The Zhitong Finance App learned that Ping An Securities released a research report saying that the semiconductor industry as a whole continues to decline, inventory digestion still takes time. AIGC brings rapid server growth, which brings about structural and other opportunities in the face of the explosion of computing power demand. Chiplets, memory chips, and optical chips will all get market opportunities. On the R&D and design side, in addition to EDA tools, instrument autonomy also needs to be strengthened. The semiconductor industry is a strategic industry that the country focuses on and supports, although there is not enough strength to rebound in the short term, wait for “silicon” to recover, and has huge potential for medium- to long-term development big, and Domestic breakthroughs are also being made in various fields, maintaining the industry's “better than the market” rating.
Ping An Securities suggests focusing on stocks such as VeriSilicon (688521.SH), Yuanjie Technology (688498.SH), Zhaoyi Innovation (), Ningbo Silicon Electronics (), Lanqi Technology (), Dingyang Technology (), Kunheng Shunwei (), and Puyuan FinTech (:)). 603986.SH 688362.SH 688008.SH 600112.SH 688283.SH 688337.SH
The core views of Ping An Securities are as follows:
The “silicon cycle” is still declining, and recovery is expected in the second half of the year:The overall industry continued to decline in the first quarter. The decline in the shipping area of silicon wafers increased, and the capacity utilization rate of fabs declined. Looking at the medium term, we predict that most of the full-year expectations will fall by more than 10%, and 2024 is expected to usher in a weak recovery; in the short term, design factories' Q2 will focus mainly on inventory adjustments, and the recovery will mainly depend on the 3rd and 4th quarters. Looking at the application side, apart from AIGC's rapid growth in accelerated servers, PCs, mobile phones, and traditional servers are still under a lot of pressure.
AI takes the lead, focusing on related hardware infrastructure and some areas where the localization rate is still low, driven by the computing power of AI chips:
1) Chiplet is one of the best ways to improve the computing power of AI chips in the back-end process. On the one hand, under advanced manufacturing processes, Chiplet is the best choice for large-scale chip production; on the other hand, in the server field, the share of Chiplet products is increasing year by year, and the market size is developing rapidly.
2) Optical chips are responsible for photoelectric conversion and are widely used in fields such as data centers, 5G and optical fiber broadband. As the digital communication market becomes faster, AIGC will create new demand;
3) Computing power drives survival, HBM has become standard for high-end AI servers, and the increase in AI server shipments is expected to drive high demand for HBM;
4) Design and development instruments have also ushered in a peak of substitution. National incentive policies have been introduced continuously, domestic electronic measuring instrument manufacturers are rapidly improving their capabilities, and alternative space is gradually opening up.
Risk warning:Policy support falls short of expectations; market demand may fall short of expectations; domestic substitution falls short of expectations.