Many people may not remember how happy the $199 cabbage price of 8GB of memory was. After all, from the Q2 quarter of 2016, the price of flash memory chips has continued for almost two years. The 8GB memory stick has risen from more than 200 pieces all the way to More than 300, more than 500, and more than 700. At its peak, it even approached the 1,000 yuan mark. Today's memory prices are nearly three or four times that of two years ago. The price hikes made other electronic products shame and used two years of memory to sell second-hand memories. The story of making money is still happening.
Regarding the root causes and impacts of this price increase, we have analyzed several articles before. Let's be special today.In 2 years, how much money did Samsung, Micron, SK Hynix and others make in the end?
If you count from Q2 2016, how do you calculate the memory, how much does the price increase make the manufacturer make?
We have made a simple calculation based on the official financial report data. We have selected Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron as representatives. They also have DRAM memory and NAND flash memory, and they are not too low.
In addition, Toshiba, SanDisk, Intel’s three NAND flash-based companies did not calculate, Intel’s share was less than 10%, and its influence was low. SanDisk’s financial report was merged into Western Digital. There is no separate NAND business data. In addition, Toshiba’s NAND business was not listed separately in the financial report (combined with electronic products), but we will simply estimate it later.
The following data are the operating profits of the three companies. They are not gross profit, nor are they net profit. , This indicator was chosen mainly because -
First, Samsung Electronics did not disclose the specific net profit of each sub-service. The total net profit does not reflect the profitability of the memory chip.
Secondly, net profit is the final condition of the company’s profit and loss. However, net profit does not always reflect the company’s revenue. If the product is sold well, it may also have a net loss. The reverse situation also exists, and the operating profit can Better reflect the operation of this part of the business.
First, look at the performance of Micron in the past two years. Their financial statements are in American fiscal year. September 1 is the fiscal year deadline. The table is converted into a calendar year, but there will be a certain deviation. 2018 Q1 quarter is actually the deadline until March 1.
In the first three quarters of 2016, the time of Micron was miserable, and operating profit was a loss. At that time, Micron was also trapped in the capacity upgrade of 20nm memory chips. The progress did not go smoothly. In the first half of the year, memory and flash memory were declining. It is a loss.
However, since the Q4 quarter, there has been a good price increase, and the operating profit in the quarter has risen to 2.25 billion yuan immediately. Since then, it has been rising all the way. The operating profit in the Q1 quarter reached 22.39 billion yuan this year, which is 10 times more than a year ago. many.
In these eight quarters, Micron’s operating profit totaled 62.55 billion yuan. Of course, if gross profit (product revenue minus cost) is total, it will total 110.05 billion yuan.
The former Micron was the weakest of the above three. Let's look at the performance of SK Hynix. They did not lose out in 2016 compared with Micron, but the Q2 quarter operating profit was also 2.7 billion, and Q3 began to rise in the Q4 quarter. Prices, operating profits have skyrocketed, and the Q4 reached 9.15 billion yuan. In 2017, it was still a rocket-like increase. Last year, Q4 quarter reached an operating profit of 26.6 billion yuan, which is a 10 times increase before the rise. ...
The financial report for the Q1 quarter has not yet been announced. However, the memory market is still 'a good one'. The price increase of 5% is not ran. Based on this range, SK Hyix's profit is expected to reach 27.9 billion. 12.58 billion yuan, if gross profit, then it is 168.7 billion yuan.
Micron, SK Hyix is a small fish shrimp, the real memory, the flash memory giant is Samsung, so their two operating profits are really small compared to Samsung, please let Samsung start performing:
It should be noted that Samsung's semiconductor business is not all memory chips, there are processors, but Samsung's earnings report although the memory chips and other chips from the revenue, but the earnings did not distinguish between the operating profit of the two, but the storage The chip accounted for at least 80% of Samsung Semiconductor's revenue, and its profit ratio will not be lower than this ratio.
The operating profit of the Samsung Semiconductor business is too large to be discussed in detail. The operating profit earned by Samsung during the eight quarters is approximately 342.05 billion yuan. Even if the memory chip is hit by 20%, it is still worth 273.6 billion yuan. For SK Hynix and Micron.
What is the concept of this? The memory chip manufacturer's 2 years profit is 10 times that of Huawei.
According to preliminary estimates, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron earned more than 460 billion yuan in storage chip prices in the past two years. Toshiba, SanDisk, and Intel have not yet counted, and the three companies added almost as much to NAND as Samsung, but NAND value is lower than DRAM. In the case of rough calculations, the total operating profit of the three companies in these two years will be around 1000-150 billion. , Then the global mainstream memory chip manufacturers made almost RMB 600 billion in this wave of price increase. This figure is not necessarily accurate, but it can already help us to assess the price of the price increase.
What is the concept of operating profit of 600 billion? China's technology companies, Huawei regardless of revenue scale or earning power are first-rate, they recently released the 2017 financial report, annual revenue of 603.6 billion yuan, year-on-year growth 16%; operating profit was 56.38 billion, which was a year-on-year increase of 23%, and net profit was 47.5 billion, an increase of 28% from the same period last year.
In contrast to this, the total operating profit of several storage chip companies is equivalent to one year of Huawei’s revenue. The operating profit is more than 10 times that of Huawei in 2017. It’s necessary to know that Huawei’s operating profit margin is only about 9%. These three semiconductor companies The gross profit margin can reach about 55-60%, and the operating profit margin can reach 45-50%. However, over a year ago, their operating profit margin was less than 20%. It can be seen that the impact of price increases is significant.
Chinese goods should be self-reliant, but the road ahead is difficult and we can not eat hot tofu
Even if it is not the operating data released by the manufacturers, the statistics of other channels also explain the impact of the price increase on the Chinese market in the past two years. The data from the Korean Customs shows that the country’s semiconductor chip exports in 2017 totaled 99.71 billion US dollars, an increase of 60.2% year-on-year. %, of which storage chip exports grew by 90.7% to reach 67.2 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for the vast majority of shares.
Among semiconductor exporting countries, China accounted for 39.35 billion US dollars. Since 2005, it has been the first export target for Korean semiconductor chips. Considering that China’s self-produced share in the memory chip market is close to 0, this part of the import amount is almost all the deficit of China. , South Korea's surplus.
In January-February 2018, South Korean semiconductor chip exports continued to increase by 47.3%, with a total value of 19 billion U.S. dollars.
At present, the memory chip market still does not stop rising. Due to the increase in production capacity, NAND flash memory prices have been stable in the past two months. Some products have even reduced prices slightly, and memory prices are still intangible. The memory contract price in Q1 is still rising this year. 5%, Q2 trend is not yet obvious, but price cuts are not a thing of the nail, the industry's expectation is that prices may be reduced in the second half of this year -
But don't be too happy to cut prices too soon. Because memory chips have risen to high prices for many times, price cuts are also a long-term process. Dropping everyone's expected price of cabbage is a far-reaching process.
What should the current situation be for the player?
Every time I write here, the answer is really very helpless - players have no way to solve this problem, even if the DIY players all boycott PC memory can not affect the current situation, this wave of memory / flash memory rose The reason for the price is that mobile memory was moved two years ago. The demand for server memory is very strong. In particular, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are in great demand. They must stock up, and they cannot purchase memory chips. In contrast, the influence of DIY players is too weak.
For Chinese consumers, to completely change this issue requires us to have our own memory chip production capabilities. Only by adding new competitors can we change the situation of the existing monopoly and oligarch monopoly.
The good news is that domestic memory chips are already on the road, and NAND flash memory is expected to erupt in the second half of this year. Because DRAM memory chips have higher technical difficulty, Ziguang has produced a small amount of DDR3 particles. DDR4 particles will come out later this year.
Beyond Violet, Hefei Changxin, Jinhua, Fujian, Zhaoyi Innovation also devoted itself to memory production, but they are unlikely to come up with usable memory in 2019, solve technical problems, increase production capacity, etc., and cannot be solved before 2019. This will surely be a long-term process. It takes a long time to cultivate a competitive industry. Without five to ten years of turbulence, Chinese companies will not be able to train in the memory chip market.
In short, although Samsung, Micron, SK Hynix, and other storage chip companies have achieved extremely good results in a way that is not too comfortable for consumers, they have earned a lot of money, and they have counted how many hands have cramped, but Is it behind the roots or from their strong strength, strong enough to reach the downstream manufacturers even if they are not satisfied with the point...
Just like Boeing only in the large aircraft market, Airbus can only provide competitive products. In the field, for example, domestic products must be self-reliant. However, this process is not easy and it is a long way to go.
