On the 28th, the CEO of chip maker STMicroelectronics said that due to the multiple blows to the chip manufacturing industry due to factors such as the new crown epidemic and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, semiconductor demand is expected to exceed STMicroelectronics capacity for the rest of this year. .

The report said that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and a new round of anti-epidemic blockade measures have affected ST's larger peers, such as Texas Instruments. This has fueled concerns about ST's ability to meet the targets announced earlier.

"Our sales and operating plans show that our capacity is fully saturated for the remaining year," STMicroelectronics CEO Jean-Marc Chery told analysts on a conference call.

In the past quarter, ST's factory in Shenzhen, China, lost two weeks of production due to the lockdown, Chery said. To reduce the impact of the lockdown, the company has moved some production to other factories to help its microcontroller sales beat market expectations.

In addition, Chery highlighted that its record orders for chips are already 30% to 40% higher than the group's capacity, with its biggest customers including iPhone maker Apple and electric car maker Tesla.

STMicroelectronics said its first-quarter sales were just above its target of $3.55 billion, with a gross margin of 46.7%, beating the average estimate of $3.49 billion by seven analysts in Refinitiv.

Diluted earnings per share for the period came in at $0.79, beating the average Refinitiv analyst estimate of 71 cents per share.

STMicroelectronics expects its 2022 revenue to be between $14.8 billion and $15.3 billion, and expects second-quarter net income of about $3.75 billion, up 5.8% from the first quarter.

Samsung: Shortages may continue in the second half of the year

According to the latest foreign media reports, Samsung Electronics predicted on Thursday that demand for server chips will be relatively stable in the second half of this year, but the shortage of parts is expected to continue in the second half of this year.

According to the report, Samsung Electronics recorded a record 14.1 trillion won ($11.1 billion) in operating profit in the first quarter of this year, boosted by strong demand for high-margin memory chips in data centers, with a quarterly profit growth of 51 percent.

Profit from its chip business rose to 8.45 trillion won ($6.644 billion), boosted by record server chip sales, more than double the 3.36 trillion won ($2.642 billion) in the same period last year; It was also the most profitable quarter for Samsung's chip business since 2018.

The South Korean tech giant expects chip demand from server customers to remain relatively stable in the second quarter, and expects the smartphone market to continue growing in the second half. However, component shortages and undercapacity at its chip contract manufacturing plants are expected to continue.