon, stating that with the post-epidemic era, life has gradually normalized, and terminal consumption has entered a period of inventory adjustment, encouraging employees to rest more and get along with their families. Industry insiders said that TSMC's move is rare, which may mean that TSMC's capacity utilization rate will continue to decline.
According to industry insiders, this internal letter was issued at around 4 pm yesterday and was stated in a video format. The speaker of the video is Wei Zhejia. The general meaning in the article is as follows:
TSMC's performance in the last quarter (third quarter) broke record again, and revenue, gross profit, and pure after-tax profit all hit new highs; it is expected to continue to grow next year.
Due to the epidemic, the semiconductor technology industry is booming and ushering in the profit peak of the electronics industry. TSMC colleagues have worked hard in the past three years.
However, as the epidemic is about to end, the market demand for remote office and technology products has decreased, which has led to the global consumer electronics being inventory-displaced, which also shows that semiconductors are gradually entering a stage of returning to normal from peak periods.
Therefore, the company encourages colleagues to take advantage of this period to rest and go out with their families more. However, this does not include 3nm with mass production and R&D and process related personnel below 3nm.
In response to this, semiconductor industry insiders said that it is a rare move for the president of TSMC to release an internal letter to encourage holidays. Industry insiders interpreted that although TSMC's internal letter only sent out signals that encouraged holidays, compared with the semiconductor talent shortage not long ago, the signal of the semiconductor market recession is clearer.
wafer industry insiders pointed out that since TSMC is mass-producing 3nm, in full swing, personnel such as F12B, Tainan F18B (P7) in Hsinchu Baoshan are not included in the scope of "encouraging vacation", and personnel of the R&D plant F12 (P4) N3E are still in the spring.
In response to this, TSMC responded on the same day that during internal communication, the president mentioned that the accelerated digital transformation due to the epidemic and the market demand for 5G and AI have driven the growth of TSMC's business. He especially thanked his colleagues for their hard work in the past three years. As life is gradually normalized, colleagues are encouraged to get along with their families more and continue to work hard after taking vacations and charging. The trend of electronicization in this world will not change. The most important thing about TSMC is leading technology, excellent manufacturing and customer trust. We encourage colleagues not to be complacent and continue to grow with the world.
Since this year, due to the lockdown of the mainland epidemic, the mainland has hit terminal demand and changes in structural purchasing power, and then due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, inflation, , the United States has raised interest rates rapidly, accelerating the reversal of supply and demand, terminal consumption has experienced a comprehensive decline in demand. First, downstream PCs and mobile phones have felt the deepest, and with the long whip effect, it continues to spread to the upstream, and the utilization rate of mature process manufacturers such as the world's advanced and LIJI Power's production capacity has dropped sharply. Recently, even TSMC has admitted that the capacity utilization rate of 7nm is not as good as before, and has experienced a cyclical decline.
It is worth noting that before this, the memory chip industry has begun to adjust in advance. Micron has announced a 30% reduction in capital expenditure in 2023; SK Hynix capital expenditure in 2023 cut by 80%; Kioxia also announced that its two-seat NAND flash memory factory in Japan will reduce wafer production by about 30% starting from October to cope with market changes; although Samsung said it will not reduce production for the time being, its profit in the third quarter of 2022 fell by 32% year-on-year.
Recently, some indicator chip design manufacturers, including MediaTek , Nvidia, AMD, etc., have successively reported cutting orders, delaying the pull-up, initiating inventory adjustments, and downgrading financial tests.
At the same time, many large companies have also announced layoff plans. Earlier this month, according to the UK's "HTM5 Financial Times" report, Arm, a semiconductor IP subsidiary of SoftBank Group, has cut its UK employees by 20%; subsequently, according to Bloomberg, Intel is planning to lay off thousands of employees significantly to cut costs and deal with the deteriorating personal computer (PC) market.In response, Intel CEO Kissinger (Pat Gelsinger) also warned employees that they planned to "targeted layoffs" in the next few weeks and will provide more details on November 1; according to foreign media Business Insider, Microsoft has laid off nearly 1,000 employees across the company last week, involving Xbox, strategic tasks and technology departments; on October 24, Dutch medical equipment manufacturer Philips (Philips) announced that it would organize restructuring plan , which is expected to lay off 4,000 employees.
Editor: Xinzhixun-Longkejian
