Semiconductor industry observation: From the second half of 2018, the semiconductor industry represented by memory entered a down cycle, especially in the first half of 2019, the industry’s data has fallen sharply year on year.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Semiconductor Industry Watch” (ID: Icbank), author Zhang Jiankeya.
Since the second half of 2018, the semiconductor industry represented by memory entered a down cycle, especially in the first half of 2019, the industry’s data has fallen sharply year on year. Therefore, many industry insiders predict that 2019 will be the worst year in the semiconductor industry in the past 10 years. From the data, the whole industry can only achieve a slight year-on-year growth in 2019, even in some sub-sectors. The fundamental aspect of negative growth is that no major changes will occur.
However, compare the second half of 2019 with the first half of the year, or subdivide it. Compare the development of Q2 in the first half of the year with Q1. It can be seen that the global semiconductor industry has shown signs of recovery. Said that this year’s Q3 or Q4 is likely to be the turning point of the entire industry development.
In July, global semiconductor sales were US$33.37 billion, down 15.5% year-on-year, and the decline was 1.3 percentage points lower than that in June. On September 4, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index closed at 1519.552, up 0.97%. On September 5, the Taiwan Electronics Industry Index closed at 450.23, up 1.61%. These all indicate to varying degrees the signs of recovery in semiconductor sales.
Below, we take the three major sectors of semiconductor equipment, foundry, and packaging and testing as an example to look at the specific performance of the industry. The reason for taking these three sectors as an example is that the semiconductor industry has a clear division of labor and a high degree of verticalization. These three sectors are highly representative. Second, they are all heavy assets, and the industry status is reflected. It is real and more convincing than the light asset field. Moreover, the “monopoly” of these three sectors is relatively high, and their respective markets are mainly the top 10 or even the top 5 companies in the industry. The control, the market concentration is high, and the corresponding data can more intuitively reflect the situation in the entire field.
Semiconductor equipment is the first to warm up
According to statistics, North American semiconductor equipment manufacturers shipped $2,034 million in July, up 1% from the previous month and down 15% from the same period of last year. The decline was significantly lower than that of January-June this year.
Statistics from BOC International Securities show that the world’s top 12 semiconductor equipment listed companies, revenue in the second quarter was 14.4 billion US dollars, down 1 year-on-year