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The semiconductor industry has shown impressive performance in the first half of the year.

As of 8 pm on August 27, out of the 155 listed companies included in the CITIC Semiconductor Index, 93 have disclosed their semi-annual reports. Among them, 29 companies have achieved a net profit growth of over 100%, accounting for more than one-third; 60 companies are expected to achieve positive net profit growth, with a performance reporting rate of over two-thirds.

Looking at the sub-sectors, memory chips, contact image sensors (CIS), and system-on-chip (SoC) companies have shown outstanding performance, and all semiconductor equipment companies that have announced their performance have achieved growth.

As one of the world's top ten fabless semiconductor companies, Will Semiconductor achieved a net profit increase of nearly eight times with a revenue of 12 billion yuan, effectively demonstrating the booming prosperity of the semiconductor industry. Will Semiconductor stated that during the reporting period, the consumer market further recovered, and the company's product introduction in the high-end smartphone market and the continuous penetration of autonomous driving applications in the automotive market; at the same time, the company's comprehensive gross margin increased by 8.21 percentage points year-on-year.

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Similarly, Huiding Technology also felt the increase in demand from end customers, and the company's shipments and operating income achieved year-on-year growth. In the first half of 2023, Huiding Technology achieved a net profit attributable to the parent company of 320 million yuan, turning a loss into a profit compared to the same period last year, and the comprehensive gross margin level also showed a recovery and growth. At the same time, the company's newly launched ultrasonic fingerprint solution with independent intellectual property rights in the first half of the year has been commercially used on a large scale, and Huiding Technology expects that with the introduction of more terminal flagship projects, it will achieve large-scale commercial use in the fourth quarter of this year.

Related memory chip industry chain companies have also performed well. For example, in the first half of 2024, with the recovery of the storage industry and the rapid increase in demand for AI server quantities, Lanqi Technology's DDR5 penetration rate continued to increase, and the company achieved a net profit attributable to the parent company of 593 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 624%, and the net profit increase after deducting non-recurring gains was as high as 14,177%.

The hot performance of the downstream is also being transmitted to the upstream. The semiconductor equipment leader, Northern HuaChuang, achieved a net profit of 2.78 billion yuan, and so far, it has won the title of "profit king" in the semiconductor industry, with a net profit increase of 54% year-on-year. In fact, so far, all six semiconductor equipment companies that have announced their performance in the equipment field have achieved year-on-year growth. Behind this is the qualitative leap from non-existence to existence, and from weakness to strength in domestic semiconductor equipment in recent years. China's semiconductor industry ecosystem and manufacturing system have been continuously improved, and the self-sufficiency rate of domestic high-end equipment has gradually increased.

According to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Organization (WSTS) forecast in June 2024, the global semiconductor market will achieve a 16% increase in 2024, reaching 611 billion US dollars. WSTS further revised the scale of its forecast for 2024 in the spring, reflecting the strong performance in the past two quarters, especially the recovery of demand in the computing terminal market.

Looking forward to the future market, industry insiders are also more optimistic. The wafer foundry leader, SMIC, achieved better sales revenue and gross margin than the guidance in the second quarter, with sales revenue of 1.9 billion US dollars, a sequential increase of 9%, and the company's third-quarter revenue guidance further increased by 13%-15% sequentially. SMIC Co-CEO Zhao Haijun said that the overall pattern for the whole year is basically determined. The company's goal is to achieve a sales revenue increase higher than the average of comparable industries, and the sales revenue in the second half of the year can exceed that in the first half.

Lanqi Technology also stated during a recent institutional research that the company's DDR5 third-generation RCD chip will start to be shipped on a large scale from the second half of this year. With the increase in demand for AI servers and the increase in application scenarios in the data center field, the orders for PCIeRetimer chips are steadily increasing and will become a new performance growth point for the company in the next few years.Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, analyzed for the Securities Times reporter, "The current recovery trend in the semiconductor industry is evident and may enter a new upward cycle. First, there is technological innovation and demand growth. With the rapid development of emerging technologies such as AI, 5G, and the Internet of Things, there is a sharp increase in demand for high-performance, low-power semiconductor products. Secondly, the semiconductor industry is cyclical. After years of adjustment, it is currently in a recovery phase. The market demand is warming up, the utilization rate of production capacity is increasing, and the profitability of enterprises is improving, which further strengthens the growth momentum of the industry."