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"science and technology innovation board daily" august 31st recently, listed companies have disclosed their semi-annual reports one after another. the science and technology innovation board daily has selected 11 semiconductor equipment companies with a market value of more than 10 billion yuan in the a-share market. judging from the performance in the first half of the year, and even the specific conditions such as inventory and orders in hand, several equipment manufacturers have shown a relatively positive trend.

specifically, seven companies achieved year-on-year growth in net profit in the first half of the year.among them, changchuan technology's net profit in the first half of the year increased by more than 9 times year-on-year, ranking first in growth. the company is engaged in the research and development, production and sales of integrated circuit testing equipment, and its main sales products are testing machines, sorting machines, automation equipment and aoi optical inspection equipment.

judging from the performance in the second quarter alone, 10 companies achieved a month-on-month increase in net profit, of which 6 companies increased by more than 100%. it is also worth noting that among the above-mentioned semiconductor equipment manufacturers,the net profits of three companies, namely north huachuang, huahai qingke and changchuan technology, all hit a record high in a single quarter in the second quarter.。

▌the month-on-month growth in inventory and contract liabilities may indicate the subsequent economic prosperity

from the perspective of inventory and contract liabilities, eight companies achieved month-on-month growth in both indicators. among them, the growth of four companies, namely, amec, shengmei shanghai, tuojing technology, and huahai qingke, was particularly obvious. specifically, their contract liabilities in the second quarter were 2.535 billion yuan, 1.042 billion yuan, 2.038 billion yuan, and 1.342 billion yuan, respectively, up 116.86%, 11.28%, 46.98%, and 9.48% from the first quarter; inventories were 6.778 billion yuan, 4.388 billion yuan, 6.455 billion yuan, and 3.08 billion yuan, up 21.39%, 4.48%, 15%, and 12.77% from the first quarter.

generally speaking, high contract liabilities mean that the company has received a large number of orders and the customers have paid in advance.these advance payments will often be converted into revenue in future financial cyclesfor example, guojin securities pointed out in its research report on august 23 that the rapid growth of amec's ​​contract liabilities will lay the foundation for the company's growth momentum. the balance of contract liabilities at the end of this period increased by about 1.764 billion yuan from the beginning balance of 772 million yuan. the current order book is full, and the full-year performance is expected to be released.

from the inventory indicators, soochow securities pointed out on august 28 that north huachuang's inventory has achieved rapid growth, indicating that the company has sufficient orders on hand.

several companies also stated in their semi-annual reports that they have made positive progress in signing new orders:

china micro corporation: the company signed new orders worth 4.1 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 40%, of which new orders for plasma etching equipment were 3.94 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 51%, mainly due to the company's market share in the production lines of major domestic customers increased significantly; the new product lpcvd began to increase in volume, with new orders reaching 168 million yuan.

shengmei shanghai: three-dimensional stacking electroplating equipment has been put into mass production at the client's end and continues to receive batch repeat orders; the company's independently developed patented rubber ring sealing technology can achieve better sealing effects and has received orders from china's leading advanced packaging customers; at the same time, it has developed negative pressure cleaning equipment for chiplet flux cleaning and received multiple orders.

tuojing technology: the company focuses on the research and development and industrial application of thin film deposition equipment and hybrid bonding equipment. during the reporting period, the company's newly signed sales orders and shipment amounts both increased significantly year-on-year, and the number of newly signed orders in the second quarter also increased significantly compared with the first quarter. as of the end of the reporting period, the company had sufficient sales orders on hand.

from an industry perspective, semiconductor equipment sales may continue to grow in the future. according to kaiyuan securities, based on the increase in capital expenditures for advanced storage and logic wafer fabs and the increase in the localization rate of production line equipment, semiconductor equipment sales in mainland china are expected to increase from us$36.6 billion in 2023 to us$65.77 billion in 2027, with a cagr of 15.8%.

huafu securities' research report on august 26 pointed out that the performance of semiconductor equipment in the first half of 2024 may be affected by the weak growth of new orders in 2023, but the production and delivery of equipment manufacturers in 2024 have begun to accelerate significantly, which is expected to bring about a significant growth in subsequent performance.

▌increase r&d investment to adapt to the ai ​​wave

on the basis of the good performance of various semiconductor equipment manufacturers, the r&d expenses of the above companies continued to grow:

data shows that the r&d expenses of 11 semiconductor equipment companies all achieved year-on-year growth in the first half of 2024. as for why they increased their r&d investment, clues can be found in the semi-annual reports of each company:

huahai qingke: with the rapid development of fields such as ai and high-performance computing, advanced packaging technologies and processes such as high-bandwidth memory (hbm) that vertically stacks dram dies based on 2.5d/3d packaging technology have become important directions for future development.

huafeng measurement & control: with the increasing application of artificial intelligence technology in various industries, more and more intelligent systems and equipment are constantly being integrated and integrated into all walks of life, continuously promoting social progress and development, and also promoting the rapid progress and iteration of semiconductor technology.

in terms of specific r&d projects, among them, china micro corporation, which had the highest year-on-year growth rate in r&d expenditure, spent a total of 970 million yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 110.84%.invest heavily in the r&d and verification of key etching equipment in advanced chip manufacturing technologycurrently, a number of equipment for the most critical etching processes in logic and memory chip manufacturing have been verified on customer production lines.

as ai drives related industries and the localization rate of local semiconductors increases, the global foundry industry is showing a trend of increasing capital expenditures. this year, tsmc's capital expenditure budget hit a record high. according to relevant reports, the company will spend $14.2 billion on installing and upgrading advanced technology production capacity; $7.1 billion on installing and upgrading advanced packaging and professional technology production capacity; and $8.3 billion on wafer fab construction and installation of wafer fab facility systems.

at the july earnings conference, tsmc cfo huang renzhao said that 70%-80% of capital expenditures in 2024 will be used for advanced process development.because tsmc tends to set capital expenditure budgets based on customer needs in the next few years, and its customers seem to want to ensure that tsmc can launch chips for ai development, capital expenditures are expected to reach us$30 billion to us$32 billion in 2024, with the lower limit of the budget raised by 7% compared with the earlier forecast.

smic's capital expenditure in the first half of this year totaled us$4.487 billion. according to previous full-year forecasts, the progress has reached 60%. in terms of production capacity expansion, the company's monthly production capacity in the second quarter increased by 22,500 pieces/month to 837,000 pieces/month from the previous quarter, and it is expected that the production capacity will increase by 60,000 pieces by the end of 2024 compared with the end of 2023.