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In 012024, the global semiconductor industry recovered, and the performance of domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturers AMEC and Shengmei Shanghai attracted market attention.

02 Both companies are expected to increase their operating income by 44% year-on-year, reflecting the trend of increasing penetration of domestic equipment.

03However, domestic equipment enterprises are still facing the challenge of technological breakthroughs in imported parts and components in some key links.

04At present, AMEC and Shengmei Shanghai are both in the period of capacity expansion, investing in R&D to enhance their technical strength.

05 Experts said that domestic equipment has made good progress in thin film deposition and etching, but key imported parts are still the core breakthrough of localization in the next step.

The above content is generated by Tencent's hybrid model and is for reference only

In 2024, the recovery of the global semiconductor industry, especially in the context of the relatively strong demand recovery in Chinese mainland, the performance of domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturers has attracted market attention.

On January 15, AMEC (688012. SH), Shengmei Shanghai (688082. SH) 2 leading semiconductor equipment companies released their 2024 annual performance forecasts. Overall, both companies achieved operating income of at least 44% year-on-year, reflecting the trend of increasing penetration rate of domestic equipment of leading enterprises. Among them, the scale of the company's operating income exceeded the institutional forecast (8.46 billion yuan) and hit a record high, and the annual revenue of Shengmei Shanghai exceeded 5 billion yuan for the first time, and the company also rarely predicted that the operating income will increase to at least 6.5 billion yuan in 2025.

Since the recovery of the current semiconductor cycle, the explosion of AI has played an important role, and the demand in this field is also considered to be the focus of the development of the semiconductor industry in the next few years. In the future, when AI puts forward higher requirements for chip manufacturing, technology to overcome the shortage of imported parts of some domestic equipment is the key proposition for the next growth of domestic manufacturers.

Semiconductor equipment revenue growth is stable

Up to now, North Huachuang, China Micro Corporation, and Shengmei Shanghai 3 semiconductor equipment companies have released 2024 performance forecasts, in the context of the recovery of the industry's prosperity, the three companies have achieved performance growth, and due to the different product matrix and structure, the annual net profit growth rate and the fourth quarter performance are differentiated.

In 2024, the company's etching equipment sales will be about 7.276 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 54.71%; MOCVD equipment sales were about 379 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of about 18.11%; The first LPCVD film equipment will be sold in 2024, and the annual equipment sales will be about 156 million yuan.

During the reporting period, the revenue growth rate of AMEC far exceeded the profit growth rate, and it is expected to achieve operating income of 9.065 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 44.73%, and the net profit attributable to the parent company is expected to decrease by 16.01% to 4.81% year-on-year, and the net profit attributable to the parent company after deducting non-profits will be 1.280 billion yuan to 1.430 billion yuan, an increase of about 7.43% to 20.02% year-on-year. In the fourth quarter, AMEC's revenue accelerated significantly, achieving revenue of 3.558 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 60.10%; The non-net profit deducted was at least 467 million yuan, which was a new high in a single quarter of the year.

Regarding the reasons for the decline in net profit attributable to the parent company, AMEC said that the market and customer demand for AMEC to develop a variety of new equipment has increased sharply, and the growth of R&D expenditure has led to a certain decline in net profit. In 2024, AMEC's R&D investment will be about 2.450 billion yuan, an increase of 1.188 billion yuan (an increase of about 94.13%) over last year, and the proportion of R&D investment in the company's operating income will be about 27.03%.

In terms of performance, Shengmei Shanghai only gave the change in operating income in 2024 in the announcement, which is expected to be 5.6 billion yuan ~ 5.88 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44.02% ~ 51.22%, and the revenue growth is mainly due to the efficient promotion of sales and delivery and commissioning and acceptance, which ensures the steady growth of business performance. Looking at the fourth quarter alone, Shengmei Shanghai's operating income was at least 1.623 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of more than 40%.

In the announcement, Shengmei Shanghai rarely predicted the scale of operating income in 2025, and the company said that combined with the business development trend in recent years, as well as the current orders and other aspects, it is expected to achieve revenue of 6.500 billion to 7.100 billion yuan, that is, an increase of 16.07% ~ 20.75% over 2024.

A recent announcement by Shengmei Shanghai on changing the investment project of IPO funds has attracted great attention from the market. According to the original plan, Shengmei Shanghai plans to use 245 million yuan of over-raised funds to build and implement the project of "Shengmei Korea Semiconductor Equipment R&D and Manufacturing Center", which has not been invested so far. After this change, SEM Shanghai terminated the above-mentioned South Korea project, and 245 million yuan was transferred to the project of "SEMEI Semiconductor Equipment R&D and Manufacturing Center".

Shengmei Shanghai said that due to the differences in the legal systems of China and South Korea, the company encountered certain difficulties in finding qualified overseas banks and in drafting and signing the four-party regulatory agreement, which affected the construction progress of the project. In addition, on December 2, 2024, the company and Shengmei Korea were added to the "Entity List" by the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). Based on the above situation, CMS Shanghai decided to terminate the South Korea project.

In addition to the expansion of production, the core imported parts still need to make technological breakthroughs

After years of development, domestic semiconductor equipment has achieved independent innovation in some links, and the penetration rate of domestic equipment has also reached a new height. With the gradual recovery of this round of semiconductor prosperity and the higher capacity utilization rate of wafer foundry, the market is highly concerned about whether the penetration rate of domestic semiconductor equipment can reach a higher level.

"There are many types of semiconductor equipment, the complexity of the technical path is not available in other industries, due to the logic chip, power devices and other different products, different sizes of manufacturing refinement requirements, generally speaking, the development of equipment presents a generation of technology, a generation of technology, a generation of equipment development law. The introduction of domestic equipment not only requires the cooperation of customers to complete research and development, but also requires the cooperation of external suppliers, such as power supply equipment manufacturers. A TMT industry analyst told reporters: "Taking thin film deposition equipment as an example, the market share of the three mainstream technology paths is basically monopolized by Europe, America and Japan, and the products of Chinese manufacturers are in the initial stage of introduction or verification. Therefore, the core driving force for the growth of equipment manufacturers' performance is the product matrix driven by R&D capabilities, as well as the scale of production capacity. ”

The first financial reporter combed through the announcement and found that the above-mentioned semiconductor equipment companies are in a period of capacity expansion. In the middle of 2024, Shengmei Shanghai announced a fixed increase fundraising plan, with a planned fundraising of 4.5 billion yuan, and the proposed investment amount of the raised funds for the mid-term R&D and process test platform construction project and the high-end semiconductor equipment iterative R&D project will be 940 million yuan and 2.255 billion yuan respectively, and 1.304 billion yuan will be used to supplement the working capital.

As a leading enterprise in cleaning and electroplating equipment, Shengmei Shanghai's cleaning equipment has covered 95% of the process step applications, and the electroplating equipment has achieved full technical coverage. In addition, in October 2024, the equipment R&D and manufacturing center of Shengmei Shanghai was completed and officially put into operation. The project has a total of 5 units, including two R&D buildings, two factories and one auxiliary plant. Two plants A and B, only plant A can achieve an annual output of 300-400 units, and the decoration and construction of plant B is expected to be implemented in 2025.

Thin film deposition is one of the core processes of chip manufacturing, and the technical routes are diverse. AMEC's new round of investment is set to start in 2025 and aims to develop thin film deposition equipment for other technology paths. According to public information, AMEC plans to invest about 3.05 billion yuan to establish a Chengdu subsidiary from 2025 to 2030 to build a R&D center, production base and supporting facilities, and the project will be mainly used to carry out the R&D and production of CVD (chemical vapor deposition), ALD (atomic layer deposition) and other key equipment. Up to now, AMEC's first CVD tungsten equipment has been shipped to key storage clients for verification and evaluation, and has passed customer on-site verification, and ALD titanium nitride equipment for high-end storage and logic devices is also in progress.

The

demand for semiconductor equipment follows the prosperity of wafer manufacturing, and the demand for equipment procurement is often placed in other links to expand production. Since the recovery of this round of semiconductor cycle, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the demand for high-performance computing and memory chips has been promoted, and the trend of automotive electrification and intelligence has driven the rapid growth of the automotive electronics market, the gradual recovery of industry demand, and the rebound of global wafer fab expansion speed, driving the demand for equipment in all links. "Judging from the volume of orders obtained by domestic equipment manufacturers, domestic equipment has indeed made good progress in thin film deposition and etching, but a considerable part of domestic equipment with 7nm and 14nm processes is in short supply of imported parts, which is the core breakthrough of localization in the next step and the key to the growth of equipment manufacturers." The aforementioned analysis says.