Judging from the recent news, China's chip industry is developing rapidly, and technological breakthroughs have been achieved in many aspects of the chip industry chain, and many achievements have been made.
Not long ago, the United States tightened the ban on chips again, including AI chips in the scope of export controls. A number of AI chips from many American chip giants, including Nvidia, Intel, and AMD, have been restricted from shipment.
Chips can be called the "food" of modern science and technology, which can not only be used in traditional mobile phones, computers and other consumer electronics fields, but also have important applications in artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, new energy vehicles and other fields.
Just recently, Huawei came out with good news that it has completed the independent research and development of the Lingxi architecture, and Huawei has previously announced that it has completed the research and development of 14nm EDA software. The combination basically means that Huawei has achieved a comprehensive breakthrough in the field of chip design, breaking the technical barriers of the United States and completing the localization substitution.
However, what people didn't expect was that a "not very good" news also came out recently, which attracted a lot of people's attention. Not long ago, SMIC, a well-known chip foundry in China and one of the world's top five wafer manufacturers, announced its third-quarter financial results.
Judging from this data, SMIC's revenue was 11.7 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 106% and net profit of 67.8 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 78%. Under the environment of continuous market downturn, global chip manufacturers have experienced varying degrees of revenue and net profit reductions, so SMIC's revenue has decreased by 106% is a good number.
But what people didn't expect was that SMIC's net profit fell by 78% year-on-year, which also touched the hearts of many people. Even many foreign media jumped out: China cannot make chips.
However, some professionals pointed out that SMIC, as the top chip foundry enterprise in China, itself shoulders the heavy responsibility of China's chip manufacturing, although in recent years, SMIC has pulled the technology gap with TSMC and other top foundries from more than ten years to about three years, solving key problems such as 28nm process yield, 14nm process mass production, and 7nm process breakthrough, but its development is too fast or it takes a certain amount of time to precipitate.
Founded in 2000, SMIC was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2004 and on the Shanghai ** Stock Exchange in 2020. It is mainly engaged in integrated circuit foundry business, providing 035 micron to 14 nanometer process design and manufacturing services.
For example, SMIC previously invested 170 billion yuan in chip construction and built four wafer fabs, directly increasing the number of wafer fabs from the previous 8 to 12. From the perspective of ZTE's scale, this investment can be called a "big gamble", and once successful, it will definitely bring a lot of revenue growth to SMIC.
However, judging from the current situation, the investment in the construction of these four fabs has been spent, but they have not yet been officially put into production. This basically means that the cost has skyrocketed, but the revenue has not increased, and the financial report data, especially the net profit, is naturally not so good.
However, with the support of SMIC in the Chinese market, chip orders can be said to be "soft", and the capacity utilization rate is also the best among many chip foundries, surpassing well-known chip companies such as UMC and GF, and basically the same as TSMC's capacity utilization rate.
Capacity utilization rate actually refers to the ratio of the current capacity scale and the theoretical capacity value under the full opening of the production line. Not only that, because the shutdown and restart of the production line not only requires a lot of costs, but also a lot of equipment loss, the production lines of chip foundry companies are basically opened all year round, which basically means a lot of electricity costs. I am a technology creator There is no doubt that SMIC's capacity utilization rate can be close to TSMC and reach the top international level, which also means that SMIC has received a large number of Chinese orders, and the actual situation is not as bad as many people think.
Postscript:
SMIC's recent financial report data has attracted widespread attention at home and abroad, and its net profit ** of more than 78% has caused many foreign media to sneer, but in fact, SMIC's net profit has decreased more because of investment in factory construction, resulting in higher costs.