According to Taiwan’s Central News Agency, today, wafer foundry UMC said that market demand has declined significantly and 2023 is a challenging year.
UMC said that due to the impact of inventory adjustment in the semiconductor industry, capacity utilization will drop to 90% in the fourth quarter, and wafer shipments will decrease by about 10%, but the average selling price of products will remain flat compared to the third quarter.
Looking ahead, UMC noted that it will provide its view on capacity utilization and quotation status quarter by quarter, and will not comment on next year’s quotation trend for now. Due to the obvious decline in market demand, 2023 is expected to be a challenging year.
UMC said that capacity utilization and quotes have a linkage relationship, the current customers are mostly focused on de-stocking operations, the reduction of quotes to enhance capacity utilization should be of limited benefit.
In addition, the corporation pointed out that UMC’s 12-inch wafer demand is still solid, and the overall capacity utilization rate in the off-season is still expected to remain above 85% level. Benefit from IDM factories continuing to outsource production, the UMC still hot demand.
