Is the semiconductor inventory correction coming? Will the industry cut orders or not?
Time：2023-04-02 Source：admin
Is the bearish sentiment among semiconductor investors intensifying? The latest report from US-based foreign investors paints a bleak picture for the semiconductor industry, predicting an inventory correction and lowering the target prices for TSMC (6770) and MediaTek (2454). Coincidentally, semiconductor analyst Lu Zhi also posted on Facebook, pointing out that the wafer shipments reported by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) in January were lower than industry expectations, raising doubts about whether prices have softened?
In the report, US-based foreign investors mentioned that due to the weak global economic outlook, prolonged inventory adjustments for smartphones, and reduced orders for semiconductors used in PCs, they have lowered the target prices of related companies. However, they are optimistic about four Taiwanese companies: TSMC (2330), WorldChip-KY (3661), Global Chip (6488), and Shinwa (5274).
Echoing the bearish sentiment of foreign investors towards semiconductors, Lu Zhi believes that SEMI's previous forecasts for global shipments of 12-inch wafers in 2022 and 2023 are only expected to grow by 9.9% and 2.7%, respectively, while shipments of 8-inch wafers are only expected to grow by 5.2% and 0.8%, respectively. These figures are significantly lower than the forecasts of downstream customers' wafer foundries, which anticipate annual shipment growth of 10-15% in 2022 and 8-10% in 2023.
He deduced three reasons: Firstly, due to insufficient expansion of global raw wafer production capacity, can we expect price increases for wafer foundry customers? Secondly, why are the shipment and expansion of major IDM companies such as Intel, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Ti, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, NXP, and a bunch of small IDMs far inferior to that of wafer foundries?
Or perhaps SEMI is pessimistic about the demand for semiconductor wafers in 2023, predicting a significant slowdown with an annual growth rate of only 1-3%. He explained that this expectation is significantly lower than the 15-20% compound annual growth rate in revenue that Company "T" predicted on January 13th this year for the coming years. It's unclear how much of this difference is due to price increases caused by changes in product mix and how much is due to shipment volume. It seems that shipment volume has at least contributed to an 8-10% growth?
Lu Zhi Xing raised the question: If a third party were to intervene, and the global 12-inch wafer foundry capacity mentioned by the contract manufacturer is gradually released in the next two years, would the capacity utilization rate start to decline from the full load of 95-105% in the past two years, and would prices also start to soften?
However, previously, foreign investors from the US have lowered their revenue targets for PC-related semiconductor stocks such as Realtek (2379) and Silicon Motion. TrendForce also predicts that the overall average price of DRAM will decline by approximately 0-5% in the second quarter, mainly due to slightly high inventories on both the buyer and seller sides. Demand from PCs, laptops, smartphones, and other sectors has been affected by the recent Russia-Ukraine conflict and high inflation, which in turn has weakened consumer purchasing power. Currently, only server demand supports the demand for memory, and there will still be an oversupply of DRAM in the second quarter.
