According to the Intelligent Finance News APP, recently, Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingchi released the industry chain order information of Nvidia (NVDA.US) Blackwell GB200 chip. Currently, Microsoft (MSFT.US) is the largest GB200 customer globally, with the fourth-quarter order volume skyrocketing 3-4 times this year, exceeding the total order volume of all other cloud computing service providers. CITIC Securities stated that looking forward to 2025, it is expected that domestic storage manufacturers and local wafer factories will continue to accelerate expansion. At the same time, with the expectation of high-end driving demand for advanced chips, the domestic semiconductor equipment market is expected to further improve, and equipment company orders are also expected to continue growing simultaneously. Related symbols: Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (00981), Hua Hong Semiconductor (01347), Shanghai Fudan (01385).

In the report, Guo Mingchi stated that the capacity expansion of the Blackwell chip is expected to start in the early fourth quarter of this year. At that time, the shipment volume in the fourth quarter will be between 0.15 million and 0.2 million units. It is expected that the shipment volume in the first quarter of 2025 will significantly increase by 200% to 250%, reaching 0.5 million to 0.55 million units. This means that Nvidia may achieve a sales target of millions of units in just a few quarters. Nvidia's founder and CEO, Huang Renxun, stated in a previous interview that the upcoming Blackwell chip has been fully put into production and the demand is 'crazy'.

At the market level, Nvidia's stock price continues to soar, hitting a historic high again last week, with a cumulative increase of over 180% year-to-date. Despite the amazing increase, many Wall Street institutions remain very optimistic about Nvidia's outlook. Bank of America expects Nvidia's earnings per share (EPS) for FY 2025-2026 to continue to rise by 13%-20%, and has raised Nvidia's target price to $190. In its latest report, Goldman Sachs pointed out that the launch of Blackwell and the ramp-up of production capacity are not only the driving forces for near-term and midterm revenue growth, but also the driving force to expand Nvidia's competitive advantage.

It is worth noting that amid the global frenzy of AI layout, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM.US) recently disclosed an exceptionally strong financial report for the third quarter, 'lifting' the entire chip sector in the global market. When discussing the demand for AI chips in the market, Wei Zhejia, the helm of Taiwan Semiconductor, expressed during an earnings conference that the outlook for AI chip demand is very optimistic. He emphasized that customer demand for CoWoS advanced packaging at Taiwan Semiconductor far exceeds the company's supply.

Taiwan Semiconductor's management expects the company's full-year revenue to grow by nearly 30%, surpassing the general analyst expectation of 20%-25% and the company's guidance from the previous quarter. The management also anticipates that the revenue related to data center AI server chips from Taiwan Semiconductor this year, which includes a wide range of AI chips like Nvidia's AI GPU and Broadcom's AI ASIC, will more than double.

The current demand for AI chips is incredibly strong and is likely to remain so for a very long time. Data recently released by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) shows that driven by the strong demand for AI chips, global semiconductor sales reached around $53.1 billion in August 2024, a 20.6% increase from $44 billion in August 2023, with an additional 3.5% month-on-month increase compared to the already strong $51.3 billion sales in July.

Global renowned strategic consulting firm Bain predicts that as artificial intelligence (AI) technology rapidly disrupts enterprises and economies, all markets related to AI are expanding, reaching $990 billion by 2027. This consulting firm pointed out in its fifth annual "Global Tech Report" released on Wednesday that the overall AI market size, including AI-related services and core hardware like AI GPU, will grow at a rate of 40% to 55% annually from the base of $185 billion last year. This means a massive revenue of $780 billion to $990 billion by 2027.

Citic Securities pointed out that semiconductors are the primary development industry strongly supported by current national policies and are the underlying foundation of technological innovation. In the complex and changeable global situation, domestic independent controllability is one of the most certain development trends. In addition, there is still a large gap in the overall production capacity of domestic semiconductor manufacturing, especially in the advanced chip sector, which has huge room for improvement.

Looking ahead to 2025, Citic Securities predicts that domestic memory manufacturers and local wafer factories will continue to expand production at an accelerated pace. At the same time, driven by the demand for advanced chips, the domestic semiconductor equipment market is expected to further improve. It is also anticipated that equipment company orders will continue to grow in sync. Citic Securities suggests paying attention to opportunities in the semiconductor sector, as favorable factors such as policy support, cyclical reversal, incremental innovation, and domestic substitution are expected to reshape valuation.

Related concept stocks:

SMIC (00981): SMIC announced in February at the earnings conference that under the assumption of no significant changes in the external environment, the guidance for 2024 is: sales revenue growth rate not lower than the average of comparable peers, with a year-on-year increase in the single digits. The company plans to continue advancing the 12-inch plant and capacity construction plans announced in recent years in 2024, with capital expenditures expected to remain roughly the same as the previous year.

Hua Hong Semiconductor (01347): The company guided that the median gross margin in the second quarter will reach 8%, continuing to improve from the first quarter. The company expects equipment to start moving in September and is expected to begin trial operation in the fourth quarter of this year, with capacity expected to be released starting in 2025. Guoyuan Securities pointed out that currently, Hua Hong's 2024 and 2025 EV/EBITDA valuations are 5.7x and 3.6x, respectively, making the valuation attractive. They maintain a "buy" rating on Hua Hong and consider it their top pick in the semiconductor industry.

Shanghai Fudan University (01385): The company has tens of types of products in four major series, including millions of gate-level FPGAs, billions of gate-level FPGAs, and PSoCs. It has the independent intellectual property rights FPGA matching EDA tool ProciseTM for the entire process and is a leading domestic supplier of programmable device chips. As one of the few domestic FPGA suppliers in the industry, the company will fully benefit from the demand brought by downstream market localization and has broad development prospects.