According to the International Semiconductor Industry Association (SEMI), the total shipments of semiconductor equipment manufacturers in North America in September were about $2.09 billion, down 6.5% from August's $2.24 billion, albeit 1.8% over the same period last year. It has fallen for four consecutive months and has been hitting a new low for ten months. The semiconductor equipment factory's revenue declines successively, coupled with the recent pessimism of many chip manufacturers' financial reports to the future market conditions, indicating that the global semiconductor industry is about to enter a trough.
The semiconductor boom is not good, and European foreign investment is believed to affect the most critical upstream silicon wafer raw materials. Credit Suisse analyst Takeuchi Takeshi believes that the current shortage of silicon wafers will continue, and prices will continue to rise. As the capacity of major silicon fabs expands beyond expectations, it is likely to fall into The situation of oversupply.
In addition, due to the traditional low season of the consumer electronics industry, wafer foundries TSMC and UMC have seen a “hot fever” trend. TSMC confirmed that after the demand for 12-inch silicon wafers was loose, the 8-inch wafer foundry production line was no longer fully loaded, which means that the customer's rush to grab capacity has faded. Although TSMC did not explain the relevant reasons, industry insiders speculate that it should be related to the weak sales of smartphones and high-end TVs, and the consumption of consumer electronics into the traditional off-season. UMC said that due to the continued weakening of sales of low-end and mid-end smartphones, wafer demand will gradually slow down. It is expected that wafer shipments and average price in a single season will be reduced by about 4-5%. The utilization rate is likely to fall below 90%. UMC's outlook for the fourth quarter is conservative, which also supports the trend of weakening semiconductors.
The cold wind also made semiconductor manufacturers say "low mood", Texas Instruments Incorporated third-quarter revenue increased only 4% to 4.261 billion US dollars, lower than the external forecast of 4.3 billion US dollars. TI CEO Rich Templeton is forecasting revenue for the quarter, which is expected to reach $36.0-39 billion, a 12% decrease from the third quarter. Templeton noted that lower-than-expected revenues were due to the slowdown in demand for Texas Instruments products in most markets.
As the semiconductor industry's bearish sentiment warmed, major chip stocks such as NVIDIA and Micron were also downgraded by target prices. Analyst Timothy Arcuri pointed out that the market for NVIDIA's new graphics chips is indifferent, and game users' willingness to update their graphics cards has become weak. Not only that, analyst Mehdi Hosseini added, pessimistic about the demand for DRAM in the first half of 2019. DRAMeXchange predicts that DRAM prices will fall by as much as 15% to 20% next year, while NAND Flash has been "downhill" this year.
Looking at the entire 2018 global semiconductor market, it still maintains double-digit growth, but the winter is approaching, and as the semiconductor industry downturn, it will likely fall to single digits next year. According to WSTS forecast, the growth rate of the global semiconductor market will drop sharply to 5.2% in 2019, and the market size is expected to be US$502.04 billion.
