International Electronic Commerce learned from Reuters on the 28th that on Wednesday local time, the chief executive of chip maker STMicroelectronics said that due to the multiple blows to the chip manufacturing industry due to factors such as the new crown epidemic and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the rest of the year will be affected. In China, semiconductor demand is expected to exceed ST's capacity.
The report said that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and a new round of anti-epidemic blockade measures have affected some of ST's larger peers, such as Texas Instruments. Against this backdrop, there are concerns over whether Geneva-based STMicroelectronics has the ability to meet the performance targets announced earlier this year.
"Our sales and operating plans show that our capacity is fully saturated for the remaining year, at more than 90 percent," STMicroelectronics CEO Jean-Marc Chery told analysts on a conference call.
In the past quarter, ST's factory in Shenzhen, China, lost two weeks of production due to the lockdown, Chery said. To reduce the impact of the lockdown, the company has moved some production to other factories to help its microcontroller sales beat market expectations.
He emphasized that chip orders are expected to be 30%-40% above capacity for the rest of the year due to continued strong market demand. The company's biggest customers are reported to include iPhone maker Apple and electric car maker Tesla.
Despite the positive signal from STMicroelectronics, the company's stock price ranged up and down, reflecting investors' uncertainty about its business prospects.
"Investors remain highly skeptical of trends through 2023, for which we recently downgraded our forecast for a half-life downward cycle given the global slowdown," Citi said in a note to clients.
STMicroelectronics said its first-quarter sales were just above its target of $3.55 billion, with a gross margin of 46.7%, beating the average estimate of $3.49 billion by seven analysts in Refinitiv.
STMicroelectronics expects its 2022 revenue to be between $14.8 billion and $15.3 billion. The company expects second-quarter net income to be about $3.75 billion, up 5.8% from the first quarter.
It is worth mentioning that in the electronic components procurement survey released by the international electronic business analyst team in January this year, STMicroelectronics' shortage in 2021 is second only to Texas Instruments.
Samsung: Shortages may continue in the second half of the year
International Electronics Business has learned that other chip manufacturers have recently released similar signals, including South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics.
According to the latest foreign media reports, Samsung Electronics predicted on Thursday that demand for server chips will be relatively stable in the second half of this year, but the shortage of parts is expected to continue in the second half of this year.
According to the report, Samsung Electronics recorded a record 14.1 trillion won ($11.1 billion) in operating profit in the first quarter of this year, boosted by strong demand for high-margin memory chips in data centers, with a quarterly profit growth of 51 percent.
Profit from its chip business rose to 8.45 trillion won ($6.644 billion), boosted by record server chip sales, more than double the 3.36 trillion won ($2.642 billion) in the same period last year; It was also the most profitable quarter for Samsung's chip business since 2018.
The South Korean tech giant expects chip demand from server customers to remain relatively stable in the second quarter, and expects the smartphone market to continue growing in the second half. However, component shortages and undercapacity at its chip contract manufacturing plants are expected to continue.
