According to Jibang Consulting survey, with the arrival of the mid-year consumer season in China in the second quarter of 618, and the return of consumer terminal inventory to a healthy level, customers have started to stock up on consumer components or replenish inventory, driving the wafer contract manufacturers to receive urgent orders and significantly improve their production capacity utilization rate compared to the previous quarter. At the same time, the demand for AI servers remains strong, driving the quarter-on-quarter growth of the top ten global wafer contract manufacturers by 9.6% to $32 billion.

In terms of rankings, the top five wafer contract manufacturers remain unchanged in the second quarter, in order: TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor), Samsung, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), UMC (United Microelectronics), and GlobalFoundries. Among the sixth to tenth places, VIS (Vanguard International Semiconductor) benefited from the urgent orders for DDI (Display Driver IC) and the dividend-driven shipment growth of PMIC (Power Management IC), and rose to the eighth place; PSMC (Powerchip Semiconductor), Nexchip (Hefei Crystal Integrated), respectively fell to the ninth and tenth places. The rankings are as follows: HuaHong Group, Tower Semiconductor, VIS, PSMC, and Nexchip.

Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC.US)

Due to Apple entering the stocking cycle and the growth of AI server-related HPC (High-Performance Computing) demand, TSMC's wafer shipments in the second quarter increased by 3.1% compared to the previous quarter, and due to the significant increase in the contribution of high-priced advanced processes, quarterly revenue increased by 10.5% to reach $20.82 billion, with a stable market share of 62.3%.

Samsung

Samsung's wafer contract manufacturing business grew 14.2% in the second quarter, driven by Apple iPhone new machine stocking and related IC demand such as Qualcomm 5/4nm 5G modem, 28/22nm OLED DDI, with quarterly revenue reaching $3.83 billion, ranking second with a stable market share of 11.5%.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation(00981)

SMIC's sales in the second quarter were driven by China's 618 sales season, with strong demand for consumer terminal peripheral ICs. Wafer shipments in the second quarter increased by 17.7% and quarterly revenue increased by 8.6% to reach $1.9 billion, with a market share of 5.7%, ranking third.

United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC.US)

In the second quarter, UMC also received support from some urgent orders during the mid-year consumer season, especially for TV-related ICs, and was driven by low-end MCUs (microcontrollers) required for consumer electronics. The wafer shipments increased slightly by 2.6% and quarterly revenue grew by 1.1% to reach $1.76 billion, with a market share of 5.3%, ranking fourth.

GlobalFoundries

GlobalFoundries' wafer shipments improved in the second quarter compared to the previous quarter. Despite the offset by some decline in ASP (average selling price), the revenue still increased slightly by 5.4% to reach $1.63 billion, with a market share of 4.9%, ranking fifth.

Hua Hong Holding Group (HuaHong Group)

HuaHong Group was affected by the urgent order effect during the mid-year promotion season, and both capacity utilization and shipment performance increased compared to the previous quarter, with a 5.1% increase in quarterly revenue, reaching $0.71 billion, and a market share of 2.1%, ranking sixth.

Tower Semiconductor

Tower's second quarter benefited from improvements in overall wafer shipments and product mix, with a 7.3% increase in quarterly revenue, reaching $0.35 billion, and a market share of 1.1%, ranking seventh.

Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS)

In the second quarter of VIS, driven by urgent orders and increased PMIC customers during the 618 consumer season, the capacity utilization rate improved significantly compared to the previous quarter, with a 19% increase in wafer shipments and an 11.6% increase in quarterly revenue, reaching $0.34 billion, with a market share of 1%, surpassing PSMC and Nexchip to rank eighth.

Powerchip Technology Corp (PSMC)

PSMC's memory business is gradually recovering, while there is no significant improvement in logic chip manufacturing in the second quarter, with a slight 1.2% increase in quarterly revenue, reaching $0.32 billion, and a market share of 1%, ranking ninth.

Hefei Crystal Microelectronics (Nexchip)

Nexchip's revenue in the second quarter was $0.3 billion, a slight quarterly decrease of about 3.2% from the previous quarter, with a market share of 0.9% ranking tenth.

It is worth noting that in the third quarter of 2023, IFS (Intel Foundry Service), which once ranked ninth in the foundry rankings, redefined its revenue from the first quarter of this year. The first and second quarter revenues reached $4.4 billion and $4.3 billion, respectively. However, the operating profit margins were 57% and 66% in the two quarters, respectively. Since 98-99% of the revenue comes from internal sources, with only about 1% from external customer revenue (selling equipment materials and packaging testing services), if only evaluating revenue from external customers, IFS has not yet entered the top ten wafer foundry rankings this quarter.

Jibang Consulting pointed out that in the third quarter, as we enter the traditional stocking season, although the global economic outlook remains uncertain and suppresses consumer confidence, the release of new smartphones and PC/NB products in the second half of the year will still drive a certain level of demand for main chips (SoC) and peripheral ICs. In addition, the demand related to AI servers and HPC is in a high-growth phase, and it is expected that the related demand will continue until the end of the year, and even some advanced process orders have been extended to the whole of 2025, becoming a key driving force to support the growth of output value in 2024. TrendForce Jibang Consulting expects that due to the improvement of capacity utilization of advanced and mature processes in the third quarter, the global top ten wafer foundry output value is expected to further increase, and the quarterly growth rate is expected to be on par with the second quarter.