semiconductors

On September 10, U.S. stocks closed with all three major indices falling, marking the fourth consecutive trading day of declines; Brent crude oil briefly touched around $108, U.S. Treasury yields rose, suppressing risk appetite; the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell about 2.66%. In terms of concept stocks, most sectors such as chips, optical modules, and storage retreated, with the seven giants showing divergence: Apple (AAPL) rose 3.56%, Alphabet slightly increased, Microsoft was nearly flat, while others fell. In the energy sector, XOM rose about 0.61%, with some energy stocks resisting declines driven by oil prices.WEEX Labs believes that the rise of AAPL indicates that funds are still willing to invest in the new product cycle despite macro headwinds; investors need to closely monitor the August CPI data released today, which is the macro highlight of the week and will directly impact next week's interest rate pricing and market reactions. Trade stocks and gold using WEEX TradFi, and you can also participate in daily egg hunts, with a 100% prize rate, winning up to 10,000 USDT in position airdrops.

Micron Technology announced on Friday that its direct labor employees in Taiwan will receive a total bonus for the fiscal year 2026 equivalent to 35 to 68 months of salary, with a minimum cash compensation of 1.7 million New Taiwan Dollars (approximately 53,809.39 USD).Employees in Taiwan who joined before August 29, 2025, will receive a cash bonus of 1 million New Taiwan Dollars (approximately 31,652.58 USD) for the fiscal year 2026. This announcement comes after union members representing about two-thirds of Micron's employees in Taiwan generally supported a strike.

KB Securities warned that the inventory of memory semiconductors at Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix has fallen to less than 10 days of supply, and the available supply next year will be significantly insufficient. The agency reported on Monday that investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure is expanding at an unprecedented pace, leading to a severe supply shortage in the memory chip market. A key factor is the transition to HBM4, which requires about three times the wafers of traditional DRAM, and limited wafer capacity will reduce the available capacity of traditional DRAM.KB Securities expects that next year, the demand for DRAM and NAND will exceed supply by more than 10 percentage points. Research director Kim Dong-won stated that artificial intelligence servers will consume HBM, server DDR5, and enterprise-grade solid-state drives, potentially leading to a historic shortage. Global hyperscale data center operators have raised their expectations for artificial intelligence infrastructure investment next year to $1.3 trillion, a 60% increase from the previous year. The agency anticipates that memory semiconductors will account for 57% of total investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure next year, up from 14% last year, with TrendForce estimating this ratio could reach as high as 68%. Samsung Electronics' stock price has dropped nearly 28% from its peak, while SK Hynix has fallen nearly 40%.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Micron, and other companies are increasing capital expenditures to expand production, driving the combined orders of the top five semiconductor engineering firms—HanTang, Axiom, FanXuan, Yankee, and ShengHui—to exceed 880 billion yuan, a record high. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company recently stated at a semiconductor exhibition that it is building up to 20 wafer fabs, with the overall capacity expansion scale increasing multiple times compared to the past, but it still cannot meet customer demand. The U.S. tariff policy has driven the demand for manufacturing plants in the United States. Axiom has the largest order amount of 440.73 billion yuan, and Chairman Yao ZuXiang pointed out that the cumulative amount of turnkey projects undertaken in Singapore over the past four years has reached 600 billion yuan, with expectations for new projects to follow. HanTang's order amount is approximately 193.937 billion yuan, setting a new record, benefiting from continued plant construction by major clients like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Micron.FanXuan's order amount reached a new high of 135.1 billion yuan, and Chairman Gao XinMing revealed that order visibility extends at least to 2028, with related projects for clients planned for 2029 and 2030. FanXuan has deployed materials, manpower, and local construction teams to support clients in Taiwan, Arizona in the United States, Japan, and Germany in synchronizing production expansion needs, and is investing in the development of technologies such as CoPoS. ShengHui's order amount exceeds 60 billion yuan, with Taiwan accounting for 68% and semiconductor orders accounting for 63%. In the first half of the year, the after-tax net profit was 2.944 billion yuan, with earnings per share of 23.73 yuan, setting a new high for the same period. Yankee's after-tax net profit in the first half of the year was 2.317 billion yuan, with earnings per share of 17.46 yuan, and the order amount is approximately 51.77 billion yuan, with order visibility reaching the end of 2027.

The Korea Electric Power Corporation is negotiating a multi-billion dollar electricity prepayment plan with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to raise funds for the power grid needed to build a new semiconductor industry cluster. According to the current plan, Samsung Electronics will prepay 200 trillion won, and SK Hynix will prepay 50 trillion won, totaling 250 trillion won, which is approximately equivalent to the electricity costs for the next five years.In a statement, Korea Electric Power said that the large-scale electricity prepayment system is a mechanism that meets the needs of companies urgently needing to expand the power grid and Korea Electric Power, which requires investment funds. Specific details, including the amount of prepayment and the coverage period, have not yet been finalized.

On September 2, TSMC Senior Vice President and Co-COO Dr. Wei-Chung Hou stated that the speed of change in AI demand far exceeds past industry experiences. Taking TSMC's equipment demand as an example, the estimated equipment needed for this year at the end of last year was calculated to be 1 times, but just one quarter later it increased to 1.5 times, and by July of this year, it had reached 1.9 times, with demand nearly doubling in just six months.Dr. Hou pointed out that the semiconductor industry has never faced such rapid changes in demand in the past 30 years. The entire industry needs to provide nearly double the original equipment, capacity, and resources in an extremely short time. TSMC is currently constructing 13 fabs in Taiwan and about 5 to 6 overseas, totaling nearly 20 fabs globally, with the scale of construction expanded to about 3 to 4 times that of the past, yet still unable to fully meet customer demand.He emphasized that in the AI era, the entire system or module needs to be optimized, and traditional collaborative models can no longer meet the demand. The supply chain must be restructured into a new cooperation model that is more closely integrated. The entire ecosystem is not yet prepared for such rapid growth, with equipment demand nearly doubling in six months, and almost no suppliers can completely avoid capacity constraints.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said on Wednesday that the Trump administration is considering a new round of import tariffs on semiconductors, which could further increase taxes on foreign chips to attract more semiconductor manufacturing to the United States.However, these tariffs may be implemented alongside tax relief measures for investments in domestic manufacturing companies, following the approach previously taken by the Trump administration in the pharmaceutical industry.Raimondo stated, "This is the principle that the semiconductor industry should follow: If you produce in the U.S., we will give you tariff relief; if you do not produce in the U.S., you will pay tariffs. This is a very wise approach and it works."Trump had previously imposed a 25% tariff on some advanced semiconductors and ordered additional import tariffs on these chips in January of this year after the U.S. Department of Commerce completed relevant trade investigations. However, the scope of the new round of tariffs may expand from semiconductors themselves to products containing chips, thereby affecting imports of data center servers and consumer electronics.

According to eight people familiar with the discussions, despite warnings from tech companies that this move could affect the United States' dominance in the field of artificial intelligence, the Trump administration is still considering imposing a new round of comprehensive tariffs on semiconductors.

KB Financial Group announced the establishment of the "KB National Growth Unicorn Scale-up Fund," with a scale of 150 billion Korean won (approximately 108 million USD), fully funded by the group's subsidiaries' own capital, and managed by the KB Securities PE Growth Investment Division. The fund will focus on investing in companies in fields such as AI, semiconductors, secondary batteries, aerospace, mobile transportation, robotics, and biotechnology, aiming to cultivate unicorn companies in cutting-edge strategic industries.This decision was finalized at the "4th Productive Financial Consultation Meeting" held on July 24. KB Financial also formulated a financial support plan in line with the government's "three major super projects," covering support for semiconductors, power infrastructure investment, and physical AI companies and AI data centers. KB Financial plans to focus on discovering local innovative small and medium-sized enterprises through the CIB center and promote a shift in corporate evaluation culture from traditional financial statements and historical performance orientation to a evaluation system based on technological strength and future growth potential.

According to ChaoXiang Research, Morgan Stanley's stock strategy report on July 20 pointed out that AI-related stocks have faced fierce selling in recent weeks, with the South Korean stock market dropping 25% from its peak, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falling 20%. Individual stocks like Samsung and Micron have seen declines between 20% and 50%. The report believes that the core driving force behind this round of decline is technical factors and position clearing, with no deterioration in fundamentals. The gap between relative prices and relative earnings trends in semiconductors continues to widen, but the supply-demand tight balance for DRAM and NAND is expected to last until 2028. DRAM spot prices remain high, and Micron has also raised its performance guidance, indicating that supply-demand tightness will last at least until 2027. The RSI of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is nearing the oversold zone, and the accumulated momentum gains for the year have basically been retraced.Morgan Stanley believes that once the oversold signal is confirmed, a rebound window will open, and it suggests that investors gradually position themselves in semiconductors during the summer. The proportion of second-quarter earnings reports exceeding expectations reached 97%, and companies in the S&P 500 that reported better-than-expected earnings outperformed the market by an average of 1.7 percentage points on the day of the report. In terms of allocation, Morgan Stanley has raised its equity allocation from 60% to 65%, increased its Eurozone allocation from 8.7% to 11%, and is overweight in sectors such as semiconductors, mining, capital goods, automotive, insurance, and banking, while underweighting software, business services, and media in the "AI erosion group." Regarding geopolitical conflicts, the report believes that the "buying on dips" strategy since the end of March remains effective.

According to South Korean media EToday, the South Korean government announced the "2026 Economic Growth Strategy for the Second Half of the Year," declaring that it will accelerate the advancement of three major "super projects": semiconductors, AI data centers, and physical AI, and plans to enhance industrial competitiveness through the construction of blockchain and digital asset ecosystems.According to the plan, South Korea aims to double its storage chip production capacity within the next five years and launch an AI chatbot and a unified AI education platform for the public in the second half of this year. Notably, the South Korean government proposed to advance large-scale demonstration projects for blockchain and digital asset ecosystems in the second half of this year and to initiate a pilot project for the tokenization of government bonds based on blockchain, exploring the linkage with the central bank's institutional CBDC to promote the upgrade of financial infrastructure. In addition, South Korea also plans to establish strategic investment accounts and a national growth fund to expand long-term capital support for strategic industries such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology, security, and blockchain.

According to Jinshi News, as the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond rises above 4.6%, U.S. stock index futures have slightly declined. Major semiconductor stocks such as Micron Technology (MU.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O) continue to fall in pre-market trading. If the S&P 500 index continues to decline today, it will mark the third consecutive trading day of losses for the index. Rising yields, high inflation, and elevated oil prices are weakening investors' willingness to invest. Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, stated that a stagflationary macroeconomic environment may not necessarily hinder stock market performance, provided that companies can still improve profit margins.