I looked through the Samsung Electronics merger and acquisition ( M&A ) listings. Germany’s Infineon, the world’s No. 1 automotive semiconductor company, was one of them. As the weighing process dragged on, the company’s ‘ransom price’ soared.
The company’s value jumped by about 40% in one year to 42.7 billion euros (about 61 trillion won). As it stands out in the automotive semiconductor market, the company plans to invest about 10 trillion won this year. As it enters the automotive memory semiconductor market, it is also digging into Samsung Electronics’ ‘home garden’.
On the German stock market on the 4th (local time), Infineon’s stock price closed at 33.165 euros (about 56,000 won) per share. It jumped by about 39.1% compared to a year ago. The market capitalization exceeds 61 trillion won.
This company has been mentioned as an M&A candidate for Samsung Electronics for several years, along with ARM , an American fabless (semiconductor design company), and NXP , a Dutch automotive semiconductor company . Samsung Electronics has announced that it will proceed with a large M&A within three years in 2021. However, M&A fizzled out, and in the meantime, the ransom of Infineon and others exploded. Infineon is the world’s No. 1 automotive semiconductor company based in Munich, Germany. The momentum of this company is strong. Peter Schaefer _
) Infineon Microcontroller General Manager (Vice President) said in an interview with the Korea Economic Daily on the 4th, “Cars are changing like home appliances스포츠토토, and consumers’ demands are becoming more demanding. That’s how explosively the automotive semiconductor market is growing.” He said. He continued, “To capture the rapidly growing automotive semiconductor market, we invested 7 billion euros (approximately 10.1 trillion won) in building factories in Germany and Malaysia this year.”
Last month, Infineon announced that it would invest 5 billion euros (about 7.15 trillion won) to build a new semiconductor factory, ‘Smart Power Lab’, in Dresden, Germany. This is the largest investment in the company’s history. Early this year, the company decided to invest an additional 2 billion euros (about 2.86 trillion won) in its Kulim plant in Malaysia to build a silicon carbide ( SiC ) and gallium nitride ( GaN ) semiconductor plant. This is contrary to the decline in facility investment by existing semiconductor companies. According to Japan’s Nippon Keizai, this year’s facility investment by the world’s 10 major semiconductor companies in the U.S., Europe, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan amounted to $122 billion (approximately KRW 161.51 trillion), a 16% decrease from the previous year.
On the other hand, Infineon announced its largest investment ever this year. CEO Schaeffer said, “We are continuously investing to respond to the demand for cutting-edge products used in automobiles and renewable energy facilities,” and said that silicon carbide and gallium nitride, the next-generation semiconductors, consume about 70 to 90 percent less power than existing silicon semiconductors. “We also started investing in semiconductors,” he said.
He predicted that the growth rate of the automotive semiconductor market would exceed the semiconductor market average. He said, “Even if the number of cars does not increase, the average number of semiconductors used in one car will increase significantly in the future.” While 200 to 300 semiconductors are installed in a conventional internal combustion engine car, an autonomous vehicle requires 1,000 to 2,000 semiconductors. He continued, “This is the result of the rapid introduction of electric vehicles, the increase in the number of vehicles equipped with autonomous driving functions, and the increase in convenience functions,” and added, “The automotive semiconductor market will grow rapidly over the next 10 years.”
The company is also working to pioneer the automotive memory semiconductor market, where Samsung Electronics and others hold the hegemony. CEO Schaeffer said , “We are focusing on designing memory semiconductor products that consume less power while providing excellent performance and security,” and added , “ SEMPER “is excellent,” he said. He said, “ Semper Interest in the Korean market was also expressed. The company operates a factory in Cheonan and innovation centers throughout the country.
