Jiwei Network News This week entered the intensive disclosure stage of the first quarter performance report of listed companies, and TSMC, a leading manufacturer of wafer generation industry, also announced the company's revenue in the first quarter a few days ago. In addition to the change in performance during the reporting period, the change in the proportion of the company's various businesses also reflects the demand situation in the downstream end market.
Among them, the most prominent changes are in the mobile phone and automobile industries.
On the one hand, the mobile phone market has been greatly reduced in demand due to the impact of the epidemic, supply fluctuations, consumer purchasing power decline, lack of innovation and other factors, on the other hand, although the automobile industry has experienced a "broken chain" phenomenon in the supply chain due to repeated short-term epidemics in China, it is still difficult to hide the strong demand in the medium and long term.
TSMC: Segmentation of industry demand polarization
TSMC recently disclosed that the company's first-quarter consolidated revenue was $17.57 billion, net profit was $7 billion, and diluted earnings per share were $7.82. Compared with the same period last year, revenue increased by 35.5% in the first quarter, while EPS after net profit dilution increased by 45.1%, continuing to maintain a high operating standard, with an ROE of 36.2%.
TSMC's 2022Q1 smartphone and high-performance computing segments accounted for 40% and 41% of net revenue, respectively, while IoT, automotive, DCE and others accounted for 8%, 5%, 3% and 3% respectively. Wei Zhejia, CEO of the company, said: "The company will continue to observe the high inventory level of customers, the production capacity is tight throughout the year, and the demand in some sub-sectors such as PCs, tablets and smartphones is weakening, but there are some areas where demand is gradually strengthening." ”
IDC data shows that in 2021Q4, global smartphone shipments were 362 million units, down 3.2% year-on-year, and mainstream manufacturers only Xiaomi and Samsung achieved positive growth, and Apple and OV both declined to varying degrees. Entering 2022 stall is more obvious, well-known mobile phone industry analyst Guo Mingxi recently said that the major domestic Android mobile phone manufacturers have cut orders of about 20%, compared with the expected shipments in 2022 170 million units.
It should be pointed out that the weak demand in the mobile phone market has not prevented TSMC from giving strong revenue guidance in the second quarter.
TSMC expects second-quarter revenue of $17.6-18.2 billion with gross margin of 56%-58% and net profit of 45%-47%; capital expenditure unchanged for 2022, which remains $40-44 billion, and the company's long-term gross margin guidance is 53% and above. The company's management said that in 2022 and the next few years, HPC will be the company's strongest growth driver. In the face of the huge demand for high-performance and energy-efficient computing, the growth rate of HPC, automotive and IoT will exceed the company's overall growth level, which is exactly where TSMC's strength lies.
According to research firm Hyperion Research, hpc servers are expected to have a market capitalization of $19.6 billion by 2022, and the total market value of the entire HPC ecosystem will exceed $38 billion. While the market scale is growing rapidly, many world-class chip designers have also increased their investment and commercialization in the HPC field, NVIDIA focuses on high-efficiency computing (HPC) chips in data centers, and its order volume at TSMC in 2022 has soared by about 3 times.
At the same time, another incremental demand for high revenue guidance in the second quarter came from the automotive sector. TSMC's automotive customers have gradually increased in recent years, and this year it will launch a 5nm automotive electronics process platform, and automotive process products will comply with all automotive safety rules.
TSMC may have received orders for NVIDIA and Intel Mobileye autonomous driving chips, and the long orders signed by customers are also supporting the continuous expansion of TSMC's production capacity. It is reported that the expansion of TSMC's Nanjing plant and the new plant in Japan are all increasing the production capacity of automotive chips. In addition, due to the stable yield of its 5nm and more advanced processes, although Tesla temporarily transferred to Samsung, Tesla is expected to return to TSMC again.
The capacity distribution of upstream chips directly reflects the changes in the demand of different terminals. As mentioned above, the continuous decline in the mobile phone market has affected all aspects of the industrial chain, in order to cope with this situation, manufacturers have adjusted their market strategies accordingly.
Mobile supply chain market strategy shift
Now at the end of the mobile phone supply chain, whoever has the greater production capacity, the more headaches he has.
In view of the current situation of today's smart phone market, a person who is deeply involved in the mobile phone industry chain made such a comment. The reason, he said, since the peak of 2017, the total number of smart phones has fallen all the way, to the present even fell more than 100 million units, the current mobile phone upstream supply chain end of the production capacity is surplus.
Due to the weak demand from mobile phone consumers, the market continues to raise warnings. A few days ago, Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingxi pointed out that due to factors such as insufficient consumer confidence, smartphone orders are likely to continue to decrease in the next few months.
In the case of a sharp contraction in smartphone shipments, mobile phone upstream suppliers have changed from "attacking" to "defending".
In this regard, some industry insiders said: "Now the global intelligent market is not good, and it is possible to explore to 1.2 billion units, for suppliers, there is no increase in the share to grab, as long as the cost is kept, keep their own share is good, the so-called holding the cold winter waiting for spring, will not always be a cold winter." ”
However, some insiders believe that for some manufacturers, it is not so simple to keep, and how to "keep" is becoming a problem that plagues them. "Now there is a serious overcapacity in the upstream of mobile phones, based on this, for some mobile phone upstream suppliers, even if they want to keep, they can't keep it."
Jiwei Network learned that since the beginning of this year, due to the sharp decline in smart phone orders, the domestic mobile phone upstream suppliers, the profits of existing manufacturers are decreasing, their product shipments are not satisfactory, and some of their production line equipment production lines have been forced to shut down, and personnel have also shrunk significantly.
An industry insider introduced to the author that the change of personnel is the most direct impact on the yield of the product, so in the context of the weak demand for smart phones and the fierce competition in the market, it is quite unfavorable for manufacturers with a significant shrinkage of personnel.
From the current situation, in the face of the epidemic, any industry and enterprise can not stay out of the matter, many enterprises are in a precarious situation, the future of many industries is uncertain, only a few can counterattack development, but from another point of view, the crisis of survival contains the potential for change.
Contrary to the mobile phone industry chain shrouded in the haze of "cutting orders", benefiting from the rapid expansion of the new energy vehicle market scale, the supply of materials on the ground continues to be tight, and even the giant car companies at home and abroad have to personally seize resources.
Lithium ore resources are in short supply
Recently, Jiwei Network has noticed that many domestic and foreign car companies, including GM, Tesla, Volkswagen, BYD, etc., have recently strengthened their voice on the battery raw materials.
In order to achieve its goal of "producing one million electric vehicles in North America by the end of 2025", GM has signed supply agreements with a number of raw material companies and built a joint-venture battery plant. The "lock mine" behavior is not a General Motors, Tesla has signed lithium concentrate procurement agreements with Piedmont, Liontown, Core, in terms of nickel resource reserves, Tesla has also finalized the long-term supply agreements of BHP Billiton, Vale, Talon Metals and other mining companies.
In addition, the European giant Volkswagen Group has also opened a model of direct procurement of raw materials, and recently signed memorandums of understanding with China's Huayou Cobalt and Qingshan Group to lock in nickel and cobalt supplies from Asia. Looking at the domestic industrial chain, BYD has become the only strategic investor introduced by Shengxin Lithium Energy in the near future.
Industry insiders pointed out that "now the order volume of new energy vehicle manufacturers is very fierce, but with the growth of volume, manufacturers have also found problems at the source of battery materials, whether it is a main engine factory or a battery factory, they will not care about the mine at all, because these are the upstream material manufacturers." ”
Musk recently said on social media that Tesla may have to enter the field of large-scale mining and refining. He stressed that there is no shortage of lithium in the world at present, and the problem is that the speed of mining and refining cannot keep up.
Musk's remarks have also been verified by upstream lithium salt processing manufacturers, and an executive of a listed company told Jiwei Network: "Tesla has also asked us to sign a purchase agreement, and we have also talked to them, but now we have no excess production capacity to give him, and in the future, our production capacity will be discussed with them." In fact, our factory in Indonesia is actually aimed at the needs of overseas customers. ”
According to its disclosure, its current production capacity in 2022 has long been "rounded" by several large battery factories and OEMs. However, rather than the production capacity being wrapped up, the market is more worried that the shortage of lithium salts cannot be alleviated in a short period of time. Because for lithium mining companies, it takes time to improve the self-sufficiency rate of raw materials.
Relevant manufacturers pointed out: "It is not something that can be solved in one or two quarters, especially now when the price of lithium ore is at a high level, no one is willing to sell, and few people dare to buy." Because the company has high debt, it will not have the funds to expand production capacity for several years. So from last year to now, we've focused on resources. ”
(Proofreading/lee)
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