Per reporter: Li Shaoting Per intern reporter: Li Minghui Per editor: Wen Duo
The high-level changes of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Unigroup Zhanrui) that have been speculated for a long time have finally landed.
On February 28, the official website of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui disclosed that with the unanimous consent of the company's board of directors, Qiwei was appointed as the acting CEO of the company, and Chu Qing no longer served as the company's chief executive officer. "Zhan Rui has been out of difficulties for three years and has entered a strong upward development track." After receiving the resolution of the board of directors of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhan Rui, Chu Qing expressed his gratitude to the directors of Zhan Rui for their support and help in the past three years.
As the longest-serving CEO of Tsinghua Unigroup, Chu Qing has a resume of well-known companies such as Datang and Huawei. Since the end of 2018, Chu Qing has been trying to show a "new exhibition sharp" to the outside world. The company has also embarked on a radical change, and the momentum of development is rapid.
Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui is at the node of sprinting IPO and 5G chip momentum, what is the impact of this executive change on it?
Chu Qing Image source: Daily Economic News Infographic
There was already a wind sound: the reorganization of Tsinghua Unigroup pulled Zhan Rui
For Chu Qing's departure, people who pay attention to the "Purple Light System" do not seem to be surprised.
At the end of last year, a consortium of Beijing Zhilu Asset Management Co., Ltd. and Beijing Jianguang Asset Management Co., Ltd. as the lead party took over the substantive merger and reorganization of seven enterprises, including Tsinghua Unigroup Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Tsinghua Unigroup).
Since then, the industry has speculated that as one of the core companies under the Tsinghua Unigroup, the turmoil in the management of Tsinghua Unigroup will be inevitable. Gu Wenjun, chief analyst of Xinmou Research, once expressed his concern to the "Daily Economic News" reporter: "After the new year' pass, there may be a large-scale brain drain such as Zhan Rui and Changcun. There are already signs of this. ”
On the evening of January 17 this year, the manager of Tsinghua Unigroup disclosed through the company's official WeChat that on the same day, the manager of Tsinghua Unigroup received the (2021) Jing 01 Breaking No. 128 Bis Civil Ruling delivered by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. According to the Civil Ruling, the Beijing First Intermediate People's Court ruled to approve the reorganization plan of the substantive merger and reorganization case of seven enterprises including Tsinghua Unigroup, and terminated the reorganization procedure of seven enterprises including Tsinghua Unigroup.
This means that Tsinghua Unigroup's 100 billion reorganization plan has been approved by the court. Not long after the reorganization plan landed, the senior management of Tsinghua Unigroup also ushered in adjustments.
In mid-February, the legal representative of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui changed from Zhao Weiguo to Wu Shengwu, and Wu Shengwu also took over the position of chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui.
This also means that the Tsinghua Unigroup under the Zhao Weiguo era has completely ended. The withdrawal of Zhao Weiguo also laid the groundwork for the departure of Chu Qing, CEO of Unigroup Zhanrui.
As the head of Tsinghua Unigroup, Zhao Weiguo can be described as a legend in the semiconductor industry, known as the "chip maniac". In 2013, during Zhao Weiguo's tenure as general manager of Tsinghua Unigroup, Tsinghua Unigroup privatized two domestic chip factories, Spreadtrum Communications (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. and Riteco Microelectronics, for 16.2 billion yuan, merging the two into Unigroup Zhanrui, the largest independent chip manufacturer in Chinese mainland.
Image source: Daily Economic News Infographic
Hero Chu Qing: In danger, he was ordered to build a new exhibition sharp
In the communications and chip industries, Chu Qing's popularity is quite high.
Prior to joining TSINGHUA Unigroup in 2018, he has been practicing in the fields of communications, semiconductors, and investment for more than 20 years, successively serving as general manager of Huawei's wireless pre-research department, deputy general manager of Datang Mobile, director of HiSilicon's wireless product line, director of Huawei Innovation Incubation Center, vice president of Huawei's corporate strategy and technology, and chief strategy officer of HiSilicon Semiconductor.
Chu Qing also confessed that he was "in danger and ordered.". In an interview with the media, Chu Qing once revealed that when he left Huawei, his goal was to go to Zhangjiang Laboratory, planning to work with academician Zhang Xu (a famous neuroanatomer) and other technical bulls. However, at the warm invitation of Zhao Weiguo, at the end of 2018, Chu Qing still joined the Purple Light Exhibition.
Previously, Chu Qing had admitted to the outside world that Unigroup Zhanrui had problems, such as 4 apology meetings a day at most, and being reprimanded by customers for 45 minutes at the quality conference.
After joining Ziguang Zhanrui, Chu Qing embarked on a drastic reform. In less than three weeks, Chu Qing led the company to clean up the project, cut 90% of the project, and concentrated 60% of its strength on 5G technology, so that the company's resources and strength could be concentrated and form a profitable direction.
In 2019, in an interview with the "Daily Economic News" reporter, Chu Qing said that all the businesses of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui pointed to three directions: one is consumer electronics, serving the intelligent needs of individuals; the other is industrial electronics, preparing for the future intelligent society; the third is pan-connectivity, which is a collection of innovative businesses that are difficult to sort out logic.
These three directions also build the prototype of the current two main business frameworks of consumer electronics and industrial electronics for Tsinghua Unigroup. Under the leadership of Chu Qing, the appearance of "New Exhibition Sharp" has gradually emerged.
Elvis Hsu, general manager of the semiconductor division of CINNOResearch, told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that Tsinghua Unigroup has made many breakthroughs in the past three years, and strong reforms have made its technology upgrade and performance growth.
In the second year of reform, the shipment of Unigroup Zhanrui's 4G and 5G mobile chips showed a significant increase, of which the first 5G set of chips sold more than one million sets in half a year, and the number of commercial terminals exceeded 50. In addition, its chip market share in the functional machine market reached the world's first.
The smart machine business has also become the main force of Tsinghua Unigroup. In 2021, the sales revenue of this business increased by 148% year-on-year, helping Tsinghua Unigroup to change the situation of functional machines in the past and fully advance into the era of smart machines.
The future of Zhan Rui: the hope of pinning on domestic chips
Tsinghua Unigroup's IPO has always attracted the attention of investors.
Since 2021, Tsinghua Unigroup has taken the initiative to disclose performance information. As early as May 2019, Tsinghua Unigroup disclosed that it plans to complete the Pre-IPO round of financing and overall restructuring in 2019, and is expected to apply for listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2020. But the time comes to 2022, and Tsinghua Unigroup has not yet disclosed the latest IPO progress.
As the core mobile phone chip design company in China, Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui also carries the hope of China's IC design. All along, the industry hopes to appear in China's next Huawei HiSilicon, and Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and other manufacturers to compete, ranking after Huawei HiSilicon Unigroup Zhan Rui is placed high hopes.
Among the top ten chip design companies in the 2020 Chinese mainland announced by Xinmou Research, Tsinghua Unigroup Ranked Fourth, second only to Huawei HiSilicon, Weier shares and Bitmain. Among them, only Huawei HiSilicon and Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui can design smart phone SoC chips.
When releasing the 2021 performance forecast, Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui said that according to the first three quarters ranking of Jibang Consulting (TrendForce) Global Wingss Top 10, the annual revenue is estimated to exceed 1.68 billion US dollars, that is, it is expected to enter the 2021 annual list, and the unigroup Zhanrui 2021 annual revenue is 11.7 billion yuan, which is equivalent to 1.83 billion US dollars, or will be listed in the 2021 global Formulass Top10.
What is the impact of the change of management at this time on the future development of Tsinghua Unigroup?
Elvis Hsu told reporters: "This time ushered in a new management class, in the case of the development of 5G policy remains unchanged (), it is worth observing whether the integration of the new leader and the original team can be smooth? Especially in terms of the improvement of 5G technology and the close cooperation between upstream and downstream supply chains, let us wait and see. ”
Looking forward to the future, the opportunities and challenges of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui coexist.
"Domestic smart machine OEMs have a strong willingness to adopt domestic alternative 5G SOC chips, which provides long-term research and development power for Tsinghua Unigroup." Elvis Hsu told reporters that at the same time, MediaTek, Qualcomm and other countries continue to impact the high-end smart machine market, and the low-end has become an opportunity for Tsinghua Unigroup to enter the 5G smart machine market.
For further efforts to the high-end market, Elvis Hsu bluntly said that Unigroup Needs to face challenges. He believes that the important challenges of Tsinghua Unigroup in the future include ensuring stable cooperative customers when entering the mid-to-high-end market, and ensuring that stable and reliable advanced process production capacity can be obtained.
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