With the explosion of the global AI industry, the semiconductor industry has ushered in a new round of growth cycle.
In this context, the performance of chip companies has increased significantly.
In particular, leading companies such as Nvidia and TSMC, in the case of soaring downstream demand, Nvidia's market value stood firmly above $3 trillion, and it once became the world's largest company by market capitalization; TSMC is not far behind, with its market value breaking through a new high during the year, and even briefly breaking through the trillion dollar mark.
Recently, with the outbreak of the domestic capital market, the semiconductor industry has taken the lead and has become the hottest sector in addition to the brokerage sector. What detonated the semiconductor market was the performance of enterprises in the semiconductor industry.
Some analysts pointed out that since the beginning of this year, the semiconductor market has generally recovered, and the revenue of domestic listed semiconductor companies is basically consistent with the global market. Coupled with the surge in the A-share market, the semiconductor industry, which is in the recovery cycle, will further accelerate the recovery speed.
On October 9, Weir Co., Ltd., a leading domestic chip company, released a performance forecast for the first three quarters of 2024, which showed that the company expects to achieve a net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company of 2.267 billion yuan to 2.467 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 515.35% to 569.64%.
For the surge in performance, Weir shares believe that the main reason is that the market demand continues to recover, the downstream customer demand grows, the company's product introduction in the high-end smartphone market and the continuous penetration of autonomous driving applications in the automobile market, resulting in a significant increase in operating income and gross profit margin.
As a world-renowned chip design company providing advanced digital imaging solutions, Weir's products have been widely used in consumer electronics and industrial applications, covering many market segments including smartphones, tablets, laptops, webcams, security monitoring equipment, automotive electronics and medical imaging.
Not long ago, Yu Renrong, chairman of Weir shares, said in an interview, "In the automotive field, in addition to cameras, the company has continued to invest in a variety of products such as digital-analog hybrid in recent years, which will become the company's profit growth point in the near future." ”
Statistics show that since late September, Weir shares have risen by 35%, with a market value of more than 36 billion yuan and a total market value of more than 135 billion.
According to the 2024 Hurun Global Rich List, Yu Renrong, chairman of Weir shares, ranks 486th in the world with a net worth of 45.5 billion.
China's richest chip man
As the richest man in China's chip industry, Yu Renrong is quite recognizable.
Not only that, but he also has the largest network in the domestic chip industry.
According to the data, Yu Renrong graduated from the Radio Department of Tsinghua University, and the 85-level radio department of Tsinghua University where he is located is a special existence, Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup, Shu Qingming, one of the founders of GigaDevice, Feng Chenhui, co-founder of Zhuosheng Microelectronics, Zhao Lixin, founder of Geke Microelectronics, and Zhao Lidong, founder of Suiyuan Technology, are all from the 85-level of the department.
According to statistics, among the top 15 A-share semiconductor listed companies in terms of total market capitalization, 4 of the listed companies founded by them occupy 4 seats, namely Weir shares, GigaDevice, Ziguang Guowei, and Zhuosheng Micro, covering chip design, manufacturing, packaging and equipment in the semiconductor industry chain.
It can be seen that Yu Renrong's background is powerful. Of course, as the richest man in the chip industry and the soul of Weir shares, his strength is not only his network, but his business and his investment ability.
According to the data, Yu Renrong himself invested in at least 10 private equity funds in the semiconductor field. He directly invested in Zhongke Flying Measurement, with an initial investment of 10 million yuan, and after the company's IPO, Yu Renrong made a lot of money.
Currently, he is waiting for his third IPO, New Henghui, to be listed. It is reported that the company is China's first smart card packaging carrier tape manufacturer, and Yu Renrong is one of the company's largest shareholders and actual controllers, with a total of 31.96% of the shares. In addition to investment, he is also keen to run a school, and he has previously taken the initiative to contact the Ningbo government, saying that he is willing to donate 20 billion yuan to build a new type of private engineering university, taking into account the scale of the school and the needs of infrastructure, an additional 10 billion yuan. According to the plan, Ningbo Oriental University of Technology has a total investment of 46 billion yuan and covers an area of 2,250 acres, of which the Ningbo Municipal Government invested 16 billion yuan to select the school site.
In order to run the school smoothly, he also donated the equity of Weir shares several times.
On October 11, Weir announced that Yu Renrong, the controlling shareholder of the company, once again donated 25 million shares of the company to support the preparation of Ningbo Eastern University of Technology. Based on the latest closing price of Weir shares of 111.95 yuan, the market value of Yu Renrong's donated shares is about 2.8 billion yuan.
Of course, what can support his dream is the stability of the main business and the continuous growth of performance. In 2022, the weakness of global consumer electronics has greatly affected the performance of Weir shares, and the decline in revenue and the collapse of net profit have directly halved the share price of Weir shares. Affected by this, Yu Renrong's worth has also plummeted from 80 billion yuan in 2021 to 45.5 billion, and it has fallen by 34.5 billion in three years.
The shrinkage of wealth and the decline in performance have given Yu Renrong a clearer understanding of the industry, and he believes that the demand side has not changed much, but the industry library is almost consumed; Focus on the main business and reduce the business that doesn't make much sense; At the moment of fierce competition in the industry, it is more necessary to be down-to-earth.
At the same time, under his leadership, Weir shares have been continuously adjusted, has formed a "left-handed mobile phone, right-handed car" double-line layout, the company's ability to resist risks has been greatly strengthened.
The main business has turned over
In the face of the recovery of the industry, Yu Renrong is quite optimistic.
In a previous interview with Securities Times, Yu Renrong said, "The reason why I am confident in the semiconductor industry is that the Chinese are more diligent, and the semiconductor industry is a rapid iteration. ”
In terms of R&D investment, Weir shares are also not stingy. According to the financial report, from 2019 to 2023, Weir has invested more than 12.5 billion yuan in the research and development of semiconductor design business. At present, Weir has nearly 4,700 authorized patents.
It is worth noting that with the recovery of performance, Weir shares have not slowed down in the investment in research and development, and its investment in research and development of semiconductor design business reached 1.582 billion yuan in the first half of this year.
Yu Renrong believes that whether a company can maintain rapid growth is based on whether the technology is leading, whether the R&D investment is large, and whether the R&D direction is right. ”
The effect of heavy research and development and high investment is very obvious. At present, Weir has made breakthroughs in HDR (wide dynamic range) technology, which has also significantly enhanced its competitive advantage in high-end smartphones. Not only that, the company's high-end CIS products for smartphones have been widely used in the rear main camera sensor solutions of mainstream domestic high-end smartphones, and this product is gradually replacing similar products of overseas competitors.
In addition, Weir also launched a new 8 million pixel CIS product, which has high dynamic range and infrared flicker suppression performance, so that the automotive automatic driving system can better cope with dark light, backlight, strong light difference and other lighting environments. According to third-party data, the company's automotive CIS product shipments ranked first in the world last year.
It is precisely because of the blessing of advanced technology that the business market share of Weir shares in the field of automotive cameras has increased quarter by quarter, and it is expected that the global market share is expected to continue to lead this year.
According to the results of the first three quarters of 2024 released by Weir shares, the company's net profit attributable to the parent company in the first three quarters reached 2.267 billion yuan to 2.467 billion yuan, an increase of 515.35% to 569.64%.
Kanjian Finance believes that after the high-pixel CIS of Weir shares accelerates the introduction of high-end mobile phone models and automobile customers, the company's performance will continue to grow explosively, and due to the continuous increase in downstream market demand, the performance of Weir shares is expected to break through the previous high within two years.
Yu Renrong said, "The company's current share growth in both the mobile phone and automobile market is based on leading technology, and the current digital-analog hybrid, display technology and other fields are in the stage of active investment, and it is expected to enter a stage of rapid growth next year." ”