It seems like everyone has accumulated a lot of stress because the recent stock market is unpredictable,
Contrary to the serious-sounding title, I'm writing a light-hearted piece.
As you might have already expected, the answer is an obvious story. It's because it costs a lot of money..
These days, the trend of FAB size is increasing steadily, so recently it's said that approximately 100 trillion won per FAB is required.
(Including construction costs and equipment installation costs)
So, I roughly calculated when we could get profits after investing that enormous capital. (I don't know accounting~)
As shown below, by the 12th year, debt completely disappears and we enter the profit phase.
As mentioned earlier, FAB construction costs 100 trillion won. The construction period is set to 3 years, which is shorter than actual(?).
Last year when business went well, SK Hynix's operating profit was about 50 trillion won,
There are 6 12-inch FABs producing products, and since various costs would be included here, I calculated assuming that the profit from product production due to FAB operation is 15 trillion won per year.
In other words, you have to wait over 10 years to see profits from a 100 trillion won investment, but if you just put this in a savings account, you get about 30 trillion won accumulated profit in 10 years with no risk. Thinking about it again while writing, this is the answer.
As an engineer, I used to curse the finance people for not preparing for the future and being stingy with R&D investment, but they were right. haha
In any case, the above production profit is based on when things go well, and semiconductors are a cyclical industry so there are many times when we see losses.
Of course, we could enter a Super Cycle like this year, but this is such a miraculous event that it's better not to consider it.
To that extent, since it's difficult for new companies to enter, existing companies won't fail unless they make significant mistakes. (This doesn't mean business always goes well)
In reality, the only country and company capable of having capital, manpower, etc. is China,
As long as the import of equipment such as EUV is restricted, it will not be easy for China to secure mass production technology of 5nm or less based on Logic, and about D1b or equivalent based on DRAM.
