News Briefing

SEMI released the latest quarterly global fab forecast report on September 28. This year, the total global fab equipment spending will be revised down to US$99 billion, a downward revision of about 9%. It is still up 10% and hit a record highut compared with last year. .As for next year, global fab equipment spending is forecast to decline slightly by 2% to about $97 billion.

Impact Analysis
Investment in fab equipment is a leading indicator of global economic sentiment. Affected by high inflation, the shrinking consumer market and rising component inventories have cooled the terminal demand of the electronics industry. In addition, the United States continues to impose sanctions on mainland China, as well as the lack of work and materials, and the war between Russia and Ukraine, which has extended the delivery time of semiconductor equipment. The average lead time has been extended from 3 months to 12 months. The above factors all affect the fab to adjust its capital expenditure and expansion plans this year. Although SEMI's expenditure forecast for next year will decline slightly, it is still high over the years in terms of total amount, so it should be interpreted that the semiconductor industry will continue to grow next year, but the growth rate is not as good as the prosperity of the past two years.

From regional perspective, Taiwan is the region with the highest wafer equipment spending in 2022, reaching US$30 billion, but lower than the estimated value at the beginning of the year, mainly because TSMC delayed some capital expenditures to 2023. The second largest region in spending was South Korea, which amounted to US$22.2 billion, and was revised down to expand production plans due to the continued decline in memory prices. China, the third-largest region for equipment spending at $20 billion, has ramped up spending as manufacturers rush to secure equipment supplies before U.S. sanctions take effect. In addition, the Europe/Middle East region has benefited from Intel. In response to the EU's chip bill and balancing its own global supply chain capabilities, Intel is actively strengthening local wafer manufacturing capabilities, making the European/Middle East region's spending in 2022 hit a record high of $6.6 billion, This is an increase of 141% over last year.