According to comprehensive media reports, the MCU industry is facing strong pessimistic expectations in the second half of the year, with market demand decelerating and the pressure to cut orders continuing downwards, with a number of MCU factories reporting annual revenue declines of more than 20% in July.
MCU factory executives confessed that customers' requests for price cuts are getting louder and louder, coupled with the recent sporadic emergence of sealing control, which has led to continued weakness in end consumption.
In addition, such a weak situation makes the crop rate of foundries and test houses under pressure, but the cost of raw materials has not fallen, so the cost of IC design is not loosened, only one situation is possible, that is, to increase the amount of new investment.
Upstream costs have not been reduced, the downstream demand for lower prices of the two-sided attack, making MCU factory, IC traders are mostly under pressure, a factory senior expected that such a deadlock situation will continue until the end of the year, the 3rd and 4th quarter gross margin performance is still mostly maintained decline, but the magnitude is still slow decline, and has not returned to last year's price increase before the water level.
It is understood that Holtek's consolidated revenue for July was NT$495 million, a monthly decrease of 3.4%, a new monthly revenue low since March last year. Not only is Holtek's revenue in the doldrums, but MCU manufacturers such as Lingtong, Song-Han and Jiu Qi have also reported a yearly decline of over 20% in consolidated revenue in July, with Song-Han registering an annual decline of 51.6%, which is higher than that of other MCU manufacturers.
For MCU manufacturers, holding prices and de-stocking are the two most important tasks at the moment. Most of them said that the price drop will take into account the importance of customers, cooperation stability, product continuity and replaceability to achieve a certain degree of balance.
Overall, there is still pressure on the gross margin performance of the MCU industry in the second half of the year, which also tests the relationship with customers and the strength of the product technology. Some manufacturers still have a certain degree of support and are relatively in a slow decline, striving to achieve a relatively good position in the tug-of-war.
In addition, as the adjustment of customer inventory levels generally takes two quarters, the corporation expects that MCU manufacturers will face the double pressure of declining unit prices and reduced shipments in the second half of the year, and will have to wait until 2023 before there is an upturn.
