On January 16, Jiang Shangyi, vice chairman of SMIC, said at the second annual conference of SMIC that "the semiconductor application market has experienced significant changes. With the restructuring of the chip supply chain, different applications need different chips, and the demand for chips has become diversified."
On November 16, 2020, SMIC released its Q3 quarterly financial report for 2020, presenting a good performance. According to the financial report, the operating revenue in the first three quarters was 20.8 billion yuan, a 30.2% increase year-on-year; the gross profit was USD 262 million, increasing 5.4% from USD 249 million in the second quarter of 2020 and 54.3% from USD 170 million in the third quarter of 2019. The gross margin in the third quarter of 2020 was 24.2%, compared with 26.5% in the second quarter of 2020 and 20.8% in the third quarter of 2019.
It is worth mentioning that, thanks to the outbreak of 14nm technology, SMIC's revenue in Q3 2020 exceeded USD 1 billion for the first time, reaching a record high. Moreover, the utilization rate of production capacity reached 97.8%, and the proportion of advanced technology increased rapidly. The proportion of 14 / 28nm technology reached 14.6%, which was 9.1% in the last quarter and 4.3% in the same period from the previous year.
Nevertheless, under the pressure of US import and export, the prohibition of investment in Chinese enterprises and other relevant policies, the SMIC has recently been in constant trouble. For example, on December 31, 2020, SMIC issued a personnel change announcement on the Hong Kong stock exchange, announcing that Dr. Cong Jingsheng, the independent non-executive director of SMIC, resigned as the third category of independent non-executive director of the company, given the recent concerns of the United States about the company. The change took effect from December 31, 2020. Cong Jingsheng's resignation will cause the number of independent non-executive directors of the company to be lower than the requirements of relevant regulations.