The localization of chips continued to advance steadily, and the self-sufficiency rate of Chinese chips gradually increased.
The rise of 'China Core' is closely related to R&D investment. With the disclosure of the 2017 annual report of listed companies, the research and development of listed companies in the chip industry chain is exposed. About 85% of the company's R&D expenditures have increased year-on-year, accounting for 9.17% of revenue. It is significantly higher than the average R&D investment of A-share listed companies in operating income, but there is still room for improvement compared with international large enterprises.
The investment continues to increase
The manufacture of 'China Core' started late, but it is trying to get out of the dilemma of chip dependence on imports.
There are 70 listed companies in the two major concept stocks of integrated circuits and chips. In 2017, the total R&D expenses were 28.747 billion yuan, an increase of 18.8% compared with the 2016 figure of 24.179 billion yuan, showing a further increase in research and development.
From the perspective of R&D investment scale, ZTE's R&D expenses are the highest, reaching 12.762 billion yuan. It is also the only chip-issuing company with a total investment of over 10 billion in A-shares. Ziguang shares, Ninestar ranks at 3.049 billion yuan and 1.641 billion yuan respectively. Second, third place. Another 28 listed companies invested more than 100 million in 2017, the total of the above three accounts for 44.29%.
However, after eliminating ZTE, the average R&D investment of the rest of the company is only 229 million yuan, which is still at a low level. Compared with foreign countries, it is understood that Intel's R&D expenditure in 2017 is as high as $13.098 billion in the world; Qualcomm is $3.450 billion. In the second.
Among the indicators of 'R&D expenditure as a percentage of revenue (R&D intensity)', Hite High-tech has the highest R&D intensity, reaching 58.25%. From the performance of the company in 2015-2017, it is less than 20% in previous years, reflecting the company's 2017 Larger investment.
In the second place, the new research and development strength of NavInfo is 42.36%; in fact, the company's R&D intensity has continued to be above 40% since 2015. Similar to the situation, there are 8 listed companies, and the research and development intensity for three consecutive years is More than 20%.
On average, 70 R&D investment in listed companies in the chip industry accounted for 9.17% of revenue.
'At present, China's chip industry is still at an early stage, technology is immature or at the low-end level, and R&D investment is sure to increase. But on the other hand, from a capital perspective, this is a high-input, high-risk industry. Insufficient capital dynamics, resulting in a small scale and weaker R&D investment compared with international large enterprises. 'A Shanghai-based private equity fund partner explained to the 21st Century Business Herald on May 2.
Just because the domestic chip industry is in its infancy, there is huge room for development, especially for companies that compete with foreign leaders, but this requires strong R&D strength to support, and many companies are already making efforts. 'The chip industry is everywhere, most companies scale. Small and not strong, there are not many companies that compete with the global leader in the attitude of the national team. 'The aforementioned Shanghai private equity fund people talked about.
Taking Huiding Technology as an example, the company is a leading company in fingerprint identification. It is a number of domestic mobile phone suppliers such as Huawei and VIVO. On May 2, the company said that it uses the Samsung mobile phone Galaxy J7 with IG32J1, a single-chip fingerprint identification solution. Duo's mass production was successful and went on sale in India, which means that Huiding Technology's fingerprint identification solution entered Samsung's supply chain.
In terms of R&D investment, although the scale is not the largest in the chip industry, the research and development of Huiding Technology continues to increase.
According to the 2017 annual report, during the period of 2014-2017, the company's research and development expenses were 82.208 million yuan, 160 million yuan, 308 million yuan and 597 million yuan, which continued to rise; especially in 2017, the research and development expenses increased by 93.73%.
However, this also led to a small increase in net profit in 2017. It is understood that Huiding Technology's non-net profit attributable to shareholders in 2017 was 871 million yuan, up 2.27% year-on-year. 21st Century Business Herald participated in Huiding Technology on April 27th. At the performance conference, Zhang Fan, chairman of Huiding Technology, said, 'The company's profits have been invested in the construction of a new growth foundation in the future.'
At the same time, the proportion of R&D investment in operating income in 2017 increased from 10% in 2016 to 16.21%.
In addition, in the team, the number of R&D personnel has also expanded from 800 to 1019. The number of Doctors of Huiding Technology has increased from 12 in 2016 to 28 in 2017.
As of the end of 2017, the number of international and domestic patents applied for and obtained by Huiding Technology has reached 1,879, more than double the figure at the end of 2016.
Technological change, advance development
Judging from the annual report of listed companies, compared with international large enterprises, the R&D investment of the chip industry still needs to be improved; because the chip industry is a capital-intensive industry, this requires enterprises and capital to be forward-looking when investing.
A medium-sized private equity fund partner in Shenzhen told the 21st Century Business Herald on May 2 that the chip industry is changing rapidly. During the technology shift period, if new technologies cannot be laid out early, the chances of catching up may be lost forever.
'Every new technology is coming, it is the opportunity to overtake the curve. If you catch up, you can establish a leading position. If you don't keep up, it will widen the gap and even be eliminated. This shows the investment in the chip industry. Urgency. ' The person said.
At the same time, he stressed that enterprises should be more precise when investing in the layout. 'The chip industry is characterized by technological innovation, which determines that there will be only two extreme results of investment success or investment failure. Some companies have made great efforts to The research and development of the technology, through the difficulties to solve the problem of non-performing rate, may eventually find that the demand for this technology or product market is not large, which means that the initial research and development investment is basically sloppy.
Taking the above-mentioned Huiding Technology as an example, the company will launch the 'Screen-on-Screen Optical Fingerprint' and '3D Face Recognition' technologies. This technology is currently the world's leading chip makers competing for sub-second development, participants have Qualcomm, Apple, Xinsi, etc. Among them, Qualcomm's ultrasonic fingerprinting solution for OLED displays will not be commercially available until the summer of 2018.
Huiding Technology said that the company continued to invest in screen optical fingerprinting technology in 2017, but failed to invest in commercial scale in 2017. This is an important reason why the company's net profit did not increase significantly in 2017.
From the first quarter of 2018, the technology has made progress. The optical fingerprint products under the screen have been used in the first quarter of 2018 for the flagship models of well-known brands such as Huawei and vivo. Zhang Fan, chairman of Huiding Technology, said at the performance briefing , 'The mass production of optical fingerprints is the result of work in previous years; the mass production time of optical products lags behind the time we expected at the beginning, because this is a new technology that has never been tried, The performance of the fingerprint technology under the screen is the best in the industry. '
Zhang Fan revealed that more than 180 patents have been accumulated on the screen optical fingerprint technology, which has gradually helped customers to enter mass production. He said that for the optical fingerprint products under the screen, the basic goal for 2018 is to reach tens of millions of shipments. Level. 'With the increase in shipments of optical fingerprint products, the company's gross profit situation will also be improved accordingly, and gross profit performance will also pick up.'
In addition, for the current popular technology - 3D face recognition, Huiding Technology is also in the layout. The company said that it is expected to gradually provide the market with low power consumption, small size and lower cost of innovative 3D face recognition system solutions in 2018. .