Extraordinary General Meeting of 2022 on July 20 to deliberate and vote on the proposal to amend the Articles of Incorporation and to register for industrial and commercial changes, etc. As its institutional shareholder, EPIC participated in the EGM and voted in favor of the proposal.
After the meeting, JRS insiders exchanged views with ICube on the progress of the photoresist business and the impact of weak consumer electronics demand on the company.
What progress has been made in the photoresist business?
As a key material for the IC industry, photoresist is developing at a fast pace. TECHCET, a consulting firm, estimates that the global semiconductor photoresist market will reach $2.2 billion in 2022, an increase of about 7% year-on-year. However, the domestic semiconductor photoresist market is still monopolized by TOK, Shin-Etsu Chemical and JSR, which means that there is huge room for growth for local photoresist manufacturers. At the same time, in the past two years, under the uncertainties of epidemic and trade war between China and the United States, the call for “domestic substitution” has become stronger and stronger, which provides excellent development opportunities for China’s photoresist manufacturers. Jingrui Electric Material is also accelerating its layout in this field.
When asked what progress has been made in the field of semiconductor photoresists, insiders pointed out that the company’s subsidiary Suzhou Ruihong KrF lithography machine and supporting equipment has been successfully moved into the laboratory, the current photoresist mass production line and test line have been installed, and the main customers of the pilot progress is also very smooth, no accident before the end of the year will be bulk supply.
In addition, insiders said that Suzhou Ruihong has applied for listing on the New Third Board and entered the innovation layer; at the same time, the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary Ruihong lithium battery and other subjects to Suzhou Ruihong implementation of capital increase, when Suzhou Ruihong can get more sufficient funds to promote the development of photoresist.
It is reported that Suzhou Ruihong mainly produces photoresists, supporting reagents, high-purity chemical reagents and other wet chemicals, used in LED, IC and other related electronic industries, and most of the relevant domestic manufacturers are to maintain business contacts.
It is known to the industry that in the past two years, wafer fabs and IDM factories have opened a tide of expansion in order to cope with the lack of core, which is not a lost opportunity for domestic photoresist manufacturers to import into the supply chain development. In this regard, insiders believe that the old factory in the beginning of the construction is bound to the supply relationship, it is difficult to be replaced, the new factory does give the company more opportunities to import, the company will first help the new factory in the consumables to reduce costs, and at the same time will control the supply security issues.
What is the impact of the weak demand for consumer electronics?
In recent times, the consumer electronics demand is weak, fabs suffer from the news of cutting orders frequently, to smart phones, for example, supply chain sources revealed that Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo and other leading smart phone manufacturers in mainland China have repeatedly lowered this year’s shipment targets, application processors, RF power amplifiers, driver ICs and other suppliers have cut fab orders. As an upstream semiconductor material manufacturer, will Jingrui Electric Material be affected?
Insiders believe that this phenomenon continues will have an impact on the upstream materials manufacturers, fab new capacity will be opened in the last two years, when the fab in order to win more orders will give in the gross margin, and then or will seek to reduce the price pressure transmitted to the upstream suppliers. “But in terms of consumables, whether it is high purity products or photoresist cost ratio is not high, so the bargaining power of consumables manufacturers than the main material manufacturers.” He said.
For Jingrui Electric Material will take what balance measures, the insider said, we will strengthen the docking with customer orders expected, in addition may also be in the customer shipping configuration to make some adjustments, basically the impact will not be particularly large.
Finally, the insider talked about the company’s long-term business layout, a few days ago the company’s subsidiary Hubei Jingrui annual output of 105,000 tons of electronic-grade microelectronic materials a project has been officially put into production, the second phase of the project is also in the planning.
It is understood that Hubei Jingrui is located in Jianghan Salt Industry Park, Qianjiang City, Hubei Province, and is a microelectronic materials project jointly created by Jingrui Electric Material and Hubei Changjiang (Qianjiang) Industrial Development Fund, mainly producing G5 level ultra-high purity electronic chemicals, photoresists and their supporting functional materials, which are widely used in semiconductor, panel and new energy industries.
