半导体行业深度报告海外观察系列十：从美光破净看存储行业投资机会

Equity Research·Industry Research·Semiconductor Semiconductor Industry Research 1 / 6 东吴证券（香港） 请务必阅读正文之后的免责声明部分 [Table_Main] Investment opportunities in the storage industry as Micron’s PB ratio fell below one Outperform (Maintain) Key words: # reversal effect Investment Thesis ◼ Entering the second half of a downward cycle, the storage industry is likely to reach an inflection point within this year. In 2022, the market size of global storage chip approximated to USD133.4bn, accounting for ~23% of the entire integrated circuit market. Storage chips are highly standardized and easily substituted, exhibiting commodity attributes. Therefore, their price changes can serve as an indicator for the semiconductor industry's business cycle. As mainstream products, DRAM and NAND Flash have a cyclical fluctuation period of 3-4 years. The last peak of the industry's prosperity was in 21H2-22H1, and currently it is experiencing a downward cycle. We expect the industry to recover and resume growth within 2023. ◼ With demand still increasing, we suggest focusing on investment opportunities from consumption recovery, server, and computing power improvement. Smartphones, servers, and PCs are the three major end-user demand drivers for storage industry, accounting for ~42%/~38%/<20% of DRAM's bit demand respectively. The overall shipments of smartphones and PCs have peaked, but there is still room for improvement in individual device capacity. Servers benefit from the demand for increased computing power, are expected to continue their growth thanks to emerging downstream applications such as ChatGPT. The development of the smart automotive industry should also contribute to high growth rates. ◼ With the slow-down of supply expansion, we suggest paying attention to changes in capital expenditure of major overseas manufacturers. For DRAM in 2021, Samsung (43%), Hynix (28%), Micron (23%) accounted for approximately 94% of the market share (CR3≈94%). As for NAND, competitive landscape is relatively dispersed, with Samsung (34%), Kioxia (19%), and WDC (14%) accounting for approximately 67% of the market share (CR3≈67%). Since 2006, the capital expenditures of Micron, Hynix, Samsung have continued to grow with fluctuations. At the end of 2022, Micron announced a significant reduction of capital expenditure by 30% for 2023, while Hynix planned to reduce 70%-80%. As Samsung is the remaining variable and a core focus of attention, its production cuts are expected to optimize the supply-demand structure. ◼ Micron Review: the "ASP - Revenue - Gross Margin - Stock Price" transmission behind storage investment. Established in 1978, Micron has been an important driver of technological progress in the storage industry. Through acquisitions in its history, the company has narrowed the gap with Samsung in the DRAM field and has achieved rapid growth by deploying new 3D NAND technologies. In FY2022, Micron's revenues from DRAM and NAND were USD22.39bn and U