As of the closing on March 25, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) share price closed at 63.68 yuan / share, and the total market value dropped to 25.524 billion yuan, which has shrunk by 78.62% compared with the peak market value of 119.4 billion yuan created by the company after landing on the science and innovation board.
Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) founder and financial officer recently announced to increase their holdings of shares, but did not reverse the decline in share prices caused by the resignation of CTO.
According to Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) announcement, Liang Jun, the company’s core technician, has recently terminated his labor contract due to differences with the company Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) in the announcement, Liang Jun’s resignation will have a certain impact on R & D management, but will not affect the company’s technological innovation and will not have a significant adverse impact on the overall R & D strength.
For the resignation of Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) CTO, Shanghai Stock Exchange also issued the “supervision letter on the resignation of Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) core technicians”.
In the secondary market, since its listing, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) share price has also fluctuated and declined. In order to enhance investor confidence, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) controlling shareholder and actual controller Chen Tianshi and deputy general manager and financial director ye Yiyin announced to increase their holdings of the company’s shares, with a total increase of no less than RMB 3 million and no more than RMB 6 million.
However, the increase of senior executives’ holdings did not reverse the situation. As of the closing on March 25, the company’s share price closed at 63.68 yuan / share, and the total market value fell to 25.524 billion yuan, which has shrunk 78.62% compared with the peak market value of 119.4 billion yuan created by the company after landing on the science and Innovation Board on July 20, 2020.
star company halo faded
Looking back on the listing experience in 2020, the “Ai chip star company” born in the Institute of computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences lasted only 68 days from application to meeting. At that time, it was regarded as the fastest meeting record. On the day of listing, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) rose 288.3% on the basis of the issue price of 64.39 yuan / share. When the daily newspaper was 250 yuan / share, the market value rushed to 100025 billion yuan. After that, its market value exceeded Montage Technology Co.Ltd(688008) and Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc.China(688012) and was second only to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation(688981) in the semiconductor enterprises of scientific innovation board.
The sought after Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) , in addition to the effect brought by the great heat of the whole semiconductor sector at that time, also brought its own “flash resume”. The founder of “young genius”. Five rounds of financing in the private market include well-known investment institutions and enterprises such as SDIC fund, Alibaba venture capital and Iflytek Co.Ltd(002230) etc. Huawei, a major customer before listing, is a partner of Huawei Hisilicon 970 chip.
Compared with the market value, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) , which is still small, is highly expected by the market because of its rising performance. Although the company lost 381 million yuan, 41 million yuan and 1.179 billion yuan respectively from 2017 to 2019, considering the high R & D costs of the chip industry, the capital market pays more attention to its performance in revenue. According to the prospectus, from 2017 to 2019, the company’s revenue was 07 million yuan, 117 million yuan and 443 million yuan respectively, achieving leapfrog growth in three years.
According to the previous prediction of the sponsor securities companies, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) in 2020, the revenue will be 600 million yuan to 900 million yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 35% to 102%. However, in 2020, when the company landed on the science and innovation board, the company’s revenue was only 459 million yuan, with a year-on-year increase of only 3.61% and a loss of 435 million yuan.
By July 20, 2021, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) ushered in the lifting of the ban on the first anniversary of its listing. The number of shares lifted reached 207.3 million, accounting for 51.81% of the total share capital. The share price and market value fell sharply.
The 2021 performance forecast recently released by Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) shows that in 2021, the company achieved an operating revenue of 721 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 57.13%, and a loss of 847 million yuan, which continues to expand on the basis of the previous year. From 2017 to 2021, the total loss of the company was about 2.883 billion yuan.
The previous grand occasion of hitting the market value of 100 billion did not last long, and the company’s share price has been falling.
At the same time, on February 23 this year, the company announced that Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) three major shareholders, Suzhou Industrial Park Paleozoic Venture Capital Co., Ltd., Ningbo Hangao investment partnership and SDIC (Shanghai) technology successfully transformed venture capital fund, intend to reduce the total holdings of no more than 23341900 shares through centralized bidding and block trading, no more than 5.82% of the total share capital.
The announcement shows that the above shares to be reduced are the shares obtained before the company’s initial public offering. If estimated according to the closing price on the day of the announcement, the market value of the above three major shareholders to be reduced is about 1.94 billion yuan.
Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) revenue and loss from 2017 to 2020 (RMB 100 million) p align = “center” data source: Company prospectus and annual report
and Huawei are moving away
Behind the falling share price and shrinking market value, the market is worried about Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) not only because its performance growth does not meet expectations and its losses continue to expand, but also because of the frequent adjustment of business structure. The poor performance in the capital market will in turn stimulate the company to find a balance between R & D and commercialization as soon as possible.
Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) the initial business focus is on the IP of terminal intelligent processor According to the prospectus and the company’s financial report in 2020, from 2017 to 2020, the IP license sales revenue of Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) terminal intelligent processor was 7.7127 million yuan, 1166621 million yuan, 687712 million yuan and 117176 million yuan respectively, accounting for 98.95%, 99.69%, 15.49% and 2.56% of the main revenue in the same period. Among them, from 2017 to 2019, the terminal IP licensing revenue mainly came from Huawei Hisilicon, accounting for 100.00%, 97.94% and 92.56% of the IP licensing revenue respectively.
Some analysts in the industry believe that the previous cooperation between Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) and Huawei is related to the resignation of CTO Liang Jun. Before joining Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) , Liang Jun worked in Huawei for 17 years. From 2003 to 2017, he served Huawei Hisilicon and was successively responsible for network chip architecture design, mobile phone SOC chip design and team management.
In 2017 and 2018, the revenue of Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) company basically came from Huawei. Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) provided artificial intelligence module IP for Huawei mobile phone chip Kirin 970 and Kirin 980 However, while adopting Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) ‘s smart chip, Huawei Hisilicon has synchronously designed its own NPU IP By 2019, Huawei’s new mobile phone chips Kirin 810 and Kirin 990 began to adopt self-developed AI modules, and Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) the amount of orders received from Huawei decreased rapidly.
Losing Huawei was very passive for Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) who relied on a single major customer at that time. After submitting the prospectus, this issue was also inquired by the Shanghai Stock Exchange Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) at that time, it was announced that it would try to include new IP licensing business related customers in 2020, but the names listed by the company at that time were difficult to compare with the volume of Huawei Hisilicon.
Other domestic smartphone manufacturers, such as Xiaomi, oppo and vivo, either choose Qualcomm, which master NPU core technology, or start to set up a team for self-research. International mobile phone giants such as apple and Samsung have SOC and NPU self-research capabilities.
According to the semi annual report of Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) 2021, the IP revenue of its terminal intelligent processor during the period was 6.1726 million yuan, accounting for 4.48% of the revenue in the same period.
main business frequency conversion
Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) , frustrated in the IP authorization business of terminal intelligent processor, began to look for opportunities in other business lines from 2019. However, the data show that the new business is unstable.
At the beginning, the intelligent computing cluster system business was promoted to the largest main business of the company. According to the prospectus, the company’s sales revenue of smart cluster business was 7.2 billion yuan in 2019, accounting for 96.6% of the company’s main business revenue in 2019. By 2020, the company’s revenue from this business will reach 326 million yuan, accounting for 71.12% of the revenue in the same period.
However, up to the semi annual report of 2021, the revenue status of intelligent computing cluster system was exceeded by the revenue of cloud smart chips and acceleration cards, and the revenue was only 1.5821 million yuan, accounting for 1.15% of the revenue in the same period.
According to the financial data released by Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) announcement, in 2019, the company’s cloud smart chip and accelerator card revenue reached 788824 million yuan, accounting for 17.77% of the total revenue. By the first half of 2020, the cloud smart chip and accelerator card revenue reached 622181 million yuan, accounting for 71.41% of the total revenue.
However, the revenue of cloud smart chips and acceleration cards has decreased to 187732 million yuan in the first half of 2021, accounting for only 13.63% of the revenue in the same period.
In the first half of 2021, when the status of the above two businesses declined rapidly in Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) main businesses, the edge smart chip and accelerator card business was promoted to the largest business. In the first half of 2021, the revenue of this business was 837438 million yuan, accounting for 60.79% of the revenue.
Why is there such a big change in the main business in the short term? Maybe it’s related to Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) customers being too single. According to Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) reply to the inquiry of Shanghai Stock Exchange in that year, in 2019, the business income of the company’s intelligent computing cluster system mainly came from the intelligent computing cluster system project carried out with the Commerce Bureau of Zhuhai Hengqin New Area Management Committee and Xi’an Fengdong Yixiang Technology Service Co., Ltd., which accounted for 97.29% of the company’s intelligent computing cluster system business.
According to public information, the Management Committee of Zhuhai Hengqin new area signed a cooperation agreement with the Computer Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to build the Hengqin advanced intelligent computing focus project, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences is the second shareholder of Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) . The Shanghai Stock Exchange also questioned the sustainability of the above projects before listing.
Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) terminal intelligent processor iprevenue and proportion from 2017 to 2020 (unit: 10000 yuan) p align = “center” data source: prospectus and annual report
car chip has a chance
When the main business changes greatly, but it has not yet expanded, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) began to seek new AI application scenarios. This time, it extended its tentacles to vehicle chips.
In January 2021, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) Xingge (Nanjing) Technology Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) was established to officially start the business related to vehicle smart chips.
On July 16, 2021, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) announced that its subsidiary Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) Xingge increased its registered capital by 170 million yuan and introduced investors, including companies under Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.Limited(300750) , Weilai automobile, SAIC and Nanjing state-owned assets.
At the 2021 world artificial intelligence conference, Chen Tianshi disclosed the key data of Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) Xingge vehicle intelligent chip: Super 200tops AI performance, vehicle specification level, independent safety island, mature software tool chain, and supported the continuous updating and iteration of customer algorithms through an open software platform to effectively support the needs of advanced intelligent driving.
Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) intended vehicle chips are mainly intelligent driving car chips. On this track, there are countless first runners. According to a previous Northeast Securities Co.Ltd(000686) report, at present, there are many entrants to intelligent driving automobile chips, including traditional automobile chip manufacturers represented by NXP and Texas Instruments, electronic chip giants such as Intel, Qualcomm and NVIDIA, automobile enterprises represented by Tesla, and start-ups represented by horizon and Centrino technology.
Among them, NVIDIA, as the inventor of GPU, is in a monopoly position in the GPU market of automobile main control chip, with a market share of 70% all year round. At present, Audi models, early Tesla models, Xiaopeng, Weima, and a large number of mainstream new energy passenger cars are based on NVIDIA’s Xavier or Orin chips.
Following closely, Qualcomm and Huawei have also successively entered Great Wall Motor Company Limited(601633) and BAIC, Chang’an and other auto enterprises. Domestic start-up chip companies in the third tier have also made some “achievements”, such as horizon’s “journey 3” intelligent driving chip entered the 2021 ideal one, and Byd Company Limited(002594) participated in the financing of horizon in 2021.
Analysts believe that from the current situation, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) the cut-in time of this track is not too early. How to expand the existing “cloud side” technology to “cloud side car” and realize the linkage of four in one is worthy of attention under the condition of losing the first mover advantage.
In the case of continuous losses, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) to obtain the huge amount needed for the breakthrough of automobile intelligent chips, it still needs to rely on external financing, which is really a difficult problem for shareholders and investors.
According to the prospectus and financial report, Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited(688256) 20172020 average R & D expenses are twice its revenue. According to the data, from 2017 to 2020, the R & D expense rates of the company were 380.73%, 205.18%, 122.32% and 167.41% respectively.
