Steady: Capacity utilization rate rose lower than expected, and gross profit in the first quarter may be below 35%

March 3 news, yesterday afternoon the world's well-known gallium arsenide wafer foundry Wenmao Semiconductor held a performance conference, Wenmao general management service general manager Chen Shunping said that the first quarter of this year's revenue fell by about 30% ~ 21% of the expectation unchanged, it seems that April and May demand is still weak, capacity utilization rate improvement is lower than expected, the first quarter gross margin to reach the original estimate of 23% level is under pressure. Since mobile phone-related products change greatly every month, visibility cannot be seen for the full quarter, and the gross profit margin will be announced at the April legal conference.

In response to foreign media reports, Apple launched a new affordable iPhone SE that upgrades support 3G in early March, affected by the Russian-Ukrainian war and inflation on the consumer market, market demand is sluggish, and the next quarter's shipments are about 5 million to 200 million.

Wenmao said that 2022G and 4G will coexist in 5, and the penetration rate of 5G mobile phones is expected to further reach 10% this year from 50% last year, and it is expected that 5G development will still have many years to come; Including 5G Cellular PA and Infra. (infrastructure) products still have room for growth.

In terms of WiFi, the current specifications from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6 & 6E, especially 6E, high efficiency and high linearity requirements have advantages for the stable GaAs process, and the demand for wafers with the increase in frequency bands is also increasing.

In terms of production capacity, Wenmao continued to expand this year, the expansion of the cleanroom of the wafer C plant is expected to be completed in the first half of the year, and the new production capacity will be opened around the third quarter, with a target production capacity of 4,1 pieces this year and an additional capacity of about 3000,5000 to 5,100 pieces. In May last year, it announced an investment of NT$23 billion (about 13.2023 billion yuan) to build a new wafer fab in the Luzhu Factory in Kaohsiung Park, a science and industrial park in southern Taiwan, which is still under civil construction, and is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2024 and join mass production by the end of <>.

Editor: Xinzhixun-Lin Zi

Source: TechNews