Source: Tiantian IPO (ID: pedailyIPO) Author: Yang Jiyun
Another Super Semiconductor IPO is about to be born.
Yesterday (January 27), the GEM Listing Committee deliberated and approved BYD Semiconductor's initial offering application - the announcement shows that BYD Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (initial offering) meets the issuance conditions, listing conditions and information disclosure requirements. According to the prospectus, bydir semiconductors intends to raise 2.686 billion yuan in this offering.
At this point, bydir Semiconductor's IPO bell rings only a matter of time. Founded in 2004, BYD Semiconductor was originally a business unit of the BYD Group, and it was not until 2020 that it was officially split off and became independent, opening the road to financing and IPO. That year, the scene of VC/PE rushing for admission tickets is still vividly remembered, and BYD Semiconductor completed financing in two months, and the valuation soared all the way to 30 billion.
When VC/PE breaks through the threshold of BYD semiconductors, behind it is a hidden track that is erupting - automotive semiconductors, which is a domestic market of 100 billion. In the past two years, the epidemic has seriously impacted the automotive semiconductor supply chain, which has triggered a global "lack of cores", but unexpectedly created a historical opportunity for domestic substitution. A sum of financing represented by Jita Semiconductor has been released, and this piece of the river and lake is giving birth to unicorns in batches.
BYD Semiconductor spin-off and listing, 56-year-old Wang Chuanfu, will sit on the third IPO
This will be Wang Chuanfu's third listed company.
Wang Chuanfu's entrepreneurial story is a classic. Born in Anhui in 1966, he graduated from Central South University of Technology (now Central South University) majoring in metallurgical physical chemistry in 1987 and entered the Beijing General Institute of Nonferrous Metals Research to pursue a master's degree in that year. After graduating from graduate school, Wang Chuanfu stayed in the hospital to work, and then was successfully promoted, in 1993, the research institute established Big Battery Co., Ltd. in Shenzhen, and Wang Chuanfu was appointed as the general manager of the company.
He has been associated with batteries ever since. In 1995, the 29-year-old Wang Chuanfu saw the huge development prospects of the mobile phone battery industry and decided to resign and start a business. That year, in an old workshop in Liantang, Shenzhen, he founded BYD, a small company with only 20 employees at the beginning, which began to develop and produce lithium batteries independently in 1997, when it could not afford too many people, so Wang Chuanfu sold himself, engineers did it themselves, and even rushed to the production line as a worker when the construction period was tight.
In 1999, BYD developed the then industry-leading SC2100P high-current discharge battery, and the output of nickel-cadmium batteries reached 150 million in that year. In 2000, BYD became Motorola's first Chinese lithium-ion battery supplier, becoming the leader in China's mobile phone battery industry at that time.
In 2002, Wang Chuanfu ushered in the first highlight moment of his life - BYD shares were listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and the scenery was unique for a while. Later, BYD shares also landed on the A-share market in 2011 and were listed in two places, which is a later story.
In 2003, BYD made a big stride into the automotive industry. At that time, BYD cross-bank acquired Xi'an Qinchuan Automobile Co., Ltd., established BYD Automobile Co., Ltd., and established a production base in Xi'an High-tech Zone. In the same year, BYD quickly stepped up its efforts to acquire Beijing Jichi Auto Mould, established a BYD Industrial Park in Shanghai, and moved its automobile sales headquarters to Shenzhen.
Fast forward to 2008, Buffett invested $230 million in BYD, BYD's stock price soared, and the following year, Wang Chuanfu became China's richest man. Nowadays, with the rapid expansion of the new energy vehicle market, BYD's industry position has repeatedly grown, and even some analysts believe that it can surpass Tesla, on the other hand, BYD has also become a global battery manufacturing giant, and it is also a mainland enterprise second only to Foxconn in the field of foundry.
Today's protagonist, BYD Semiconductor, is not the first listed company to spin off BYD. In 2007, BYD Electronics was listed in Hong Kong. In other words, BYD Semiconductor will be Wang Chuanfu's third listed company.
The lesser-known story is that for semiconductors, BYD has been laying out for 18 years. Back in 2004, BYD Microelectronics was incorporated, initially a semiconductor division of BYD, and since then BYD has also begun to invest in the semiconductor field. In April 2020, BYD Microelectronics changed its name to "BYD Semiconductor" and sought to be listed independently at the right time. Wang Chuanfu even told the media that if there is no car, it will make semiconductors.
If there is no accident, BYD Semiconductor will be the "first stock of the core" in China. Now, with the success of BYD Semiconductor, it is also expected to help BYD's market value reach the trillion mark - previously, in November 2021, BYD's market value once broke through 900 billion yuan.
The lack of core in the car is swept away, and the half-year income is 1.2 billion, how to support the first share of the core?
Is this a color geometry semiconductor company?
Let's look at the most intuitive revenue first. From 2018 to the first half of 2021, BYD Semiconductor's revenue was 1.32 billion, 1.07 billion, 1.42 billion and 1.22 billion, and its net profit was 104 million yuan, 85.1149 million yuan, 58.6324 million yuan and 184 million yuan, respectively. It can be seen that although the revenue fluctuates greatly, BYD Semiconductor's revenue and profit in the half year of 2021 have approached or even exceeded the annual revenue of previous years.
Through the analysis of the prospectus revenue, it can also be seen that BYD Semiconductor's customer concentration is very high, and more than half of the revenue comes from the parent company BYD Group. Therefore, for the split of BYD Semiconductor listing, one of the reasons speculated by the industry is to facilitate the supply of other car companies, supply to other fields other than automobiles, and find more new customers, thereby expanding market share.
As one of the few automotive semiconductor suppliers in China, BYD Semiconductor is mainly engaged in the research and development, production and sales of power semiconductors, intelligent control ICs, intelligent sensors and optoelectronic semiconductors. According to the prospectus, since its inception, the core business of BYD Semiconductor has been automotive-grade semiconductors.
In the field of automotive-grade semiconductors, BYD has laid out the IDM model of the whole industry chain from chip design, wafer manufacturing, module packaging and testing to system and application testing.
From the perspective of product categories, BYD automotive semiconductors are mainly divided into Three categories: SiC (Silicon Carbide) Module, IGBT Module (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) and Self-developed Hybrid DM Control Module. It is worth mentioning that in the field of IGBT, BYD Semiconductor ranked second in the world among new energy passenger car motor driver manufacturers in 2019 and 2020 for two consecutive years, and ranked first among domestic manufacturers, with a market share of 19%. Moreover, it is also one of the few IDM manufacturers in China that can realize the mass production and loading of vehicle-grade IGBTs.
So, what is IGBT? In simple terms, the vehicle-grade IGBT is the brain of electric vehicles, and IGBT accounts for about 7-10% of the total vehicle cost, which is the second most expensive component in addition to batteries. In electric vehicles, the role of IGBT is the conversion of alternating current and direct current, while also undertaking the function of high and low conversion of voltage, which is considered to be one of the core technologies of electric vehicles.
Wang Chuanfu said a long time ago that the core product of BYD Semiconductor in the future will be IGBT. At present, in the application of automotive power semiconductor devices such as IGBT, China is the world's largest market, but the localization supply is only 10%, and the remaining 90% needs to be imported.
There is no doubt that when the entire automotive industry suffers from the "lack of cores", the demand for domestic chips is increasing day by day, and the unstoppable revolution of new energy vehicles also makes the vehicle-grade semiconductor companies usher in a huge opportunity for development. According to the data, it is expected that by 2025, the global automotive grade semiconductor market size will reach 80.4 billion US dollars, and the mainland automotive grade semiconductor market will exceed 20 billion US dollars.
In addition, BYD also wrote in the listing announcement: In the future, BYD Semiconductor will take automotive semiconductors as the core and simultaneously promote the development of semiconductor business in the fields of industry, home appliances, new energy, and consumer electronics.
Now, BYD Semiconductor has finally succeeded. Its valuation has also soared from 7.5 billion to nearly 10 billion with repeated financing to 30 billion. And that's another VC/PE head-scratching story.
The valuation exceeded 30 billion, hundreds of VCs/PE competed, and this track exploded
The scene of BYD Semiconductor's financing is still impressive.
On April 15, 2020, BYD announced the formal split of "BYD Semiconductor" to wait for the opportunity to be listed independently, and at the same time, it intends to introduce strategic investment by means of capital increase and share expansion.
As soon as the news came out, the enthusiasm of the VC/PE was instantly detonated. Just 42 days later, the first round of financing was quickly settled - on May 26, 2020, BYD announced the luxury lineup of BYD Semiconductor's Series A financing of 1.9 billion yuan: Sequoia, CICC Capital, SDIC Innovation, And Himalaya Capital (Himalaya Capital) have entered. This round of investors entered the market with a pre-investment valuation of 7.5 billion, and BYD Semiconductor's post-investment valuation was nearly 10 billion.
At that time, BYD Semiconductor was chased by VC/PE. At first glance, there are not many A-round financing institutions, but BYD Semiconductor has left a foreshadowing: "A number of well-known industrial investment institutions with highly coordinated business are fulfilling the investment procedures." ”
Therefore, less than a month after the completion of the first round of financing, on June 15, 2020, BYD Semiconductor announced the completion of a total of 800 million yuan of A+ round financing. The list of investors can be listed in a long list: South Korea's SK Group, Xiaomi Group, CMB International, Lenovo Group, CPE Yuanfeng, ARM, SMIC, SAIC Production and Investment, BAIC Production and Investment, Shenzhen Huaqiang, Country Garden Venture Capital, Yangtze River Industry Fund, Songhe Capital, Oriental Fuhai, SMIC Juyuan, Lenovo Venture Capital, etc., not only the national team, financial investors, but also many industrial investors, semiconductor giants, etc., which are spectacular.
After two rounds of financing, BYD is valued at 10.2 billion. According to Tianyancha information, BYD Semiconductor also completed two other rounds of unexploded financing in August of that year. After several rounds of financing, CICC gave BYD Semiconductor a market valuation of not less than 30 billion yuan. Of course, this number has also been controversial.
How hard is it to invest in BYD Semiconductor? Many semiconductor investors have mentioned to the investment community, "it is too hot, even if there is money, it may not be able to go in", "The time is particularly small, and it is crazy robbery, more than 100 institutions are robbing, this kind of case we do not squeeze." And the people who invest in it, many of the shareholding ratio is only a few tenths, very few.
According to the prospectus, before the IPO, BYD held 72.3% of the shares, which was the controlling shareholder, in addition, Sequoia China, Advanced Manufacturing Fund, Xiaomi Industry Fund, etc. are the top ten shareholders holding BYD Semiconductor shares.
Looking back, the reason why BYD Semiconductor is favored by VC/PE, in addition to its ability and position in the field of IGBT, is because of the huge potential of automotive-grade semiconductors - it is generally believed that automotive semiconductors may be the backbone of the third wave of semiconductors, which is a track that is exploding.
In December 2021, a heavy financing of automotive-grade chips was released - Jita Semiconductor completed a huge round of financing of 8 billion yuan, and the investment lineup behind it is luxurious: in addition to the investment led by the company's original shareholder, Huada Semiconductor Co., Ltd., the investors also include SAIC Group's Shangyi Capital, Huichuan Technology, Skyworth Investment, Xiaomi Yangtze River Fund, BOCOM Investment, Shanghai Free Trade Zone Fund, Lingang New Area Science and Technology Innovation Fund, Pudong Science and Technology Innovation, Shanghai Puke Investment, CITIC Industry Fund, CICC Capital, National Policy Investment, and AVIC Production Investment , China Insurance Investment, Cathay Fund, CITIC Construction Investment Capital, Guotai Junan, Shenzhen Investment Holdings, Shanghai Guosheng, Lingang Group, etc.
According to the data, Jita Semiconductor is the earliest enterprise engaged in the manufacture of automotive electronic chips and IGBT chips in China, and has considerable advantages in the manufacture of vehicle-grade chips. It has been reported that SMIC founder Zhang Rujing will fade out of his fifth venture Qingdao Xinen, and his next stop may be Jita Semiconductor.
This is a microcosm of the hot financing of automotive semiconductors. Since 2021, a large number of well-known projects have emerged on this track, such as Yuntu Semiconductor, CHIPWAYS, Zhuhai Micro Core, Qixin Micro, Chuhang Technology, etc., and the investors behind it include Xiaomi Yangtze River Fund, Wuyuefeng Capital, CDH Investment, Shunwei Capital, Yuanhe Chongyuan, Innovation Factory, Linxin Investment, SAIC's Shangyi Capital, Xiaomi Production and Investment, Jingwei Hengrun, Yaotu Capital and so on.
In addition, various localities are also increasing their efforts to lay out the production of vehicle-grade chips to solve the problem of "lack of cores" in automobiles as soon as possible. At present, Shanghai, the city with the largest number of new energy vehicles in the country, is accelerating the landing of automotive chip enterprises and creating a leading domestic design and development and manufacturing base for vehicle-grade chips.
The Internet era is far away, and hard technology has stood at the center of the historical stage. Times are brewing more high-profile IPOs.
[The author of this article is IPO every day, and the entrepreneur authorizes reprinting.] If you need to reprint, please contact the WeChat public account (ID: pedailyIPO) authorization, unauthorized, reprint must be investigated. ］