Electronic Components Make It Hard to See the Spring

Recently, our continuous tracking of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index and the North American semiconductor order shipment ratio rebounded. Combined with the industry’s judgment of leading global component manufacturers, we believe that after experiencing long-term difficulties, the electronic components industry has shown signs of recovery, which indicates that The industry will gradually bid farewell to the "cold" and usher in the dawn.

As the two indices continue to rise, we have found that the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) has risen by 15.4% in the past month. If we count from the bottom of the SOX on December 19, 2011, the cumulative increase of the index has reached 19.19%, while the same period, Shenwan Electronics The cumulative index fell by 3.79%. Not only are the gaps large, but there are also divergence trends. This includes the reasons for A-shares themselves, such as the small-caps in emerging industries, high-valuation stocks, and components. But in any case, the signs that the industry, especially the demand side, is showing signs of recovery are still not to be ignored.

Judging from the linkage between the two in recent years, the Shenwan Electronic Index has had a need to stop rising and rebound. Statistics on the monthly changes of the monthly electronic index and the SOX index from January 2007 to the end of the year, we can see that the two are highly positively correlated, and the gap between the changes is within a relatively small range. Considering that the constituent stocks of SOX can better reflect the current status quo and future development trend of the electronics industry, SOX is more representative, and the trend of SWS's deviation from SOX will not be long-lasting, and there will be a need to stop rising and rising in the future.

Specifically, last year's SWF electronic index and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 14% in the entire December. Statistics from the statistical industry for the past ten years have found that the monthly increase is more than 14%, and the probability is only 28%. In other words, it may be considered that the future SWS electronic index will have a 70% chance of narrowing the gap with SOX.

What is more noteworthy is that in December of last year, the North American semiconductor device order shipment ratio (B/B value) was 0.88, and the BB values ​​in September-November were 0.71, 0.74, and 0.83, respectively. This figure has risen for three consecutive months and hit a new high in the past six months.

The moving average order amount for the three months in December last year was $1.158 billion, which was a new high in the past four months despite a decrease of 26.7% year-on-year. It was also a 18.5% increase from the $9.77 billion in order amount revised in November last year. In terms of shipments of semiconductor equipment, the average shipment amount in the three months ended December last year was US$1.316 billion, which was also the highest in the past four months. Although it was down by 25.2% from the same period of the previous year, it was revised after November last year. The $ 1.177 billion increase by 11.8%.

The analysis found that North American semiconductor orders and shipments have narrowed their year-on-year declines. If the seasonal factor is removed (December is the peak season for the consumer electronics industry), the quarter-on-quarter growth rate is still positive. Industry orders and shipments All have been improved to some extent. The rebound in BB for three consecutive months is a positive signal. Historically, there has been a positive correlation between North American semiconductor BB and the Philadelphia index. In particular, the BB value rose for three consecutive months, SOX will certainly react. The facts also prove that the SOX index has rebounded.

Four signs confirming warming We also investigated a series of leading component companies in the component industry, including semiconductor equipment vendors, wafer fabs, hardware and software vendors, and downstream terminal manufacturers. Most of the companies are turning cautiously optimistic about industry trends.

First of all, upstream manufacturers changed their pessimistic view in the fourth quarter of last year. Equipment manufacturers, including lithography equipment maker ASML, Applied Materials, and Lam Research, have recently improved their outlook over the fourth quarter of last year, and believe that the industry will have a chance to bottom out in the near term. Fab TSMC Zhang Zhongmou also believes that the first quarter of this year will be in line with the fourth quarter of last year, the second quarter and then upward; Xiao Wen, chairman of the board said that the first quarter will be the semiconductor industry boom in 2012. In the first quarter, the average order of counterfeit products was similar to that of the previous quarter. Currently, the capacity utilization rate is about 70-80%; the US communications IC designs Xilinx and Linear expect that the industry will increase by 2-6% and 4-8% in the first quarter. , is expected to drive the US SOX rose. In addition, we learned that although this year's market sentiment and visibility are poor, international semiconductor companies are interested in overweight investment in the downturn. Intel’s capital expenditure this year reached US$ 12.5 billion, an increase of 16% year-on-year; Samsung’s capital expenditure on semiconductors reached 12.2 billion. The U.S. dollar rose by 33% from last year. Although TSMC lowered its capital expenditure this year, it still has $6 billion.

It should be said that the companies listed above, such as Esmol, Applied Materials, Colin R&D, TSMC, Samsung Semiconductor, etc., are located upstream of the industry and are very representative. Among them, Esmol is one of the world's largest semiconductor equipment manufacturers headquartered in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, providing leading comprehensive integrated key equipment to global complex integrated circuit manufacturing companies. By 2011, the global market share was 75%. Currently, most of the world's semiconductor manufacturers purchase TWINSCAN models from ASML, such as Intel, Samsung, Hynix, TSMC, SMIC, etc.; and applied materials. The company is the world's largest nano-manufacturing technology company and is committed to creating every semiconductor chip and flat panel display in the world with nano-manufacturing technology. Xilinx is one of the world's leading suppliers of programmable logic and complete solutions. Its customers include Alcatel. , Cisco Systems, EMC, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Nortel, Samsung, Siemens, Sony, Sun Microsystems and Toshiba; TSMC's revenue accounts for approximately 100% of the global foundry market Sixty.

Secondly, what cheered investors was that Apple's latest performance exceeded expectations. The demand for Apple's iPhone is still huge. 37.04 million units shipped in the previous quarter, exceeding the forecasted 30.22 million units, which is 128% of the data in the same period of last year. iPad sales also rose 111% to 15.43 million units, compared with the previous estimate of only 13.87 million units. Mac sales rose a record 26% to 5.2 million units, compared with 5.16 million previously. Downstream Apple's products are so hot that the global demand for electronic products is better than the market originally expected.

Again, some time in the future, there will be a number of new terminals that will drive industry technology upgrades. Bloomberg reported during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week that the Apple iPad3 will be available in March with 4G LTE connectivity; Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that the Ultrabook ultra-thin notebook (NB) is expected By the end of 2012, it will win 40% of the consumer NB market. Market optimism is expected in the second quarter with the Intel (Intel) IvyBridge platform officially debut. The Research Center believes that the introduction of representative terminals is conducive to the popularization of new products and new technologies, and will accelerate the upgrading of technology, which will help improve corporate profitability.

Finally, the industry destocking is expected to end. According to statistics, in the third quarter of 2011, isuppli’s semiconductor inventory days were 81 days, and some agencies expect that the fourth quarter will fall to 79.3 days. According to the supply chain inventory situation, Mr. Zhang Zhongmou, chairman of TSMC, stated that the supply chain inventory days (DOI) in the fourth quarter of 2011 continued to decline, which was 7 days lower than the seasonal level. It is estimated that the inventory level of DOI in the first quarter of this year will remain below the seasonal level. . According to domestic agencies, domestic integrated circuits and chip makers have a small amount of stocks in the near future. It is expected that the destocking of the market will end this season.

Expected to bottom out in the second quarter Before the industry estimated that the output value of Taiwan's packaging industry in 2011 was 246.8 billion yuan, and the output value of the test industry could reach 110.7 billion yuan, which was 5.4% and 4.8% lower than the 2010 decline. The latest estimate by Taiwan's IEK is that in 2012, the output value of Taiwan's IC packaging industry was 262.2 billion yuan, an increase of 6.2% year-on-year; the output value of the IC test industry was 118 billion yuan, an increase of 6.6% year-on-year. IEK pointed out that in the first quarter of this year, the capacity utilization rate of the professional packaging and testing outsourcing foundry industry will fall to the bottom, with an average of about 80%. Then “there is a jump in the first quarter and the second quarter is expected to gradually recover.”

Many foreign investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, CLSA, and JP Morgan Securities, also agreed that the semiconductor industry boom and fab capacity utilization is expected to bottom out in the first quarter and recover in the second quarter. Quarterly shipments and earnings are expected to rebound. Among them, JP Morgan believes that the market inventory has been over-corrected, the second quarter in response to the introduction of new products of technology companies, the demand for covert stocks will be very strong, will drive semiconductor orders back to temperature, the second quarter is expected to semiconductor factory performance is expected to be more than In the first quarter it surged in double digits.

The research center also learned that domestic IC manufacturers stated that this year April and May is a good observation window and the industry is likely to kick off the rebound. In addition, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. chairman Zhang Zhongmou also expected that the semiconductor supply chain is expected to start covering the stock in March and April this year, which is closer to the current industry consensus.