Frustrating Semiconductor Industry... "Hampered by Supply Chain Bottlenecks"

Concerns Over Supply Chain Bottlenecks in Earnings Reports from US Micron and Others
Negative Impact on Domestic Semiconductor Companies
Focus on Taiwan TSMC Earnings Announcement Needed

[Asia Economy Reporter Minwoo Lee] The semiconductor sector continues to experience sluggishness. Following the earnings announcement by U.S. memory semiconductor company Micron Technology, analyses suggest that supply chain bottlenecks are negatively impacting the stock prices of domestic semiconductor companies.

On the 11th, Hana Financial Investment provided this analysis regarding the semiconductor sector. Last week (from the 5th to the 8th), the KOSPI, KOSDAQ indices, and the KRX Semiconductor Index fell by -2.1%, -3.1%, and -3.6%, respectively. During the same period, the U.S. Philadelphia Semiconductor Index also dropped by -0.46%, while Taiwan's Taiex Index, which has a large semiconductor sector weighting, only rose by 0.42%. Kim Kyung-min, a researcher at Hana Financial Investment, explained, "Following Micron's earnings announcement, supply growth restrictions caused by supply chain bottlenecks in the same industry adversely affected the stock prices of domestic semiconductor companies with high semiconductor weightings."

In fact, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix recorded weekly returns of -2.23% and -6.0%, respectively. The continued weakness of the KRW-USD exchange rate around the 1,190 won level is also considered negative from the perspective of foreign investors' sentiment and supply-demand due to concerns over foreign exchange losses.

Regarding the U.S. Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, the rise in the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield negatively affected investor sentiment. Although Taiwan's semiconductor sector saw electronic component exports?which account for over 90% of the sector?reach $16.58 billion (approximately 19.8 trillion KRW) in September, a 26.8% increase year-over-year, the weekly return of the market cap representative stock TSMC was only +0.2%. Concerns over China's power shortages influenced the stock prices of Taiwan's semiconductor sector. ASE Technology, which provides semiconductor packaging services in Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province, China, recorded a weekly return of -10.9%.

Attention is expected to focus on the quarterly earnings announcement of Taiwan semiconductor company TSMC on the 14th. Researcher Kim stated, "Micron and Nanya Technology mentioned supply growth restrictions stemming from supply chain bottlenecks during their earnings announcements, presenting conservative bit growth (bit shipment growth rate) forecasts, which negatively impacted investor sentiment. It is anticipated that the TSMC earnings conference call will also receive many inquiries regarding supply chain bottlenecks and the impact of China's power shortages." He added, "Overall, concerns about earnings visibility for the semiconductor sector in Q4 this year and Q1 next year have increased."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.