Persistent shortage of automotive chips Italian-French semiconductors plan to double investment in 2022

Italian Semiconductor plans to invest 3.4 billion to 3.6 billion US dollars this year, nearly double the 1.8 billion yuan invested in 2021, including the construction of the first production line in Italy's Agrate 12-inch new fab, local time said Thursday.

According to reports, according to the company's results released on the same day, driven by high demand, its net profit in the fourth quarter of 2021 exceeded expectations. The company's biggest customers, including Tesla and Apple, are expected to have net income of between $14.8 billion and $15.3 billion this year, an increase of 20 per cent.

St earned 82 cents a share in the fourth quarter, higher than the average analyst estimate of 69 cents, according to Refinitiv. But the company expects first-quarter sales of about $3.5 billion, down 1.6 per cent from the previous quarter, with a gross profit margin of about 45 per cent.

Jean-Marc Chery, the company's chief executive, said on a conference call that he expected the chip shortage in the automotive industry to continue and that he did not see any signs of inventory increase. On the contrary, "challenge. Is capable of supporting a major transformation in the automotive and mobile industries. "

Also performing well is Texas Instruments, a peer of STMicroelectronics, which is increasing production capacity while reporting better-than-expected data. TSMC also said this month that strong growth was expected to accelerate in the coming years due to a surge in demand for semiconductors.

In early 2022, bottlenecks in the semiconductor industry can still be felt. Toyota, the carmaker, said last week that it did not expect to meet its annual production target of 9 million vehicles, and the chip competition meant it did not have enough money to increase production to make up for production losses during last year's epidemic.