This week, semiconductor industry chain enterprises continued to disclose the performance forecast for the first half of the year, and analyzed the H1 performance forecast of Allwinner Technology, Rockchip, Torch Core Technology, Hengxuan Technology, Jingchen Shares, Weir Shares, Smartway and other companies and found that the reasons for the expected increase in performance include "significant improvement in downstream customer inventory", "recovery of terminal demand", "full orders in hand", etc., which further proves that the warm wind of industry recovery has blown, driving the performance of related enterprises in the first half of the year to exceed expectations.
Among them, in the mobile phone market, with the opportunity of the evolution of smart phones to AI mobile phones, local supply chain enterprises have more introduction opportunities, and Shunluo Electronics took the lead in developing a material MWTC1412065SR24MTB02 suitable for Qualcomm 8750 platform, and obtained Qualcomm test and certification, achieving the first domestic launch.
The recovery in demand drove the performance of chip companies to exceed expectations
After experiencing the digestion of inventory in the past two years, the current chip downstream customers, agency channels and original inventories have basically returned to a healthy level, and the original factory is also carrying out continuous upgrading and iteration of the part number and the development of customers, and the prosperity of many sub-industries of semiconductors is also continuing to rise, which can be seen from the performance of many consumer chip companies such as Weir shares and Allwinner Technology in the first half of the year.
A few days ago, a number of A-share chip design companies issued performance pre-increase announcements, and companies with performance exceeding expectations gathered in the field of digital SoC and CIS. As of the evening of July 16, 7 semiconductor chip design companies, including Allwinner Technology, Rockchip, Torch Core Technology, Hengxuan Technology, Jingchen Shares, Weir Shares, and Smartway, issued performance pre-increase announcements, and the company's subdivisions are mainly concentrated in SoC, AIoT, CIS, etc.
Among them, Weir's 2024 H1 revenue was 11.904 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.97%, and the company's automotive CIS products and high-end CIS product lines represented by OV50H began to increase volume; Allwinner Technology's net profit in the first half of 2024 increased by about 759.31-853.5% year-on-year, mainly due to the increase in demand in downstream segments such as intelligent vehicles, industrial control, sweeping robots, and intelligent projection, and the smooth mass production of the company's new products and solutions, which has become the main driving force for the company's revenue growth; Benefiting from the continuous growth of demand in the downstream smart wearable and smart home fields and the gradual increase in the company's market share, Hengxuan Technology is expected to have a revenue of 1.531 billion yuan in 2024H1, a year-on-year increase of +68.24%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 148 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of +199.68%.
In the financial report forecast of these seven listed companies, there are descriptions of "significant improvement in downstream customer inventory", "recovery of terminal demand" and "full orders in hand", which further proves that the warm wind of recovery of the industry has blown, driving the performance of the first half of the year to exceed expectations.
At present, SoC has been warming up from destocking to prosperity, and a new round of industry upward trend has been established. Image upgrading is still the key to the upgrade of smartphones, and the number of CIS, as one of the components of mobile phone cameras, is still increasing year by year on a single smartphone. On the whole, a number of SoC and CIS manufacturers have continued to invest in R&D in the past two years to achieve technology upgrades, product upgrades, and complete customer development.
Huafu Securities believes that the consumer electronics industry is at a triple inflection point of short-term stabilization and recovery, the advent of the innovation cycle and the continuous catalysis of new products of giants. The demand for consumer electronics terminals has picked up significantly in the short term, and the medium and long-term AI-empowered smart terminals will drive the acceleration of mobile phone/PC replacement, and the upstream, midstream and downstream of the consumer electronics industry chain are worthy of attention, especially for enterprises with technological innovation capabilities and market share advantages.
Shunluo electronic integrated power inductor debuted on the Qualcomm platform
The market recovery, in addition to the performance of chip companies beyond expectations, also extends more new opportunities, AI mobile phones are one of them, and the local supply chain also benefits from more introduction opportunities, which is expected to accelerate performance growth.
2024 can be regarded as the first year of rapid development of mobile AI. A number of well-known brands such as Samsung, Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, etc., have integrated AI technology into their flagship mobile phones. Counterpoint, a market research agency, predicts that AI mobile phone shipments will account for 11% in 2024 and reach 550 million units by 2027, accounting for 43%, with an average annual compound growth rate of 49%.
AI mobile phones are not only deeply integrated at the software level, but also optimized and adapted accordingly on the chip side.
The Qualcomm 8750 platform (i.e., Snapdragon 8 Gen4), as Qualcomm's next-generation flagship mobile processor, uses advanced process technology (TSMC 3nm process) and self-developed CPU architecture (Nuvia Phoenix architecture), and these hardware upgrades provide strong performance support for AI computing. The AI capabilities of the Snapdragon 8 Gen4 will promote the intelligent application of AI phones in more fields. For example, AI algorithms can be used to optimize camera functions, which can achieve more accurate object recognition, scene recognition, beauty optimization, and night scene shooting. AI technology can be used to optimize mobile phone system resources to achieve more intelligent performance scheduling and energy-saving management. AI technology is used to achieve more accurate voice assistant and natural language processing functions, and improve the user's interactive experience.
The upgrade of performance is inseparable from the upgrade of hardware, and the power supply is a very important part of it. In order to improve AI performance, the Qualcomm 8750 platform adjusts the core power supply inductance to 0.24uH inductance for the first time, and proposes that the Isat meets the high requirements of 6.5A & DCR<24mohm. Shunluo Electronics took the lead in developing a material MWTC1412065SR24MTB02 suitable for Qualcomm 8750 platform, and obtained Qualcomm test certification, which was the first in China.
It is worth noting that in the process of the evolution of the mobile phone industry from smart phones to AI mobile phones, industrial chain enterprises also pay more attention to intellectual property protection, which may have an impact on the shipments of some enterprises.
A few days ago, Qualcomm issued a statement on its ongoing lawsuit against Transsion Holdings Group in an India court for infringement of four non-standard basic patents, saying that Transsion recently signed a license agreement with Qualcomm for some of its products, but most of its products have not been licensed by Qualcomm and are still infringing on Qualcomm's valuable patent portfolio. Through this lawsuit, Qualcomm seeks to restore and maintain a level playing field for all of its licensees.
In response to the lawsuit filed by Qualcomm, Transsion responded that Transsion has signed a 5G standard patent license agreement with Qualcomm and is fulfilling the agreement. However, in some countries, some patentees do not own or only have a small number of patents, but demand excessively high royalties at a globally uniform rate, without taking into account factors such as the difference in the level of economic development in different regions, their absence of patents or only a small number of patents in a particular region or market, and the existence of existing precedents that provide different rates in different regions. This approach is not fully in line with the principles of fairness, reasonableness and non-discrimination.
Transsion said that it will continue to negotiate patents with third parties, and promote the determination of reasonable license fees under the framework of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory principles while respecting the intellectual property rights of others.
China's intelligent driving companies have intensively broken through the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
Among them, the field of intelligent driving, which started almost at the same time as international companies and is currently developing in parallel, has accelerated the capitalization process and hopes to accelerate technological innovation with the help of capital.
Affected by factors such as the continuous tightening of the A-share IPO channel in recent times, and the corresponding lowering of the IPO threshold for technology companies by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, more and more Chinese technology companies choose to land on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
According to incomplete statistics, since the end of 2023, the autonomous driving companies that have landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange include Zhixing Technology, Ruqi Travel, and Tick Travel, among them, Zhixing Technology is known as the first autonomous driving stock in Hong Kong stocks, Ruqi Travel is known as the "first share of autonomous driving operation (Robotaxi) technology", and Tick Travel is "the first share of China's shared travel".
In addition to the above three companies, there are also a number of autonomous driving industry chain companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, such as the first share of Hong Kong LiDAR Suteng Juchuang, the first stock of Hong Kong stock automotive aftermarket, Tuhu Yangche, the largest second-hand car trading platform in China, Auto Street, China's largest automotive aftermarket SaaS marketing and management service provider Guanglian Technology, China's largest pledged vehicle monitoring service provider in the field of automobile circulation, Changchang Shares, etc.
Importantly, there are still a large number of autonomous driving and related industry chain companies are queuing up for IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, such as Black Sesame Intelligence and Horizon Robotics are competing for the first share of China's intelligent driving chips, both companies are high-quality core technology providers in the field of intelligent driving in China, directly benchmarking against NVIDIA, and is the core engine of China's autonomous driving autonomy and controllability.
In terms of autonomous driving solutions, the leading representative in the field of intelligent network simulation testing SAMU Technology broke through the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the third time, China's largest passenger car APA parking solution provider Zongmu Technology hit the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after terminating the A-share IPO, and China's top three assisted autonomous driving solution innovation company Youjia Innovation, China's first intelligent cockpit & intelligent network solution provider to launch a 3G Internet of Vehicles system Botai Internet of Vehicles is also impacting the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
In terms of the industrial chain, Hezhong New Energy (Nezha Automobile) has started the IPO of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and is expected to become the seventh new car-making force listed in China after Weilai, Xiaopeng, Li, Leap, Zeekr, and Evergrande Automobile. In addition, Cao Cao Mobility, backed by Geely, the first batch of RV electrification experts in China, REFIRE Co., Ltd., China's largest hydrogen fuel cell system provider, Zhida Technology, China's largest commercial vehicle charging pile service network provider, Jinko Electronics, the first domestic research and development of flip-top high-power vehicle-grade LED technology and products, China's top four new energy loaders and new energy wide-body dump truck manufacturers Breton, the world's fourth largest supplier of lithium iron phosphate cathode materials Lopal Technology, and China's largest vehicle high-pressure hydrogen storage bottle provider Guofu Hydrogen Energy, the world's largest closed-loop freight trading platform Lala Technology (Cargo Lala) and other companies are in the Hong Kong stock IPO stage.
In addition, Foretek, Momo Zhixing, Xiangdao Travel, and T3 Travel also have Hong Kong stock listing plans; Xinqing Technology and Xinchi Technology may also use the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as one of the IPO options. According to industry analysts, enterprises related to the autonomous driving industry chain are expected to usher in the peak period of landing in Hong Kong stocks in the second half of the year, and only in July, two companies have successfully IPOed in Guanglian Technology and Ruqi Travel.