A-Share Semiconductor Companies "Fight Back In The Water" Under The Tide Of Price Rise: Can The "Gambling Style" Fund-Raising Self Built Production Line Break The Situation?

The global semiconductor production capacity is in short supply, and the price rising tide is transmitting from wafer manufacturing to the whole industry chain.

According to market participants, changes in supply and demand are the main reasons for the price rise: on the one hand, the growth of demand for downstream consumer electronics; on the other hand, the production capacity of local wafer factories and packaging plants is limited due to the overseas epidemic.

Before that, the United States had many restrictions on the domestic semiconductor field, which made the market realize that the localization rate is seriously insufficient in the upstream field of chip semiconductor. The spread of the price rise in the semiconductor industry seems to be a confirmation of the above short board.

Perhaps it is driven by the above motivation that the 21st century economic reporter found that recently, the industrial chain tentacles of many companies began to extend upstream. Including Zhuo Shengwei, gekewei and xinjieneng, they have issued financing plans to build their own or joint upstream production lines.

The global semiconductor production capacity is in short supply, and the price rising tide is transmitting from wafer manufacturing to the whole industry chain. Xinhua News Agency

When self built production line is in progress

At present, the majority of semiconductor companies adopt the fabless model, which focuses on the research and development, design and sales of integrated circuits, and entrusts the wafer manufacturing and packaging test of products to the OEM. This also means that once the upstream capacity is limited, home production will become very passive.

This is the original intention of many companies to build their own production lines. "If it has been subject to the relevant supporting production line, there will be more uncontrollable factors." Gekewei, a relevant person in charge, said in an interview with the reporter of the 21st century economic report a few days ago.

The IPO application of Geke Micro Technology Innovation Board passed the meeting on November 6 this year and is in the process of submitting for registration. The fund to be raised is 6.96 billion yuan, which will be used for the R & D and industrialization project of 12 inch CIS IC and the R & D project of CMOS image sensor.

The total investment of the 12 inch project is as high as 6.845 billion yuan, and 6.376 billion yuan is expected to be raised. Gekewei said that under the background of global BSI wafer supply tightening, the project guaranteed the supply of 12 inch BSI wafers through the way of "self built production line and segmented processing", so as to realize the independent control of key production steps of CIS special process.

"The investment cost of the wafer plant is huge, and it has high requirements for technology and equipment. It is located in the upstream link of the semiconductor industry chain. The investment is calculated in the amount of 100 million yuan. If there is no huge capital support, we dare not intervene easily." A Jiangsu semiconductor industry personage said to reporters.

Or in view of the heavy asset mode of self built wafer plants, Zhuo Shengwei, the leader of RF front-end chips, takes the form of co construction.

At the end of May this year, Zhuo Shengwei put forward a fixed increase plan. It plans to raise 3 billion yuan to invest in R & D and industrialization of high-end RF filter chips and modules, 5g communication base station RF devices, and cooperate with wafer foundry to establish production lines.

Zhuo Shengwei said that the project plans to purchase a large amount of wafer manufacturing equipment, and cooperate with the wafer foundry to establish a production line, cooperate to complete the R & D and iteration of manufacturing process, and realize the control and independent supply of key manufacturing links.

Moreover, on November 28 this year, Zhuo Shengwei also announced an investment of 800 million yuan to build a semiconductor industrial production base in Wuxi, including the construction of SAW filter wafer production and RF module packaging and testing production line.

Zhuosheng micro related personnel told reporters, "previously, the company was more in the design phase, manufacturing and sealing test were outsourced. Now we want to control the upstream link in our own hands, so as to realize the independent control of the supply chain."

As the leader of wafer foundry, SMIC is also expanding. On December 4, it announced the establishment of a joint venture with the national integrated circuit Fund II and Yizhuang Guotou, with a registered capital of US $5 billion. Its business scope includes the production of 12 inch integrated circuit wafers and integrated circuit packaging series.

The reporter learned from the industry that compared with the investment of hundreds of millions of yuan in wafer manufacturing, the investment in packaging is relatively small, which makes some companies focus on the construction of packaging test production line.

Xinjieneng landed in a shares in September this year, and the construction of semiconductor power device packaging and testing production line is one of the projects raised. The total investment is expected to reach 320 million yuan, and the fund raised for use is 200 million yuan.

"10 million-50 million package lines are still expected to be put into production. In fact, some packaging lines can not be put into one production line A person close to the new Jieneng told the 21st century economic reporter.

The source further said, "in the field of packaging, more advanced technology is abroad. Domestic technology is mainly in the hands of several large factories, but compared with high-end technology, they may be more willing to choose relatively mature technology fields, so the benefits are more obvious. So xinjieneng wants to extend upstream to do some high-end packaging production lines. "

Risk vs self control

In the semiconductor industry chain, wafer manufacturing is the most upstream link, which has previously restricted the midstream chip design manufacturers and downstream consumer electronics companies. As mentioned above, the investment cost of the wafer plant is huge, which makes many people flinch.

According to GEKO micro's prospectus, its 12 inch CIS IC project is expected to last for two years. It is predicted that after the completion of the project, the financial internal rate of return after income tax is 12.68%, and the investment recovery period (including construction period) after income tax is about 7.67 years.

Gekewei admitted that it is difficult for the project to fully generate benefits in the short term, while the depreciation and amortization expenses and labor costs generated by investment projects will increase significantly in the short term. Whether the company can complete the project construction according to the plan and whether the management team has enough ability and experience to operate the project is uncertain.

Even Zhuo Shengwei, which adopts the mode of co construction, also faces the same problems.

The construction period of the fixed increase projects is 5 years. The company will complete the production capacity construction in stages and gradually purchase equipment. Moreover, the equipment purchased includes lithography machine, coating machine, film preparation and other equipment with high unit price, with a total amount of 3.912 billion yuan, far exceeding the company's current level of fixed assets.

However, Zhuo Shengwei said that the joint construction of production lines can effectively reduce the capital expenditure of self built plants and some general production equipment by utilizing the experience of the wafer plant. On the other hand, the mode of production based on sales and investment based on production can gradually invest to expand production capacity according to market conditions, and reduce the risk of idle production lines and waste of capacity.

"We have studied in this field for many years, and we have experience in process cooperation with upstream wafer factories. There is no problem with the fixed increase project and foreign investment funds. The fixed increase project is waiting for the approval of the CSRC. We are actively expanding upstream. " Relevant personnel of Zhuosheng micro said.

It can be seen that even at great risks, a number of semiconductor companies are still investing in upstream links.

And this expansion has more practical significance in the context of the current price rise. In the current round of price rise, the demand for capacity of overseas wafer factories and packaging plants is transferred to domestic leading manufacturers, which aggravates the tension of domestic manufacturers' production capacity and will directly affect the relevant downstream links.

"Domestic wafer foundry resources are relatively rich, and a considerable number of manufacturers have the capital and technical strength to build their own power chip wafer production lines and operate in IDM mode. In the face of localization opportunities, local enterprises have the ability to seize the opportunities, achieve high-quality customer breakthroughs, and improve the degree of localization. " An electronics industry analyst said.