LED package industry is still warming up the pressure on chip companies

“In the past week, the company’s orders have significantly increased.” Wang Yuchun, chief executive of Ruifeng Photonics, which specializes in LED packaging products, sighs with reporters. The LED market is changing rapidly. The overall situation of the industry from the third quarter of last year until the end of February of this year was bad, but it entered. Only a short week in March, the industry has clearly recovered. The industry is also optimistic about the future trend of the LED industry. It is expected that the performance of the industry in the second half of the year will be better than the first half.

The packaging industry is clearly warmer and Wang Yuchun said, “The LED packaging industry has been developing very well until the first half of last year, but by the third quarter of last year, the entire industry has changed rapidly and the situation in the fourth quarter has been even worse. After the Spring Festival this year, everyone I feel that it was no fun. In late February, agencies came to the company to investigate the situation. It was said that the situation of the packaging companies in Taiwan was improving and asked about the company's situation. At that time, it did not feel any change, but from January to March, the company’s orders increased significantly and the industry picked up. Obviously, at the same time, last year's LED chip manufacturers in the upper reaches of the price reduction, the phenomenon of mass sales and inventory clearance has disappeared, the chip prices have gradually stabilized, the company did not have to bargain purchase of chips.”

Wang Yuchun further stated that the driving up of orders for companies has not only the demand from the LED backlight source, but also the demand from the LED lighting field. Ruifeng Optoelectronics has a certain industry representation.

An analyst who did not wish to be named told reporters that as early as February, the LED industry had seen a warming signal and it was clearly warming up in March. First, orders for LED chips and packaging manufacturers in the Taiwan region improved, and the utilization rate of production increased. Through regional transmission, the trend of LED companies in the Mainland has gradually improved. The increase in shipments of large-size backlight display screens has significantly increased the demand for LED-related products.

According to the latest news, LED makers in Taiwan, such as Jingyuan, Yiguang, Dongbei and Yuyuan, will announce their revenue in February this week. The industry expects that with the significant increase in demand for panel backlights and LED lighting, LED makers in Taiwan will generally increase their revenue by 10% to 20% in February and are expected to rise month-on-month to the third quarter from February. Among them, Yuen-Yuan announced February revenue of NT$320 million (approximately RMB 68.45 million), an increase of approximately 18% from January. The company said that the revenue growth mainly comes from the increase in orders for large-size backlight sources, while the small- and medium-sized parts also rebounded slightly. It is expected that the demand for LED lighting will also gradually pick up.

The pressure of chip companies is still relatively warmer than that of the midstream packaging industry. A person listed on an LED chip company frankly stated that after the first two years of substantial expansion, “the current pressure on chip companies will be slightly greater.”

The 2011 annual reports of listed companies have also revealed that the inventory of LED chip companies at the end of last year all increased significantly compared to the beginning of the year. For example, the inventory of Sanan Optoelectronics (600703) as of the end of 2011 was 919 million yuan, although there were more The decrease was still an increase of 195.88% compared with 3.1 billion yuan at the beginning of the year. Silan Micro (600460) had a stock of 483 million yuan at the end of 2011, an increase of 53.91% from the beginning of the year.

According to the above analysts, the LED packaging business is expected to have a positive effect on the upstream chip business, but based on the structural imbalance between supply and demand caused by the mad expansion of chip companies in the previous two years, he expects the supply and demand gap in the chip sector to be difficult to Fundamentally improved, and expressed that it is not optimistic about the overall performance of the upper reaches of the LED industry.

In addition, the above-mentioned chip company listed that although the current chip prices gradually stabilized, but the chip price is a long-term trend, the decline in product gross margin will also be an inevitable trend. This has been the most direct response in the annual reports of listed companies. Silan Micro's gross profit rate of LED products was 35.65%, a decrease of 12.41 percentage points from the previous year. At the same time, due to the decline in gross profit margin, the profit margin of Sanan Optoelectronics chip sales business decreased by 43.47% year-on-year.

However, the person also said that the chip prices fell, the product cost-effective increase, and ultimately will in exchange for a larger market space. At present, the space for domestic LED chip companies to compete is relatively small, especially in lighting applications, mainly rely on financial investment and financial subsidies, mainly in engineering lighting.

On the whole, the obvious recovery in orders from the packaging industry has led LED companies to be optimistic about the industry's annual trend. Wang Yuchun expects that the situation in the second half of the year should be better than in the first half of the year. His views have been recognized by many people in the industry. The industry is also generally expected to benefit from the rebound in demand for LED backlights and steady growth in the demand for LED lighting, at the national policy level. With the promotion of investment and financial subsidies, the industry will show a trend of low and high growth for the whole year.