With the intensification of the global chip supply crisis, the problem facing the major chip giants is not that they have no money, but that their own production capacity cannot keep up. As a result, the enterprises with money in their hands have accelerated the pace of buying and buying in the world, some buying equipment, some buying production capacity, and some simply carrying out large-scale mergers and acquisitions.
On January 11, local time, South Korean chip manufacturer Samsung Electronics was exposed to consider the acquisition of German chip manufacturer Infineon and Dutch semiconductor company NXP. To put it bluntly, following SK Hynix's acquisition of Intel's Dalian factory in China, another Korean company has plans to merge. In December 2021, the relevant institutions in China have released the transaction of SK Hynix.
From the beginning of 2021 to the present, although the news of Samsung Electronics has not yet been "hammered", the recent statement of Samsung Electronics executives to cover up has made the industry begin to think. During cess 2022, an executive at Samsung Electronics asked about a potential merger and acquisition, and he said he would soon announce good news.
As the world's second largest chip manufacturer, Samsung in addition to the strength of memory chips "can play", the business level of chips in the non-storage field has room for improvement, and the two semiconductor companies mentioned above, the ace business is basically concentrated in the field of automotive semiconductors, so for the ambitious Samsung Electronics, and their merger can make up for the lack of non-memory chip business areas.
In other words, in 2021, when the world is short of cores, Samsung Electronics can be said to have made a lot of money. Just a few days ago, Samsung released its 2021 earnings forecast, which is expected to reach 51.6 trillion won (275.5 billion yuan), an increase of more than 40% year-on-year, and the total revenue is close to 280 trillion won.
However, in the case of the intensification of the global epidemic, Samsung Electronics does not dare to guarantee that its own business can maintain the same high growth in the next few years, especially it has no confidence in its own production capacity. Just these days, the news that major manufacturers have booked semiconductor production capacity in 2022 has been frantically brushing the screen. As the world's leading semiconductor exporter, South Korea is naturally included.
It is reported that at present, South Korea's domestic 8-inch semiconductor foundry capacity has basically been "robbed". Among them, Key Foundry's annual booking capacity has been divided, and another foundry, DB HiTek, based on the industry rules of accepting bookings every six months, also plans to close the order channel in June 2022.
It is worth mentioning that NXP, the object of Samsung's "anchored" merger, tried to marry Qualcomm before, but was finally abandoned. The timeline was adjusted to 2016, when Qualcomm agreed to invest $44 billion (280.4 billion yuan in contracts) to buy the Dutch semiconductor giant, but for various reasons, the transaction has not been successfully completed, dragging on until 2 years later (2018), Qualcomm decided to "pigeon" the cooperation, and paid NXP a $2 billion "break-up fee".
Text | Liao Lisi title | Huang Zi gallium trial | Liao Lisi