From January to September 2021, the global semiconductor equipment market continued to grow, and the annual equipment expenditure is expected to reach a new high. From January to September 2021, the cumulative year-on-year shipment of semiconductor equipment in North America was + 43.7%, and the cumulative year-on-year shipment of semiconductor equipment in Japan was + 29.2%. In 2021q3, the income of the world’s leading semiconductor equipment manufacturers increased significantly, ASML Amat (semiconductor equipment) and Lam both grew by more than 50%. Throughout the year, Lam and KLA have announced their annual reports for fiscal year 2021, with annual revenue of US $14.63 billion and US $6.92 billion respectively, with year-on-year growth of 45.6% and 19.2% respectively; ASML expects the revenue of 2021q4 to be between EUR 4.9 billion and EUR 5.2 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 35% in 2021, and has set a revenue target of EUR 15 ~ 24 billion in 2025; Amat (semiconductor equipment business) is expected to have an annual revenue of US $16.57 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 46%. According to semi data (2021 / 09), benefiting from the strong demand of global industrial digitization for cutting-edge technologies, the global wafer plant equipment expenditure will increase by 44% to US $91.4 billion in 2021; the growth rate will drop to 8% in 2022, but the expenditure will reach US $98 billion, a record high.
China’s semiconductor equipment industry is expected to enter a super boom cycle. With the transfer of global semiconductor industry to China and the construction of wafer production capacity in mainland China, foundry and memory represented by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation(688981) , evergreen and Changxin are stepping up production capacity investment and construction, and the demand for equipment has increased significantly. In 2020, the scale of semiconductor equipment in mainland China was 18 billion 700 million US dollars, up from +39%, accounting for 26% of the world’s total. It surpassed Chinese mainland Taiwan to become the largest equipment market. We calculate that China’s equipment market is expected to increase to US $21.6 billion / 24.2 billion in 2021 / 2022. With the rapid development of China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry, the disadvantages of insufficient supporting capacity of local equipment are becoming increasingly prominent. According to the data of China Electronic Special Equipment Industry Association in 2019, the self-sufficiency rate of domestic semiconductor equipment is about 14.2%. If the impact of photovoltaic, led and other pan semiconductor equipment is deducted, the self-sufficiency rate of domestic IC special equipment is only 4.6%. The US BIS has introduced a series of stricter export control policies for China’s semiconductor industry chain since May 2020. Chinese mainland chips have actually felt the threat of “off the shelf” at any time. In order to ensure the security of the supply chain, mainland wafer factories will vigorously promote the “de beautification” process, step up the verification of local equipment, and the procurement proportion of domestic equipment will be significantly increased. Process testing equipment, PVD, ion implanter, etcher, CVD and CMP all account for more than 50% of American equipment. In order to ensure the safety of the supply chain, there will be a more urgent demand for “de beautification”. With strong downstream demand and accelerated localization, China’s semiconductor equipment industry will enter a super boom cycle.
The supporting capacity of domestic equipment manufacturers has been significantly improved and will take the lead in benefiting from the golden development period of the industry. Referring to the bid evaluation results of Changshun in the second half of 2020, the number and proportion of domestic equipment have increased significantly. From the first stage (2017-2019 / 08) to the third stage (2020 / 06 to now), the localization rate of degumming (+ 43.2pct), heat treatment (+ 13.0pct), CMP (+ 20.8pct), cleaning (+ 6.5pct), process detection (+ 6.8pct), lithography (+ 4.5pct) and other equipment has increased significantly. Among local suppliers, Naura Technology Group Co.Ltd(002371) (heat treatment / PVD / etching), Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc.China(688012) (etching) and Yitang (degumming / etching / cleaning), shengmei semiconductor (cleaning), Huahai Qingke (CMP), Shanghai Precision Measurement (measurement), Shenyang tuojing (CVD) and other enterprises have made rapid breakthroughs in their respective fields, and their supporting capacity has been significantly improved, which is expected to take the lead in benefiting from the outbreak of industry prosperity.
