2022 can be said to be a year in which the global semiconductor downward cycle is more obvious.
In this year, the semiconductor industry has experienced a "lack of core tide" and a shortage of production capacity, and the company's revenue has increased significantly. However, as the global economy slows, the relationship between supply and demand in the market has changed, replaced by a negative situation such as capacity saturation, chip price "avalanche", revenue expectations down, and corporate layoffs.
Even the world's major semiconductor giants have fallen in this "catastrophe", and can only bite the bullet and tighten their belts under this round of chip cold wave.
(Source: Subchart.com)
On December 24, 2022, Micron Technology released its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 ended December 1 last year. The data shows that the company's revenue in the first quarter of FY23 was $4.09 billion. This compares to $6.64 billion in the previous quarter and $7.69 billion in the same period in 2021, respectively, that is, it decreased by 46.8% year-over-year and 38.4% sequentially.
With supply and demand not yet in 2023, Micron expects profitability across the semiconductor industry to continue to face challenges throughout the year. As a result, capital expenditures for fiscal 2023 were revised down to between $7 billion and $7.5 billion from the previous target of $8 billion.
Meanwhile, as of September 30, 2022, South Korea's SK Hynix financial report for the third quarter of fiscal 2022 showed that the company's operating profit in the third quarter plummeted 60% year-on-year to 1.66 trillion won, and plummeted 61% month-on-month. It was lower than analysts' expectations of 2.5 trillion won.
(Source: Subchart.com)
SK Hynix said that this is greatly related to the global macroeconomic environment, the sluggish demand for DRAM and NAND products, the decline in sales and prices, and the year-on-year decrease in sales in the third quarter is also expected. As a result, SK Hynix has also reduced its investment scale in 2023 from the original maximum of 20 trillion won to more than 50%.
After looking at the trend of semiconductor companies in the United States and South Korea, let's take a look at the course of Chinese semiconductors in 2022. If you want to say that China can not be affected by the global semiconductor downturn, that is impossible. However, China has taken these pressures and made some progress.
(Source: Subchart.com)
From the chip bill in August last year, to the new rules that continued to tighten restrictions on China in October, to restrictions on the sale of lithography machine equipment and materials to China by companies such as ASML, which includes American technology. The United States has done everything to block the development of Chinese semiconductors.
But even under such conditions, China's wireless communications and 5G, artificial intelligence, automotive electronics and other fields have made progress in 2022. At the same time, the domestic production rate of semiconductor equipment materials is also increasing, and the domestic production rate in etching and CMP fields is higher than 20%.
Text| Wei Yansong, inscription| Huang Zixin, Review, | Zeng Yi