[Chip War] Irrespective of US sanctions and the Pandemic, China’s IC sales to Grow by Another 11% in 2022

In recent years, China’s IC sales have been increasing year over year. Although sales have been suppressed by the United States and the impact of the pandemic, China’s IC sales still increased by 17% in 2020. Benefiting from the development of terminal applications such as 5G, online office, and smart cars, China’s IC sales grew by 18.2% in 2021 and it is expected to rise by 11.21% in 2022.

Currently, China’s 12-inch foundries are primarily owned by SMIC and Hua Hong Semiconductor. SMIC’s 12-inch fabs are located in Beijing and Shanghai while Hua Hong’s 12-inch fab is located in Wuxi. SMIC’s annual sales revenue in 2021 was US$5.44 billion, growing 39% YoY, and it posted net profit of US$1.775 billion, growing 147.76% YoY. From the perspective of revenue structure, 12-inch products contributed approximately 60% of SMIC’s revenue in the past year.

From the perspective of production capacity, SMIC’s capacity utilization rate has hovered around 100% in the past year. In 1Q22, SMIC’s capacity utilization rate was 100.4%, with a monthly production capacity of 613,400 units of 8-inch equivalent. . In 2021, new production capacity was 100,000 units/month (converted to 8 inches), of which 45,000 units/month was added as 8-inch wafers. At present, SMIC is still accelerating production expansion. Its project in Lingang, Shanghai has broken ground and its two projects in Beijing and Shenzhen are progressing steadily. Production is expected at these fabs by the end of 2022, mainly as 12-inch capacity.

Hua Hong Semiconductor posted operating income of US$1.631 billion in 2021, a YoY increase of 69.64%. From the perspective of revenue structure, Hua Hong Group primarily focused on 8-inch production capacity before 2020. As production commenced at Hua Hong Wuxi’s 12-inch project, Hua Hong completed the leap from 8 inches to 12 inch wafers. In the past year, Hua Hong’s average monthly production capacity of 8-inch wafers was 194,000 units and revenue was US$1.15 billion, accounting for 70.55% of total revenue. The average monthly production capacity of 12-inch wafers was 56,000 wafers and revenue was US$480 million, accounting for 29.45% of revenue, and the proportion of 12-inch revenue is increasing. In 1Q22, Hua Hong Semiconductor’s 12-inch revenue accounted for 44.1% of total revenue, an increase of 5 percentage points from the previous quarter. With the completion of the second phase of the Wuxi project, 12-inch revenue is expected to, once again, achieve substantial growth.

It is worth noting that since the Sino-US trade war, China’s substitution of domestic products has become mainstream, especially in the foundry and packaging and testing portions of the manufacturing process. In addition, the tense relationship between supply and demand and hobbled logistics caused by the pandemic has also catalyzed an increase in the proportion of fab revenue coming from China. From the perspective of wafer foundries, Hua Hong Semiconductor’s China revenue will account for 76% of total revenue in 1Q22. In terms of SMIC, although 4Q20 was categorized by an inability to manufacture Huawei orders and the proportion of revenue from China and Hong Kong fell from 69.7% in 3Q20 to 56.1% in 4Q20, as tension rose between supply and demand, lost Huawei orders have been taken up by other Chinese IC designers. In 1Q22, SMIC’s revenue from China and Hong Kong accounted for 68.4% of total revenue, a return to its peak level in 3Q20.

Behind record high sales of semiconductors is an unrelenting spike in demand. In order to alleviate the imbalance between supply and demand, the world’s major fabs are accelerating new production capacity and China’s fabs represented by SMIC and Hua Hong are also stepping up production expansion. From the perspective of the expansion structure, the current focus of fabs is still on the expansion of 12-inch wafers. The primary reason for this is that 12-inch wafers are characterized by higher production efficiency and lower unit consumables, with a comprehensive equipment supply chain. In the past two years, China has built a total of 11 projects involving 12-inch wafers. However, due to factors such as the pandemic, tide of production expansion, and lack of chips for equipment, the lead time of semiconductor equipment has been continuously drawn out, resulting in a slowdown in fab expansion. In addition, 8-inch capacity expansion is relatively slow due to equipment constraints. From the perspective of China’s foundry market, among new wafer production capacity (8 inch equivalent) from 2020 to 2021, 12 inch capacity accounted for 58.17%, 8 inch capacity accounted for 22%, and 6 inch capacity accounted for 19.83%.