What are the topics covered? There’s Infineon selling a corporate bond worth €500 million and also investing €2 billion to make SiC and GaN power ICs, China’s share of world wafer capacity and the delay in construction of TSMC’s plant in Arizona…
5. China has 16% of world wafer capacity
The new 2022 edition of Global Wafer Capacity shows that China’s has a 16% share of the world’s capacity for fabricating IC wafers, according to Knometa Research. Worldwide IC wafer capacity at the end of 2021 was 21.6 million 200mm-equivalent wafers per month, with fabs in China having the capacity to process 3.5 million. China’s share of capacity has increased one percentage point in each of the last two years and a total of seven points since 2011, when the country accounted for just 9% of all IC wafer capacity.
4. Infineon to invest €2bn in SiC and GaN
Infineon is to invest more than €2 billion building a third module at its fab site in Kulim, Malaysia to make SiC and GaN power ICs. The third module will generate more than >2 billion in annual revenues. The expansion will benefit from the economies of scale already achieved for 200-millimeter manufacturing in Kulim. It will complement Infineon’s leading position in silicon, based on 300-millimeter manufacturing in Villach and Dresden.
The Q2 flash price could spike 5-10% as a result of the contamination at the Yokkaichi and Kitakami fabs of Western Digital/Kioxia, says TrendForce. The contaminated products in this incident are concentrated in 3D NAND (BICS) with an initial estimate of 6.5exabytes (approximately 6,500M GB) affected. According to TrendForce, damaged bits account for 13% of the group’s output in 1Q22 and approximately 3% of the total output for the year.
2. TSMC Arizona plant delayed
Construction of TSMC’s plant in Arizona is taking longer than expected. TSMC had originally planned to start moving equipment into the plant by September this year, but the company is reported to have told suppliers that deadline will be pushed back to February or March 2023. The TSMC project was announced in May 2020, and construction started last June. In Taiwan, TSMC usually reaches the equipment move-in stage in about 15 months, and sometimes in 12 months.
Infineon has sold a corporate bond worth €500 million under its EMTN (European Medium Term Notes) programme. The placement was multiple times over-subscribed. The money raised will go to paying down bank loans taken out to buy Cypress Semiconductor. In June 2020, Infineon put corporate bonds worth €2.9 billion into its EMTN programme.