Fudan Microelectronics: Net profit in 2021 increased by 287.2% year-on-year to 514 million yuan

On the evening of March 20, according to the annual report released by Fudan Microelectronics, the company achieved operating income of 2.577 billion yuan in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 52.42%; net profit of 514 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 287.20%. Basic earnings per share was 0.69 yuan. The company plans to pay a cash dividend of 0.65 yuan (including tax) for every 10 shares.

According to the company, the performance growth was mainly caused by the following factors: (1) the demand for integrated circuit downstream application market was strong. The company seized the opportunity of industry development, actively explored the market and new customers, optimized the product and customer structure, and achieved growth in operating income of each product line; (2) benefiting from the launch of new products and the increase in unit prices of some products, the comprehensive gross profit margin increased by 12.95 percentage points compared with the previous year; (3) in order to maintain and enhance the company's core competitiveness, the company continued to maintain the intensity of R&D investment, and the investment in the year was approximately RMB 749 million, an increase of 41.46% over the previous year;

According to the annual report, in terms of the security and identification product line, this product line has multiple sub-product series such as radio frequency identification (RFID) and sensor chips (formerly "RFID and memory card chips"), smart cards and security chips, and smart identification device chips. In 2021, sales revenue was approximately 866 million yuan, and a total of more than 1.5 billion pieces were shipped.

During the reporting period, this product line firmly followed the high-quality service route of "overall solution and full system" and "deepening the terminal major customers" with integrated and complementary sub-product lines, and achieved good results. The RFID product line combines the near-field wireless communication (NFC) technology with the physically unclonable (PUF) technology to produce anti-counterfeiting special chips, which have established a good and stable customer reputation in the field of anti-counterfeiting and traceability of high-value items such as high-level conference certificates and alcohol. Smart cards, security chips, and smart identification device chips, while maintaining the competitiveness of traditional smart cards, contactless readers and writers, are steadily expanding into new fields represented by the Internet of Things, such as device security authentication, communication security, and device connection.

Among them, the FM1280 chip for smart cards and security chips and the FM17 series of reader-writer chips for smart device chips have successfully obtained AEC-Q100 certification, and breakthroughs have been made in the fields of automotive TBOX security chips and digital keys. The research and development of key new products in this product line is expanding well, and the development of UHF RFID chips, UHF reader-writer chips, and security SE chips is continuing to advance and is expected to be mass-produced.

In terms of the non-volatile memory product line, this product line has various memory products such as electrically erasable read-only memory (EEPROM), NOR flash memory (NOR Flash) and SLC NAND flash memory (NAND Flash), with a variety of capacities, interfaces and packaging forms. Sales revenue in 2021 was approximately RMB 721 million. During the reporting period, this product line continued to expand its market share in three dimensions: stable supply chain, advanced process and market coverage. Focusing on large customers as the key introduction direction, on the basis of stabilizing the market share of home appliances, instruments, mobile phone modules, PC peripherals, etc., it has successively introduced leading customers in the network communication, IPC (network camera), wearable, WiFi6, display screens and other industries, and multiple projects in the field of automotive electronics have successfully entered mass production.

In terms of the smart meter chip product line, the product line mainly includes: smart meter MCU, general low-power MCU, etc. The sales revenue in 2021 is about 296 million yuan. The company is one of the earliest domestic companies to enter the smart meter dedicated MCU chip design, and has deep technical reserves in this field.

The company's FM33A048 (B) large-capacity smart meter MCU product was rated as one of the "Top 100" high-tech achievement transformation projects in Shanghai in 2020 and one of the "Top 10" independent innovation projects. In 2021, under the pressure of high supply chain capacity, this product line worked hard to cooperate with customers for inspection and mass production, and continued to follow up on regulatory changes such as high-protection and long-life meters, and operating income maintained a growth trend. In the fields of industrial control, smart home, automotive electronics, etc., the proportion of general-purpose low-power MCUs has gradually increased. The company has been working in the Internet of Things industry for many years, and with its excellent low-power performance, it has been widely used in fields such as the Internet of Things, water, gas and heat meters, and smart cities, where chip power consumption is extremely sensitive.

The company has accumulated a lot of practical experience in the fields of MCU chip underlying driver development and application software development. Through tools such as "Magic Cube" and self-built ecology, it can greatly reduce the threshold of user technology development and shorten the time to market for customer products. The company actively continues to launch new products based on the characteristics of white goods, motor drives, new energy, pan-IoT and other fields. During the reporting period, the company announced that the LG series MCU has successfully obtained AEC-Q100 certification, and the target application areas include automotive wipers, windows, seats, door locks, air conditioners, electronic shifters, etc.

In terms of FPGA chips, Fudan Microelectronics is one of the leading companies in the field of FPGA in China. It can currently provide 10 million gate and 100 million gate FPGA chips and embedded programmable chips (PSoC) and other products. The sales revenue of FPGA and other products in 2021 is about 427 million yuan.

The company has the first embedded programmable PSoC launched in China, which can well meet the needs of high-speed communication, signal processing, image processing, industrial control and other application fields, and has received good market response. At present, the company is actively developing a new generation of 1 billion gate products based on 14/16nm process technology, and further enriching the types of FPGA and PSoC chips with 28nm process technology to expand new markets and maintain the company's leading position in domestic FPGA technology.

In terms of testing services, Hualing Co., Ltd., a holding subsidiary of the company, is a professional integrated circuit testing company that started integrated circuit testing research and development earlier in China. It has accumulated a lot of technology in the fields of product testing solution design, mass production test automation, and test informatization, and has undertaken a number of major national science and technology projects. The 10GHz high-speed wafer testing and more than 4,800pins high-density wafer direct connection testing methods developed by Hualing Co., Ltd. have been put into mass production, and it is actively carrying out research and development work such as artificial intelligence chip testing, high-performance image transmission chip testing, and 5G chip testing.