'From Core to Cloud', Ziguang ZHAO under ZHAO Wei-guo is trying to build a multi-billion-dollar empire in the storage industry.
Public information shows that starting from 2016, Ziguang Group has started construction of a storage chip and memory manufacturing plant with a total investment of nearly 100 billion U.S. dollars in Wuhan, Nanjing and Chengdu. Recently, the "China Business News" correspondent was divided into three groups. These projects conducted field visits.
A semiconductor industry, said in an interview with reporters, purple projects in various places, although the National Fund and the support of various banks, but the fund is still purple can smooth the bottleneck of various projects in the future if the loss, the pressure will change Big, 'the market does not carry the burden of national mission,' the person said.
Billions of dollars plan
In Nanjing in January, the weather is slightly colder, and a taxi driving 17 kilometers from Yushan Road Subway Station in Pukou District of Nanjing can reach the Ziguang Nanjing IC Base (Phase I) in Pukou Economic Development Zone. The project address is located west of Zifeng Road and Linzhong Road North, Listen Yingying Road, east of the spruce road.
If nothing else, this will be Ziguang Group involved in the integrated circuit industry two years ago, investing in the Yangtze River storage after another project.Previously, in February 2017, Jiangsu Province in 2017 focused on the construction of major projects with a total investment of 30000000000 US dollar purple semiconductor industry base in Nanjing and a total investment of 30 billion yuan (about 4.8 billion US dollars) Purple International City Project IC started.
At present, the integrated circuit industry is one of the most valued actions of Ziguang Power Group, from core to cloud, while the above project of Zijing Nanjing has also become a key project of Nanjing Pukou Economic Development Zone.
Reporters at the project site to see the proposed planning address has been flat, there are still roads around the completion of the unfinished, in the early stages of development less than 2 km away from the upcoming completion of TSMC semiconductor manufacturing plant TSMC in December 2015 Finalized construction in Nanjing and started construction in July 2017. Ziguang Group plans to set up Nanjing Qinghua Ziguang IC Industrial Park in Pukou District of Nanjing in 2014. In contrast, Ziguang Group project moves slightly slower.
Nanjing Pukou Bureau of Planning Bureau told reporters, 'the land is still part of the land transfer phase, not under construction.' 'Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Land and Resources Pukou Branch Land Use Division, a staff member said that the current purple and Nanjing City Land Resources Bureau of Pukou signed a transfer contract, but the balance has not been paid, the relevant procedures are being handled.
Prior to the start of the Nanjing project, in December 2016, Ziguang Group and Chengdu Municipal Government reached a cooperation agreement and both parties will jointly build Chengdu International City City Project with a total investment of more than 200 billion yuan (about 31.9 billion U.S. dollars).
Reporters from Chengdu Shuangliu District Government relevant responsible person was informed that the Chengdu Purple IC International City project has been announced on January 4, 2018 to start, but the specific chip foundry in the project to start the specific time after the Spring Festival. Reporters drive Wai The planned area was observed in a circle, and the planned area has basically been demolished.
A thousand miles away, a total investment of 24 billion US dollars, known as Wuhan City, 'Project No. 1' is also in full swing in China storage project, which is also the first storage project of Ziguang Group in China.
The project leader in charge of construction projects told reporters that at present the main structure of the project has been capped, will be carried out inside and outside the renovation, installation of production lines, plans to trial production April 15, 2018. It is noteworthy that recently, purple under the Yangtze River Storage Successfully developed a 32-layer 64G 3D NAND chip, while the 32-layer 3D NAND chip when the energy production, expansion is concerned about the industry.This is also the key to consider the true strength of the Yangtze River Storage.In response, the Purple Light Group PR The source said it expects to see mass production in 2018, and said more about the progress of the project were not informed.
The reporter was informed that the registered capital of the Yangtze River storage in two phases funded by the first phase of the National IC Industry Investment Fund Co., Ltd., Hubei Guoxin Industry Investment Fund partnership (limited partnership) and Wuhan Xinxing shareholders Hubei Science and Technology Investment Group Co., Ltd. Jointly funded the establishment of the Yangtze River Storage Project on the basis of Wuhan Xinxin Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (ie 'Wuhan Xinxin'), and will build 3 world-wide 3D NAND Flash manufacturing plants with the largest single clean area; the second phase will be jointly organized by the Group, And the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Co., Ltd. jointly funded.
In fact, the above project is only the tip of the iceberg of the billion-dollar group of the Ziguang Group.Zhao Weiguo once said that in the future to make 300 billion yuan of industrial investment and mergers and acquisitions fund, the total output value of chip business into the world's top three, to become a world-class chip giant.
In order to accomplish the above blueprint, Ziguang Group has carried out large-scale industrial mergers and acquisitions in recent years. It has bought Spreadtrum for 1.87 billion US dollars, acquired Rocket Inc. with 907 million US dollars, Xinhua Holdings Ltd. with 2.5 billion US dollars and US $ 600 million won the Taiwan Semiconductor Testing and Testing Corporation A 25% stake; also formed an alliance Intel, Western Digital and Hewlett-Packard and other industry leaders set up a joint venture.
In December 2016, Ziguang Group established a joint venture with Hubei National Science and Technology Holding Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as 'Ziguang Guoji') and ICIC (National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund), a local fund of Hubei Province and Hubei Branch to jointly set up the Yangtze River Storage Technology Co., Ltd. ("Cheung Kong Storage") and a $ 24 billion national storage base project (with an estimated total investment of 28 billion U.S. dollars). Since then, Ziguang Group has tried to pass its other listed company Ziguang Guoxin (36.610, 0.21, 0.58%) to restructure the Yangtze River storage, after the SFC rules of refinancing new regulations ran aground.
Reporters found that up to now, Ziguang Group has signed strategic cooperation agreements with Xiamen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Hefei, Wuhan, Chengdu, Kunming, Dali, Tianjin and Lianyungang, Dongguan and Shijiazhuang The total investment exceeds 100 billion U.S. dollars.
Radical expansion?
Behind the dazzling expansion across the country, Ziguang Group has also made frequent moves in the capital market. Recently, it successfully issued 1.85 billion U.S. dollars of bonds overseas and became the largest Chinese company that has obtained the largest share of non-graded US dollar bond issuance by overseas Chinese state-owned enterprises.
Ziguang Group did not disclose the specific purpose of the funds but said that Ziguang Group has initially constructed a high-tech whole-industry chain from core to cloud and actively conducted various forms of international cooperation to steadily accelerate the pace of self-help innovation.
At the funding level, Ziguang Group also received the sponsorship of the National Fund.According to reports, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China Development Bank will provide various types of financial products and services to Ziguang Group and intend to support a total financing of 100 billion yuan As the only management agency of National IC Industry Investment Fund, Huaxin Investment intends to invest no more than RMB50 billion in the intention of Ziguang Group, with a focus on supporting the development of integrated circuits related business segments of Ziguang Group.
According to the statistics of this reporter, according to the data disclosed by Shenzhen Stock Exchange, only in 2017, Purple Light Group issued 4 non-public issuance of bonds with a total raised amount of 6.65 billion yuan; and in 2016, Bond issuance and financing of RMB10 billion Overseas In December 2015, Ziguang Group issued a USD800 million double-grade unrated senior bond and obtained strong support from Tsinghua University and Tsinghua University.
Semiconductor industry is considered to be the last and most important piece of industry in China.Industry insiders pointed out that the Group is willing to undertake the development of China's memory industry responsibility, it is industry affirmed.
However, its large-scale expansion also make the outside world full of questions. 'No need to engage in a further expansion is also time to go.' The semiconductor industry to the newspaper reporter cited an example, the integrated circuit industry is usually put into trial production of 5,000 to 10,000 trial production , According to the process, the cost of finished products and then decided to expand the production of 20,000 or 30,000, or even 50,000.
The memory industry is a long-term investment, high-risk industries.According to sources, because of the high cost of integrated circuit capacity once put into operation can not stop, if the monthly loss of 100 million US dollars, a year will be a loss of 1.2 billion US dollars.
At present, many of the main mode of integrated circuits for local investment, build factories, enterprises introduced equipment production and operation.Reporters learned that the purple light is located in Chengdu and Nanjing storage project for the purple self-financing, the required capital is huge.According to the insiders, Purple technology is not mature enough, if the future risks, the market does not bear the burden of national mission.
The insiders said that the almost zero-based access to the field purple, the challenge goes without saying. 'A person who has not done a chip manufacturing project is unlikely to accurately predict the future unforgettable difficulties.'
It is understood that the Group of these semiconductor base will be mainly used for the production of 3D NAND Flash, DRAM and other memory chips.At present, the global 3D NAND Flash has been Samsung, Hynix, Toshiba / SanDisk, Micron / Intel and other companies partition, When the purple is still studying the 32-layer stacked 3D NAND Flash memory products, Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix has 64 layers of technology force.
We respect the strong will to develop the national semiconductor industry, but the more we need to maintain some rationality at this time, hoping that it will lower its stance and drive an industry from an underlying technology and industry perspective rather than from a capitalist perspective. An industry analyst told reporters.