핵심요약

• 4분기 매출 30억 달러, 전년 대비 36.1% 성장
• 순이익 4억 7,920만 달러 달성 (세 배 가까이 증가)
• 웨이퍼 선적량 290만 8인치 환산량 (전분기 대비 14% 증가)
• AI 주변 부문 성장률 40% 예상
• 중국이 매출의 90%를 차지

도입

본 기사는 미국 수출 통제라는 지정학적 환경 속에서 중국 파운드리(SMIC)가 AI 칩 시장을 어떻게 공략하고 있는지 분석합니다. 이는 단순한 재무 성과를 넘어, 글로벌 반도체 공급망의 재편과 기술 패권 경쟁이 어떻게 실제 시장 가격 및 고객 확보 전략에 영향을 미치는지를 보여줍니다. 투자자들은 이 움직임을 통해 향후 중국 반도체 산업의 성장 잠재력과 지정학적 리스크를 동시에 평가해야 합니다.

본문 1: 재무 성과와 시장 지위

SMIC는 첫 분기에 매출 30억 달러를 기록하며 전년 대비 36.1%의 높은 성장을 달성했습니다. 이는 매출 성장률 가이던스(14%~16%)를 상회하는 실적이며, 특히 순이익이 4억 7,920만 달러로 세 배 가까이 증가한 점은 회사의 운영 효율성과 시장 내 입지가 강화되었음을 시사합니다. 웨이퍼 선적량은 290만 8인치 환산량으로 분기별 14% 증가하며 수요에 대응하고 있음을 보여줍니다. 그러나 중국이 매출의 90%를 차지하고 있다는 점은, 글로벌 공급망의 불확실성이 SMIC의 성장에 직접적인 영향을 미치고 있음을 의미합니다. 이는 중국 내 수요와 공급의 균형을 유지하는 것이 향후 성장의 핵심 과제가 될 것임을 의미합니다.

본문 2: 수요의 변화와 가격 협상 전략

SMIC의 성장은 단순히 GPU 수요에 국한되지 않고, CPU 및 GPU를 제외한 로직 IC, BCD 전력 관리 부품, 광학 트랜시버 구성 요소 등 AI 주변 부품의 수요 증가에서 비롯되었습니다. AI 주변 부문의 성장률은 분기별 40%로 예상되어, SMIC가 고부가가치 AI 관련 제품군에서 경쟁 우위를 확보하고 있음을 보여줍니다. 이러한 수요 변화는 SMIC에게 가격 협상력을 부여하며, 회사 측은 고객과의 가격 협상을 통해 더 공정한 가격을 요구하고 있습니다. 이는 공급자로서의 지위를 강화하고, 제한된 자원(웨이퍼)에 대한 통제력을 확보하려는 전략으로 해석됩니다.

본문 3: 공급 과잉과 장기적 가격 전략

SMIC는 과거에 새로운 중국 생산 능력에 맞서 시장 점유율을 방어하기 위해 성숙 노드 가격을 할인하는 전략을 사용해 왔습니다. 그러나 이제는 공급 과잉 상황에서 2026년 12월에 웨이퍼 가격을 약 10% 인상하는 등 가격 인상 전략으로 전환하고 있습니다. 이는 단기적인 시장 점유율 방어에서 장기적인 가격 결정력을 확보하려는 움직임으로 보입니다. 이러한 가격 정책의 성공 여부는 글로벌 AI 칩 시장의 장기적인 수요 흐름과 미국 제재의 지속성에 달려 있으며, 이는 향후 SMIC의 수익성과 시장 지배력에 중대한 영향을 미칠 것입니다.

결론

SMIC는 강력한 재무 성과와 AI 주변 부품으로의 포트폴리오 전환을 통해 단기적인 성장을 달성했습니다. 그러나 향후 성장은 미국 제재 환경과 웨이퍼 가격 협상에서 확보하는 가격 결정력에 크게 의존할 것입니다. 투자자들은 중국 파운드리가 글로벌 AI 공급망에서 차지하는 역할과, SMIC가 확보하는 고부가가치 시장에서의 가격 협상 능력을 핵심적인 관점에서 지속적으로 모니터링해야 할 것입니다. 특히 웨이퍼 가격 인상 전략이 시장에 미치는 파급 효과에 주목할 필요가 있습니다.

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원문 링크: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMi2AFBVV95cUxNSDhqenV6RGIyRXMwcXppeHlneFpIRG8tTS1kVlJicXpmTWt3Q0hWRVhaOFZURUIwRU1lSDJMVll1bVhOSWRPcDR0OHlsdnY5b0VwNE15dGRnYVpIZlJ6M0JKNmc3cFBwd3hfSlFWX2FETTBJSURCZ0NyMjlaMVBFN1p0cmlnbkc1LUFzeW8zQTRqbUdRVXFnUEN6Sk5VbXpncGx0YjVSeC1Gc3AxZE9WOUs3UTc2Tk1yNUhLQWNrd0NGS1BwaTNCZG5NNnVpaTZ2TzFtMVZNZUs?oc=5

SMIC posts record $3B quarter and hikes wafer prices — US sanctions hand Chinese foundry a captive AI market - Tom's Hardware

SMIC posted its first $3 billion quarter earlier this month, with revenue up 36.1% year on year, net profit nearly tripling to $479.2 million. Co-CEO Zhao Haijun told analysts the next day that the Shanghai foundry will charge more for wafers processed in the third quarter after price negotiations concluded in the first. Utilization hit 93.7% against demand Zhao said SMIC can't fully meet, driven by Chinese AI data center buildouts that U.S. export controls have cut off from TSMC and Samsung at the leading edge. "Since there's still a big gap between industry-leading wafer prices and SMIC's current prices, we need to negotiate with customers for fairer pricing," Zhao said on the call.

The quarter blew SMIC's own out of the water on every front. The company had guided to 14% to 16% sequential revenue growth and a 20% to 22% gross margin; it delivered 20% growth to $3.01 billion and a 25.3% margin, up from 20.1% in Q1. Wafer shipments rose 14% quarter-on-quarter to 2.9 million 8-inch equivalents, blended selling prices climbed 5.7%, and Q3 guidance calls for a 26% to 28% gross margin. China accounted for 90% of revenue.

Demand isn’t coming from GPUs, however, with Zhao commenting that the surge came mostly from AI chips other than CPUs and GPUs, such as logic ICs, BCD power-management parts, and optical transceiver components, all in short supply. Meanwhile, growth in SMIC’s AI peripheral segment is expected to be around 40% for the quarter, while industrial and automotive chips rose to 16.5% of wafer revenue from 10.6% a year earlier.

SMIC's utilization sat at 68.1% in the first quarter of 2023 and averaged 75% that year as net profit fell more than 60% and gross margin dropped 16.4 points to 21.9%. As late as early 2025, it was reported that SMIC and Hua Hong were cutting mature-node prices to defend share against a wall of new Chinese capacity. The company that spent 2023 and 2024 discounting into overcapacity spent 2026 raising prices by around 10% in December, negotiating targeted increases in capacity-constrained segments in February, and applying another round to Q3 wafers.

Export controls did most of the work, with Washington’s restrictions keeping China's AI accelerator demand away from TSMC. Beijing has been redirecting that demand inward: the government wants 70% of silicon wafers sourced domestically this year, and a Bloomberg Intelligence survey of 60 Chinese tech executives in June found firms plan to spend 46% of their AI accelerator budgets on local chips over the next 12 months, up from 30% now. SMIC is the only Chinese foundry that mass-produces 7nm-class logic, which makes it the sole domestic route to silicon for Huawei's Ascend line and Cambricon's accelerators. A protected buyer pool, along with a mandated shift to domestic supply and a single qualified supplier at the leading edge, produces a textbook seller's market.

Hua Hong, China's second-largest foundry, reported utilization of 102.8% in the same week, with record revenue of $717.5 million, up 26.8% year on year. TrendForce data shows foundry prices across China rose 5% to 15% between Q1 and Q2, with a third round of increases being prepared for the second half. TSMC is reportedly raising prices across all its advanced nodes too, so SMIC's hikes track a global trend, but SMIC is doing it from a captive position TSMC doesn't have: its customers have no other choice.

China's AI chip designers post record first halves

Cambricon's first-half revenue rose 108% to 6 billion yuan (c. $890 million) with net profit up 122.6% to 2.3 billion yuan, per its Shanghai Stock Exchange filing reported by the South China Morning Post . Moore Threads grew first-half revenue 147% to 1.74 billion yuan and cut its net loss by 96%, and Biren projected first-half revenue growth of more than 1,850% off a small base ahead of a Hong Kong IPO. Memory maker CXMT raised $8.6 billion in Shanghai's biggest-ever semiconductor listing last month and surged 466% on debut to become the most valuable company on any mainland exchange. Every one of these firms sits on the U.S. Entity List or depends on suppliers that do, and every one just posted record or near-record numbers.

Beijing had until recently been blocking Chinese imports of U.S. accelerators. The US approved around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia's H200 in May, but China had been blocking the purchases to protect domestic suppliers. Under Secretary of Commerce Jeffrey Kessler told a congressional hearing on July 14 that "very few" H200s had actually shipped. Officials have relented as of August 19, with ByteDance and Tencent each having received around 10,000 H200 chips, the first meaningful deliveries since the U.S. approved around 10 Chinese firms as buyers.

Some 20,000 delivered accelerators against Huawei's target of 600,000 Ascend 910Cs this year leaves Chinese cloud spending, which Goldman Sachs pegs at roughly $102 billion for 2026 in combined AI capex across Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and Baidu, landing overwhelmingly on domestic silicon.

SMIC's 7nm yields and the HBM shortage

SMIC's leading-edge economics remain brutal, however, with industry sources cited by the Financial Times putting SMIC's 5nm and 7nm prices 40% to 50% above TSMC's with yields of less than a third, a consequence of running multi-patterned DUV on nodes designed for EUV . The wafers SMIC is repricing are overwhelmingly mature-node parts, where its cost position is sound; the advanced capacity that feeds Ascend production stays yield-limited and expensive per good die regardless.

Memory, not logic, caps accelerator output anyway, and SemiAnalysis estimates Huawei has been drawing down a stockpile of roughly 13 million Samsung HBM stacks acquired before the late-2024 controls, and domestic HBM from CXMT will cover only a fraction of 2026 Ascend targets .

SMIC's own profit surge also comes with a glaring asterisk: CFO Wu Junfeng said the near-tripling was boosted by a one-time gain from a subsidiary. Demand for its silicon rests largely on policy rather than proven end markets, with an analyst tally cited by Asia Times putting China's top 11 listed chip firms at a combined average of roughly 122 times projected 2026 earnings.

Source: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMi2AFBVV95cUxNSDhqenV6RGIyRXMwcXppeHlneFpIRG8tTS1kVlJicXpmTWt3Q0hWRVhaOFZURUIwRU1lSDJMVll1bVhOSWRPcDR0OHlsdnY5b0VwNE15dGRnYVpIZlJ6M0JKNmc3cFBwd3hfSlFWX2FETTBJSURCZ0NyMjlaMVBFN1p0cmlnbkc1LUFzeW8zQTRqbUdRVXFnUEN6Sk5VbXpncGx0YjVSeC1Gc3AxZE9WOUs3UTc2Tk1yNUhLQWNrd0NGS1BwaTNCZG5NNnVpaTZ2TzFtMVZNZUs?oc=5