On February 10, SMIC announced its fourth-quarter 2021 financial report that the company's fourth-quarter net profit was US$533.8 million (about RMB3.394 billion), far exceeding the previous estimate of US$353.3 million and an increase of 172.7% year-on-year. SMIC's total revenue for the quarter was US$1.58 billion, close to the estimated US$1.59 billion.
Although SMIC's share is not as exaggerated as TSMC, Intel, and Samsung, in the context of global chip shortage, semiconductor foundries have been busy in the past two years, and orders have poured in, promoting the growth of performance. In order to alleviate the pressure on production, TSMC, as the head of chip foundry, had to increase the oem price to block a steady stream of orders.
SMIC said it delivered 1723360 8-inch equivalent wafers in the fourth quarter, up 21.7 percent year-over-year and with a capacity utilization rate of 99.4 percent. In addition, the company's R&D expenses in the fourth quarter also increased from US$167.4 million (about RMB1.064 billion) in the third quarter of 2021 to US$172.1 million (about RMB1.094 billion).
You may not be familiar with 8-inch wafers, 8-inch silicon wafers are mainly used in featured technologies or differentiated technologies, such as we are familiar with a variety of power chips, camera sensors, fingerprint recognition sensors, wireless communication chips, etc., covering smart phones, tablets, computers, cars and other consumer areas that have exploded in recent years. Because the production capacity of 8-inch wafers is not high, coupled with the increasing demand of the market, combined with the blow of the epidemic, the global lack of core may come from this.
As the supply of the wafer becomes more and more tight, semiconductor companies such as TSMC and Samsung are stepping up to expand production capacity. SMIC is no exception, saying that in 2022, it will increase investment in the expansion of the old plant and three new plant projects, with an estimated investment of US$5 billion (about 36.878 billion yuan), and production capacity will also be on the next level.
Whether it is SMIC or TSMC, because of the continuous expansion of the demand for cores in various fields, these semiconductor companies have become a fragrant industry, especially the automobile industry, and now the car is gradually transforming to electrification, and each vehicle needs more chips than traditional fuel vehicles. Xiao Lei expects that with the full support of various semiconductors, enterprises can get out of the haze of chip shortage as soon as possible and return to the normal rhythm.