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Num：64
See：1546
2021-04
08
A factory in the mainland won 8 inches of production capacity, breaking $1000 / piece!
Recently, a Taiwan-based foundry bid for a batch of 130nm 8-inch wafer foundry capacity. The final bid was as high as $1,000 per wafer, more than 40% of the current industry average price and the highest in nearly a decade.
 

 
 
Wafer markups of hundreds of dollars per wafer, as founders open bids for Q2 capacity, have already seen markups of $100- $300 per wafer in the first quarter, but the current 100% seller's market underestimates the commitment of IC designers to deliver to customers.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the recently released batch of 130nm 8-inch capacity from a foundatory was just over 100 pieces, and was eventually sold to a mainland IC design company at a price of up to $1,000 per piece.

The current price for an 8-inch wafer from major founders is around $600 to $700, with premiums as low as 43%.
 
Average revenue per wafer for the four OEMs

 
According to data from IC Insights, from 2014 to 2020, the average revenue per wafer contributed by the world's top four foundering fabs (TSMC, GIC, UMC and SMIC) will be US $1,634 per wafer in 2020, which is 66% higher than that of the second largest foundering fabs (GIC).

As for the other two companies with mature processes (above 65nm) and 8-inch production lines, UMC and SMIC contributed $675 and $684 per wafer in 2020, both less than half of TSMC's revenue in the same period.

Therefore, the auction price of $1,000 per piece of the 8-inch capacity at 130nm is unprecedented. It must be a product that must be delivered on a tight deadline. It is not the norm in the industry.
 
Source: Business Times


The two main prerequisits for fabs to offer high prices are that the product market is scarce enough to be "hard to find", and there are orders endorsed by certain big customers behind it. Otherwise, under the circumstance of the same scarcity of closed testing capacity and price rise, such a low amount of wafers would be very risky.

The latest time for the electronics industry to compete through bidding was the MLCC out of stock boom from 2017 to 2018. Due to the shortage and hot channel speculation, the market price of a rare MLCC model increased by more than 10 times. Taiwan capacitor factory led by Guoju set up an auction to sell the quasi-spot to terminal factories, EMS and agents in a bidding way.
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