Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2023-04-10 Origin: Site
The semiconductor equipment market has seen another surge.
The strength of chip manufacturing is considered to be the core of future global semiconductor industry competition, and semiconductor equipment, as the key to chip manufacturing, has been a hot topic of discussion in recent years. Especially with the promotion of US sanctions against China, the field of semiconductor equipment has been pushed to the forefront. International equipment giants have begun to weaken the Chinese market in order to reduce the heavy burden of US export restrictions to China. At the same time, with the downturn in the downstream application market, industry chain manufacturers have successively reduced capital expenditure and reduced the pace of production expansion, resulting in a decline in semiconductor equipment supplier orders. American Applied Materials stated at a press conference a few days ago that "there are a large number of cancellations and delays in orders from storage chip customers." The world's leading semiconductor equipment manufacturers are facing a "cold market winter".
Looking at the current situation, the downward cycle of the semiconductor market and trade frictions are intertwined internally and externally, which has brought significant losses to the business of semiconductor equipment giants. However, this also provides new development opportunities for domestic equipment suppliers involved.
Currently, a group of domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturers represented by Northern Huachuang, Zhongwei Company, Shengmei Shanghai, and Xinyuan Micro have completed the accumulation process from 0 to 1 through decades of development.
With the arrival of the A-share performance release period, semiconductor equipment related companies have also submitted their responses to the market, which can provide a glimpse of the development of China's semiconductor equipment industry in 2022.
Performance of Domestic Equipment Manufacturers in 2022
The performance of Chinese semiconductor equipment manufacturers in 2022 was very impressive.
According to incomplete statistics, as of March 2023, more than 100 companies related to the semiconductor industry have issued performance forecasts for 2022, and more than half of them have achieved year-on-year growth in net profit, most of them listed companies in the field of semiconductor equipment and materials. Companies with a growth rate of more than 100% include several domestic semiconductor equipment companies, such as North Huachuang, Tuojing Technology, Xinyuan Micro, Huahai Qingke, and Changchuan Technology.
North Huachuang
North Huachuang's main business includes electronic process equipment and electronic components, with equipment layout covering etching, deposition, cleaning, testing, and other aspects. Downstream, it covers multiple fields such as logic, storage, power, third generation semiconductor, photovoltaic, and panel. The company continues to expand its product line, making it the leading platform based semiconductor equipment supplier in China.
Zhongwei Company
Zhongwei Company is a high-end micro processing equipment company, whose main business is to focus on the research, development, production, and sales of key equipment such as plasma etching equipment, deep silicon etching equipment, and MOCVD equipment used in the field of micro devices such as integrated circuits and LED chips. According to the data released in the performance report on February 27th, the company achieved operating revenue of 4.74 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of 52.50% compared to the same period last year, hitting a new record high; The attributable net profit was 1.1698 billion yuan, up 15.66% year-on-year. The amount of new orders signed by the company in 2022 was about 6.32 billion yuan, an increase of about 2.19 billion yuan compared to 2021, with a year-on-year increase of about 53.0%. The order to sales ratio reached 1.33.
According to the company, the company's main product, plasma etching equipment, is the most critical micro processing equipment besides photolithography machines, and is the equipment with the most manufacturing steps and the most difficult process development. Due to the wavelength limitations of photolithography machines and the development of 2D to 3D chips, plasma etching equipment is increasingly becoming a bottleneck device, and has also become the largest category in the market for ten key equipment categories, accounting for about 25% of the total semiconductor front-end equipment market. The thin film equipment (mainly chemical thin film and epitaxial equipment) arranged by the company is the third largest equipment market besides photolithography and etching machines. In addition, Microelectronics has invested in the fourth largest equipment market - optical detection equipment. MOCVD equipment, another key product of the company, is the most critical core equipment for the manufacture of three or five group compound semiconductors.
By the end of 2022, the company had accumulated 3311 plasma etching and chemical thin film reaction platforms, with 106 production lines in China, Asia, and Europe, fully achieving mass production and a large number of repetitive sales, winning the trust and support of many customers and suppliers.
Among them, the CCP capacitive high-energy plasma etching equipment continues to gain recognition from more customers at home and abroad, and its market share continues to increase. It has achieved multiple batch sales in the world's most advanced 5-nanometer chip production line and the next generation of more advanced production lines, with more than 200 reaction platforms operating satisfactorily on the production line; Since its launch, the ICP inductive low energy plasma etching machine has continuously approved more etching applications, rapidly expanding the market and receiving batch orders from leading customers. It has conducted mass production of more than 100 ICP etching processes on various chip production lines for over 20 customers, including logic, DRAM, and 3DNAND, and continues to expand to verify more etching applications, with a strong development momentum. The 8-inch and 12-inch deep silicon etching equipment that also uses ICP technology continues to receive batch and repeated orders in the etching markets such as advanced system packaging, 2.5-dimensional packaging, and MEMS chip production lines.
In addition to etching equipment, MOCVD equipment, the key equipment for gallium nitride based LEDs manufactured by the company, has achieved an absolute leading position in the production line of blue-green LED in the industrialization of the new generation of Mini LED.
In addition, the development of various new products by the company, including extremely high aspect ratio etching equipment for more advanced micro device manufacturing, LPCVD thin film equipment, EPI epitaxial equipment, and various MOCVD equipment, has also made gratifying progress, and will soon contribute to the company's sales revenue.
Shengmei Shanghai
The main products of Shengmei Shanghai Company include semiconductor cleaning equipment, semiconductor electroplating equipment, and advanced packaging wet process equipment. It has developed the world's first SAPS/TEBO megasonic cleaning technology and Tahoe monolithic slot combination cleaning technology, which can be applied to the wafer cleaning field at 28 nm and below technology nodes, effectively solving the problems of organic contamination and particle cleaning after etching.
According to the annual report of Shengmei Shanghai, the company achieved operating revenue of 2.873 billion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 77.25%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 668 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 151.08%; after deducting non recurring profits and losses, the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 690 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 254.27%.
Shengmei Shanghai said that sales orders continued to grow due to the increasing demand for equipment in the domestic semiconductor industry. At the same time, the company has achieved certain results in new customer development, new market development, and other aspects. New products have been recognized by customers, and the order volume has steadily increased. Among them, the company's business income from the Chinese Mainland region was 2.722 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 78.03%; The main business income outside Chinese Mainland was 34 million yuan, up 86.44% year on year.
Benefiting from the development of the semiconductor equipment market, the competitive advantage of the company's products, and the company's multi-year capacity expansion, the production and sales volume of Shengmei Shanghai semiconductor cleaning equipment and other semiconductor equipment (electroplating, vertical furnace tubes, stress free copper throwing, and other equipment) increased in 2022.
Meanwhile, Shengmei Shanghai is still increasing industrial investment. Based on the disclosure in its annual report that it has held shares in four companies, including semiconductor special equipment components, the company recently established Nantong Quande Xuelou Kexin Phase II Venture Capital Fund Management Partnership (limited partnership) with Tongfu Microelectronics, with a registered capital of 701 million yuan. In its annual report, Shengmei Shanghai stated that while growing organically, the company is considering investing in and acquiring high-end semiconductor equipment manufacturers at home and abroad or conducting cooperative development with well-known domestic equipment manufacturers to enable the company to cover more product categories and occupy more market segments. The company will focus on equipment companies in the fields of cleaning equipment, chip manufacturing, packaging and testing, as well as other equipment companies in the compound semiconductor field.
At the same time, Shengmei Shanghai also announced the new trend of its global layout. The company plans to raise 245 million yuan in excess of the raised capital to increase the capital of its wholly-owned subsidiary, Shengmei South Korea, in order to build and implement the project of Shengmei South Korea Semiconductor Equipment R&D and Manufacturing Center. The company stated that this move could effectively improve the R&D and production conditions of its Korean subsidiary, enhance its R&D strength and industrialization capabilities; At the same time, further improve the company's global industrial layout, accelerate the verification and promotion of the company's competitive differentiated products on international clients, and enhance the company's ability to serve global customers.
Based on the business development trend in recent years, Shengmei Shanghai expects that the annual operating revenue of 2023 will be between 3.65 billion and 425 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 27.0% to 47.9%, maintaining a high-speed growth.
