Bid farewell to 2021, meet 2022, hope that everyone has a good start, and also wish that China's semiconductor industry can "go further" in the new year!
The 300 billion chip giant that filed for bankruptcy reorganization
In July 2021, Tiger Ben chips, unigroup displays, unigroup memory, SIM card chips, automotive security chips... Tsinghua Unigroup, a chip giant with many semiconductor products and assets of nearly 300 billion yuan, was suddenly applied for bankruptcy reorganization by creditors. This news has stirred up thousands of waves in the field of domestic semiconductors.
According to public information, as of the end of 2018, Tsinghua Unigroup has more than 40,000 employees in the world, is the world's third largest mobile phone chip design company, accounting for more than 20% of the global SIM card chip market share, is also one of China's leading cloud service providers, in the brilliant years of Tsinghua Unigroup, it plans to control TSMC, the acquisition of MediaTek, but who can expect such a star-like enterprise to go to the brink of bankruptcy in 2021.
According to the official news of Tsinghua Tsinghua Group, on July 9, 2021, our group received the "Notice" served by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. The main content is that the relevant creditors applied to the court for bankruptcy reorganization of our group on the grounds that the group could not pay off the debts due, the assets were insufficient to pay off all the debts, and there was obviously no solvency, and it had the value and feasibility of reorganization.
In people's long-term cognition, Tsinghua Unigroup is definitely not bad money, unlike Huawei, Loongson and other enterprises that take the road of self-development, Tsinghua Unigroup believes in "buying, buying and buying", using capital to exchange technology.
In 2013, Tsinghua Unigroup borrowed $900 million and acquired Spreadtrum For nearly $1.8 billion. A year later, it spent more than $900 million to acquire Rydico, and then fused the two companies to create a well-known Unigroup Zhanrui chip.
In 2015, Tsinghua Unigroup spent another $2.5 billion to buy a majority stake in Hewlett-Packard's company, Xinhuasan, and three years later, spent another $2.26 billion to acquire French chip component maker Linxens.
In addition, Tsinghua Unigroup also controlled nanmao, silicon and other chip packaging factories in Taiwan, and established a joint venture with Western Digital to establish Unigroup Western Digital, and then established Yangtze River Storage in Wuhan.
However, under this series of capital operations, the total assets of Tsinghua Unigroup have risen from less than 7 billion at the end of 2012 to nearly 300 billion today, but the ensuing liabilities have also directly soared to more than 200 billion, which has also laid the groundwork for bankruptcy reorganization.
Bumpy bankruptcy reorganization road
On October 18, 2021, Tsinghua Unigroup officially issued a document saying that under the auspices of the Beijing Municipal First Intermediate Court, the first creditors' meeting of the substantive merger and reorganization of seven enterprises including Tsinghua Unigroup (hereinafter referred to as the "One Debt Meeting") was held on the same day, and two procedural proposals were voted on, disclosing that a total of seven interested investors signed up to participate in strategic investment. According to the minutes of the meeting, Tsinghua Unigroup has determined the scale of creditors' rights of 108.181 billion yuan, and it is expected that a repayment plan will be given before February 27, 2022 and voted by creditors.
Tsinghua Unigroup's subsidiaries are not affected by restructuring, maintain normal production and operation, and can repay principal and interest normally; non-core businesses outside the chip and cloud and network will be included in the overall restructuring, but depending on the intention of war investment. If the war investment is not active, actively look for other asset interest parties.
However, soon after, Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup, reported in real name, believing that the bankruptcy reorganization of Tsinghua Unigroup was suspected of the loss of 73.419 billion state-owned assets, leaving the entire Tsinghua Group bankruptcy reorganization under a shadow.
Subsequently (on the evening of December 16), the official website of Tsinghua Unigroup issued a statement saying that the manager of the group (tsinghua group liquidation group) noticed that the minority shareholder of tsinghua unigroup, Jiankun Group, and the actual control individual Zhao Weiguo spread false remarks about the disposal of debt risks of tsinghua unigroup, in an attempt to interfere with and affect the judicial reorganization process of tsinghua unigroup, and the manager resolutely opposed it, and would take measures to pursue the legal responsibility of relevant individuals and units according to law.
An internal dispute, let many people worry about tsinghua unigroup, the huge scale coupled with complex holdings, so that it has a decisive impact on the domestic semiconductor industry, in view of the tsinghua group for many years of continuous large-scale acquisitions, as well as the semiconductor industry long cycle, multi-fixed investment operating model, itself in the memory, chip, cloud and other semiconductor industries have a deep accumulation of technology, and even in some industries to achieve a breakthrough in domestic zero, whether from the market level, or the national level, Tsinghua Unigroup is an important pillar enterprise to achieve semiconductor localization, and it is unlikely to completely withdraw from the market competition due to some debt problems, but it can only deal with the contradiction between the current situation and the future route while running at full speed.
According to the latest announcement on the official website of Tsinghua Unigroup, at 9:30 a.m. on December 29, 2021, the second creditors' meeting and investor group meeting of the substantive merger and reorganization of seven enterprises including Tsinghua Unigroup was held through the National Enterprise Bankruptcy reorganization case information network, and the reorganization plan of Tsinghua Unigroup was voted and approved.
This means that the restructuring of Tsinghua Unigroup has entered a new stage, and the controversy about the restructuring of Tsinghua Unigroup that has lasted for nearly a month has also been settled.
The controlling shareholder of JIANGUANG Assets is China State Construction Investment Capital, and the actual controller is Central Huijin Investment Co., Ltd., which is wholly state-owned. The two companies have been deeply engaged in the semiconductor field for many years, according to the microgrid, since 2015, the two have led a number of major mergers and acquisitions in the field of semiconductors and hard technologies of more than 10 billion yuan, including Nexperia Semiconductor, Ambrolon Semiconductor, Siemens pressure sensor subsidiary Fuba, Austrian Semiconductor, Automotive Electronics Packaging and Testing Enterprise United Technology, Wansheng Technology and other heavyweight mergers and acquisitions projects. On December 1, 2021, Riyueguang Investment Control, the world's largest semiconductor packaging and testing manufacturer, announced that it had sold four factories and operations in mainland China to Zhilu Capital for US$1.46 billion.
For Zhilu and Jianguang consortium has good management and industrial operation capabilities, through its many years of layout in the semiconductor industry chain, it is expected to further enhance the synergistic empowerment effect of various technology enterprises of Tsinghua Unigroup, Tsinghua Unigroup itself is diversified in business, mainly in chip business and cloud network, tsinghua unigroup guowei, a listed company under the chip industry sector, is in a leading position in the field of intelligent security, and several other unlisted companies have also been widely used in the fields of memory, communications, and cloud services. Tsinghua Unigroup, the cloud network industry sector, is the core asset and is in a leading position in the fields of computing and storage, network transmission equipment, data security, cloud services, and smart cities.
After the re-integration, it is indeed expected to move forward as a domestic semiconductor "new aircraft carrier", and after learning the lessons of buying, buying and buying, I believe that in the future layout of Tsinghua Unigroup, self-research will have an increasingly important position.
It is expected to improve the independent chip strategy
"Buy, buy and buy" makes Tsinghua Unigroup grow rapidly, and with the establishment of the scale closed loop, the next focus of Tsinghua Unigroup is the integration of internal resources around self-developed chips.
Taking memory chips as an example, the annual shipment of memory chips accounts for one-third of the global chip production, and there is a huge market demand, but the memory chips are more standard and general, and the ecological requirements are far less than that of computing chips, which gives domestic semiconductor companies the opportunity to concentrate resources to open a breakthrough.
The research and development of NAND Flash of Changjiang Storage Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yangtze River Storage"), funded by Tsinghua Tsinghua Tsinghua Group, is progressing smoothly. The company will achieve mass production of 64-layer 3D NAND Flash in 2019 and is planning to achieve mass production of 128 layers; if the 128-layer 3D NAND Flash is successfully mass-produced, the company will be on a par with top manufacturers in technology and is expected to achieve 8% market share in 2021. Tsinghua Unigroup (the parent company of Yangtze River Storage) has also announced its entry into DRAM, but due to the lack of expertise in manufacturing packaging, independent research and development is expected to take three to five years.
Similarly, in the field of network applications, Tsinghua Unigroup deep layout of the "core - cloud - network - edge - end" industrial chain, grasp the important opportunities of market development, in the new generation of cloud computing infrastructure construction and intelligent application services to occupy the advantage, relying on years of technology accumulation, to provide full-stack ICT infrastructure and services, but also launched the self-developed high-performance intelligent network processor - Zhiqing 660 chip, its launch for the company to maintain the core network leading market position to lay a solid foundation, It also marks that the company has become the first manufacturer of network processors with high-level language programming capabilities in the domestic industry.
In the future, with the strengthening of the strength of self-developed chips, we may be able to witness the growth of a new semiconductor giant.