Souljabooii, the more you promote, the more it drops, obviously the market doesn't buy your view. It doesn't care. The market is forward looking. Cut loss to preserve your capital.
From Souljabooii's posts, I can see that he is merely expressing and sharing his views of HDD future based on his research which I found very informative. Readers are free to draw their own judgement and why the fuss??
TSMC just guided their Capex will be 28-32 billion USD in this year compared to ~30 billion USD last year. Most of their capex will be used to expand their AI related segment. The current bottleneck of Nvidia AI accelerator is the advanced packaging that is used to package the HBM DRAM by using CoWos technique (2.5D packaging). Lots of OSAT, even foundaries like TSMC, Samsung and Intel are expanding their advanced packaging factories. https://investor.tsmc.com/english/quarterly-results/2023/q4
I have no idea why the stock plunged from RM1.94 to the current price. But I guess the real reason behind the plunge is due to the sluggishness of the Q4'23 earnings report. Institutions maybe already access the QR report and decided to dump the shares.
Wait... You mean TSMC wants to build the equipment by themselves? Do they have the capability? Why Apple chose to use ICs from other companies instead of building all by themselves?
Do you really understand how difficult it is to build an equipment like the ASML EUV? Why US ban China from buying high end EUV from ASML? Why AMAT, KLA, LAM and etc are still there but not slaughtered by TSMC expansion?
Control cost is by having a lot of suppliers. The more they are, the cheaper it will be the equipment. FYI, companies like ASML has no competitors in their league. The price of a EUV can go up to 500 million USD just for one equipment. This industry is not a "commodity" or any "low barrier to entry industry". The amount of patents and intellectual properties are insane and I don't think in any near future, TSMC will be able to build their own equipment, especially the EUV machine.
thanks for your sharing Souljabo, more than 76% of its revenue is generated from the HDD segment as per AR2023, appreciate if you could shed some lights how TSMC Capex would have spillover effect to precision maker like Dufu, no doubt data center expansion has to support growth in AI & others which will benefit Dufu.
TSMC is just a benchmark. It shows that the semicon industry is reviving again. The capex guided by TSMC is mainly to expand their manufacturing capacities for AI chips (Nvidia, AMD and etc). Therefore, we can expect that the money will be channelled to a lot of front-end to back-end (CoWos capacity) equipment manufacturers. The equipment manufacturers will look for precision metal players to manufacture the modules (precision parts). Other than TSMC, big players like ASE and Amkor are also expanding to provide advanced packaging (2.5D) services. This year will be a HUAT year for all the semicon players (not so huat for automotive)... Logic, Memory, Analog, Sensors... The market will be hotter once Intel introduces their AI PC...
Nearline HDD is mainly used in the conventional data center. AI data center has a lot of issues to solve, power is one of them. FYI, GPU is very power intensive. Hence, you will see headlines like Microsoft is proposing to use nuclear energy for their AI data center and etc... In general HDD uses more power than NAND flash (SSD), so I don't think it will be the main storage that will be used in the AI data center. It will be benefitted by the trend, because generative AI will create a lot of new contents. The new contents have to be stored, and nearline HDD is the most economical way to store these data. This is guided by Seagate in their earnings call, I don't have the details and firm answer for this.
What happened after 1nm and they cannot go lower.. They will start stacking chips.. this is where advanced packaging is important for future. And TSMC definitely will build their own advanced packaging factories.
I would say the fabless players will look for more than one supplier... NO ONE WILL WISH TO RELY 100% on TSMC. They will place order with other OSAT players like ASE/AMKOR. No doubt that TSMC will further expand their advance packaging capacities, but do they wish to take orders from chips that are 10nm and below? Keep in mind that the margin is so low, and saturated with China players in this region...
Some suppliers went bust during this HDD recession. WDC and STX mentioned that this recession hurt their supply chain gao gao. Hence, I am very confident that WDC and STX will not terminate their contracts with Dufu. A good relationship with its customer is also a moat.
If the hyperscaler is asking for more HDD, WDC and STX also mentioned there is a supply issue due to unhealthy supply chain. Keep in mind that Toyota once shut down their factory due to insufficient disk space. This shows how important is a 'cheap but large capacity storage devices'.
All the local OSAT players are getting more orders from China. Customers are looking for a more resilient supply chain instead of focusing all their resources in China. This will benefit our local OSAT players, as well as equipment and precision metal players.
The semiconductor industry is definitely going to revive in this second half of this year. There is no turning back, we all are using more digital devices.
HDD is now on the verge of entering a new phase of growth, thanks to breakthrough technology aimed at increasing its capacity. This technology is the ultimate form of energy-assisted recording aimed at improving recording density, known as Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR). Seagate Technology in the United States plans to start mass production of 3.5-inch HDDs for data centers using HAMR by the end of March 2024. The recording capacity per disk (per platter) is 3TB, and they have developed a product with a capacity of 30TB, named Exos Mozaic 3+, by incorporating 10 disks.
Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) is a groundbreaking technology designed to significantly increase the storage capacity of hard disk drives (HDDs). By using a laser to temporarily heat a small area of the disk, HAMR enables the magnetic recording of data on much smaller regions than was previously possible, leading to a dramatic increase in data density. This technology allows for the potential creation of HDDs with capacities far exceeding current limits, aiming towards drives with 20TB of storage and beyond, with projections reaching up to 100TB by around 2030. HAMR technology operates by focusing a laser's heat on the disk surface, which reduces the coercivity of the material, making it more susceptible to magnetic changes. Once the area cools down, the data is securely stored with high fidelity. Despite the advanced nature of this technology, it is designed to be compatible with existing HDD form factors, ensuring that it can be integrated into current systems without necessitating significant changes to hardware configurations. This compatibility extends to the anticipated running costs of HAMR drives, which are not expected to be significantly higher than those of traditional HDDs, as the laser used in HAMR requires only a small amount of power. The development of HAMR technology by companies like Seagate marks a significant milestone in data storage technology, aiming to meet the growing demand for higher capacity storage solutions in data centers and other applications where massive data storage is essential.
Despite the decreasing cost of SSD storage, HDDs are expected to remain the preferred option for mass storage in data centers for the foreseeable future due to their capacity advantages. Reflecting on the evolution of storage capacities, Seagate's progress is noteworthy, considering they reached a milestone of 16 terabytes only in 2018, and are now poised to double that capacity.
Last Friday sell off was to price in the poor performance of its peers. Dufu is quite unique in the supply chain, its metal stamping division takes semiconductor parts, automotive, life sciences and etc. But its main product is the spacer ring, which I anticipate the recovery has definitely started since January of this year.
And then in the HDD business, of course, we saw the big hyperscale players in the U.S. coming back more robust conversations there. We saw good growth in China. We had over 100% sequential growth in China in the HDD business. So we came into the quarter with a lot of strength and a lot of momentum in the business. which brings us to the current quarter. I'll give a little bit of an update on what the environment looks like right now.
I think from when we guided, the business is stronger than that at this point. If we look at the guidance ranges, we provided, we expect to be near the high end of guidance of the range we provided. But each business is performing better from a profitability point of view. Couple of points of additional gross margin in each business. All the rest of the numbers are within guidance ranges. So we expect this quarter, we expect on an EPS basis to exceed the high end of our guidance range.
And then in the HDD business, of course, we saw the big hyperscale players in the U.S. coming back more robust conversations there. We saw good growth in China. We had over 100% sequential growth in China in the HDD business. So we came into the quarter with a lot of strength and a lot of momentum in the business. which brings us to the current quarter. I'll give a little bit of an update on what the environment looks like right now.
I think from when we guided, the business is stronger than that at this point. If we look at the guidance ranges, we provided, we expect to be near the high end of guidance of the range we provided. But each business is performing better from a profitability point of view. Couple of points of additional gross margin in each business. All the rest of the numbers are within guidance ranges. So we expect this quarter, we expect on an EPS basis to exceed the high end of our guidance range.
Post a Comment
People who like this
New Topic
You should check in on some of those fields below.
Title
Category
Comment
Confirmation
Click Confirm to delete this Forum Thread and all the associated comments.
Introducing MY's First IPO Fund for Sophisticated Investors!
MQ Chat
New Update. Discover investment communities that resonate with your ideas
MQ Trader
M & A Value Partners IPO Equity Fund has been launched - Targeted 13% Return p.a
Latest Videos
0:17
New IPO: The onshore and offshore support services provider for the O&G industry, Steel Hawk Bhd aims to list on the Ace Market!
MQ Trader 2938 views | 2 d ago
0:17
New IPO: The largest mini-market player and a leading groceries retailer in Malaysia, 99 Speed Mart Retail Holdings Bhd aims to list on the Main Market!
This book is the result of the author's many years of experience and observation throughout his 26 years in the stockbroking industry. It was written for general public to learn to invest based on facts and not on fantasies or hearsay....
gooman
743 posts
Posted by gooman > 2024-02-13 10:58 | Report Abuse
stock market reflects a view of the economy six months in advance,