The prosperity of the semiconductor industry continues to be passed on to upstream equipment manufacturers. The International Semiconductor Industry Association ((SEMI)) today released the latest shipments of semiconductor equipment in North America, which hit an all-time high of US $3.04 billion in January, up 13.4% from a month earlier and 29.9% from a year earlier.
Cao Shilun, global marketing director of SEMI and president of Taiwan, said that the January shipment of semiconductor equipment in North America was a good start, as the semiconductor industry accelerated its digital transformation, driving strong and lasting demand for semiconductor equipment.
The leader expands the prosperity of capital expenditure and transmits it to the equipment market.
At present, the market demand of consumer electronics, 5G and automotive electronics is constantly expanding. On the other hand, under the epidemic situation, the semiconductor industry chain is out of stock, and the wafer production capacity falls short of demand.
Under the background of mismatch between supply and demand, the major wafer leading manufacturers have expanded their investment. TSMC expects capital spending to reach $25 billion-$28 billion this year, a record high and an increase of 45-62 per cent from 2020. UMC's capital expenditure will reach US $1.5 billion this year, an annual increase of 50%. The world's advanced capital expenditure will also increase from NT $3.54 billion last year to NT $5 billion this year, an annual increase of more than 40%.
In addition, the new port-facing zone of China (Shanghai) Free Trade Zone in 2020 revolves around the key links of the integrated circuit design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, materials and other industry chains, leading the development of smart chips, embedded flash memory, analog and power devices, advanced digital-analog hybrid circuits and other industries. Among them, the new chip manufacturing project in Hong Kong has a total investment of more than 160 billion yuan, including Jita Semiconductor, which has a total investment of 35.9 billion yuan, and Geke Micro, which has a total investment of 15 billion yuan, and other factories have been opened one after another.
The prosperity of the industry continues to be transmitted to the upstream equipment manufacturers. International leaders have raised their performance forecasts one after another. Recently, TEL revised its consolidated revenue target for fiscal year 2020 to 1.36 trillion yen from the previous forecast of 1.3 trillion yen, a record high; Advantest revised from 275 billion yen to 305 billion yen; Screen Holdings revised up to 314 billion yen from 313.5 billion yen. In addition, Japan's Disco also announced that its sales in fiscal year 2020 are expected to reach an all-time high, with the plant continuing to operate at full capacity, driven by the highest level of orders in history.
Counterpoint Research predicts that the world's leading foundry is expected to make large-scale capital investment in semiconductor equipment between 2021 and 2023.
The localization of semiconductor equipment is expected to be accelerated.
The shortage of wafer production capacity and the acceleration of localization will double drive the uptrend of the domestic equipment industry. The new and expanded wafer factories in the world are mainly in mainland China, and the market scale of semiconductor equipment in mainland China accounts for about 20% to 25% of the global market, which is conducive to the localization of domestic equipment process verification. with the improvement of the willingness to localize domestic manufacturing lines, the process verification cycle of domestic equipment has been greatly accelerated.
Some domestic manufacturers have been in the forefront. Shilan Jike, which is jointly funded by Shilanwei and Xiamen Semiconductor Investment Group, is expected to invest 17 billion yuan to build two 12-inch process chip production lines in Haicang, Xiamen. The first batch of test line equipment will be moved in by the end of May 2020, and by the beginning of January 2021, some domestic equipment with leading technical level has passed the process verification, which is 50% shorter than the original acceptance time.
In addition, Shengmei Semiconductor's first 12-inch single wafer cleaning equipment was checked and accepted in advance, and the equipment was moved into the factory as one of the first batch of equipment on May 20, 2020, from formal installation to application in product production, it only took 18 days. The original verification period of one year took only 6 months to successfully complete the acceptance, and the opportunities and support for localization of domestic front equipment in the domestic manufacturing line are being greatly improved.
According to a research report released by CITIC Securities on January 7, wafer factories such as Changjiang Storage, Huahong Group, SMIC and Changxin Storage have actively expanded production, driving the domestic semiconductor equipment market to grow twice as fast as the global market, and the progress of production expansion is expected to be accelerated under the tight production capacity of the industry.
Debang Securities also released a research report on January 6, saying that global semiconductor equipment expenditure has entered a rising cycle, and China has become the largest semiconductor equipment market as the semiconductor industry shifts to China. Domestic etching equipment, thin film deposition equipment and testing equipment are expected to become the vanguard of semiconductor equipment localization.
Among the A-share listed companies, China Micro Corporation is the leader of domestic etching equipment that has entered the global supply chain; North Huachuang is the leader of wafer equipment with multi-business layout; Zhi Chun Technology is the leader of domestic cleaning equipment and is in the stage of capacity expansion; Jingsheng Mechatronics is the leader of large silicon wafer equipment; Huafeng Measurement and Control is the leader of test equipment that has entered TSMC's supply chain. Glue-coated developer manufacturer Core Source Micro and testing equipment manufacturer Precision testing Electronics both plan to invest in a new R & D base and production base in Lingang.
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