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On August 11, a Beijing Business Daily reporter noticed that Saiteng Co., Ltd. released its 2024 semi-annual report the day before. In the first half of 2024, the company achieved operating income of 1.631 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.21%; and achieved net profit of 154 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 48.87%.

Saiteng Co., Ltd., which started out as a "fruit chain", now has a more diversified customer structure, which provides more guarantees for its revenue and profits. However, the company does not want to stop at consumer electronics, and it regards semiconductors as a new growth point. However, after several years of development, the current business is still weak. In the context of needing to compete with international leaders for the market, Saiteng Co., Ltd. seems to have a sense of "time is running out".

Backed by consumer electronics

Saiteng Co., Ltd., which "sells shovels" in the consumer electronics field, has continued to grow for many years. The company officially landed on the A-share market in 2017. Its revenue and profits have been increasing year by year, but the growth rate has been sometimes fast and sometimes slow.

Saiteng mainly provides manufacturing equipment for production lines such as mobile phones, tablets, and smart wearables, including parts assembly and testing. 2011 was crucial for the company. At that time, Saiteng passed Apple's qualified supplier certification and began to supply customized automatic assembly equipment and testing equipment to Apple, becoming a member of the "Apple supply chain". In addition to the iPhone, Saiteng's business has also extended to Apple's tablets, watches, headphones and other products.

From 2014 to 2017, Apple contributed almost 90% of the revenue of Saiteng Co., Ltd. After going public, Saiteng Co., Ltd.'s customers became more diversified, and Apple's proportion decreased, but it is still important.

Liang Zhenpeng, a senior industrial economic observer, told the Beijing Business Daily that due to the different product forms, the assembly and testing equipment required by various consumer electronics manufacturers are also different, requiring personalized customization, that is, one thousand faces for one thousand people. Generally speaking, the equipment manufacturer and the downstream will first discuss the plan together, then carry out prototype production, proofing testing, small-scale mass production, and then sign the order. Once it is finalized, the cooperation between the two parties is often relatively stable. For companies like Saiteng Co., Ltd., customers are important resources.

As for the future, unlike the voices in the market that are pessimistic about consumer electronics, Saiteng shares believes that AI will bring new opportunities. The company has stated in a research activity that it expects AI mobile phones to bring about a wave of phone replacement, and mobile phone assembly orders will increase significantly. AI mobile phones have higher requirements for cameras, sensors, acoustic components, etc., and the market space for related equipment is also larger.

The second curve is "weak"

However, outside of consumer electronics, Saiteng's new business seems to be growing sluggishly, and the semiconductor and new energy sectors do not contribute much to revenue. Although the company did not disclose detailed data in the semi-annual report, according to the 2023 annual report, consumer electronics revenue is about 4.124 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 93%, while semiconductor and new energy business revenues are only about 264 million yuan and 50.54 million yuan, respectively.

Not only does it account for a small proportion, but in 2023, Saiteng Co., Ltd.'s semiconductor revenue also "regressed", falling 9.48% year-on-year, in sharp contrast to the approximately 68% growth in the consumer electronics sector.

In fact, Saiteng shares have been involved in semiconductors through acquisitions for quite some time. As early as 2018, Saiteng shares acquired 51% of the shares of Wuxi Changding Electronics. In the same year, the company announced that it would acquire 100% of the shares of Lingou Technology by issuing convertible bonds, with a transaction price of 210 million yuan. In 2019, Saiteng shares purchased 67.53% of the shares of Japan's Optima Co., Ltd., and will also increase the capital of Optima, with a total investment amount of approximately RMB 240 million.

In the semiconductor field, Saiteng Co., Ltd. is still engaged in product testing. In the 2023 annual report, Saiteng Co., Ltd. stated that the company cooperated with the needs of first-tier international customers, tested wafers, improved the defect monitoring in various chip manufacturing processes, and obtained transfer approval.

Specifically, HBM is where Saiteng shares are focusing their efforts and is also the focus of the market. HBM, or high-bandwidth memory, has become popular along with AI. Unlike traditional DDR memory chips, HBM can stack multiple DDRs together like building a house, and then package them together with GPUs for use in AI servers, professional graphics cards, and data centers.

The main HBM manufacturers are Samsung and SK Hynix in South Korea, while Micron in the United States is slightly inferior. With the frequent release of new products by downstream companies such as Nvidia, HBM has also attracted market attention. Public information shows that Saiteng Co., Ltd. has already had a considerable degree of cooperation with Samsung and is also in contact with SK Hynix.

Zhang Xiaorong, director of the Deep Technology Research Institute, believes that HBM's market potential is unquestionable and it is an important opportunity for domestic companies. More and more players are involved in this field, but the ultimate winner will still depend on speed.

Experts believe that Saiteng shares should increase investment in semiconductors. After all, the company is in good financial condition and can afford to invest more. Saiteng shares has customers from overseas, and its competitors also come from overseas. In the chip testing track, Saiteng shares may have to "steal food" from leading companies such as KLA-Tencor and ASML for a long time.

A Beijing Business Daily reporter interviewed Saiteng Co., Ltd. on relevant issues, but no response was received as of press time.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Tao Feng and Wang Zhuli