On March 27, Zhaoyi Innovation released its 2019 annual financial report. The company achieved an operating income of 3,202.92 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.62%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 606.92 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 49.85%; 4 shares were transferred and 3.8 yuan was distributed.

The main business of Zhaoyi Innovation is the research and development, technical support and sales of flash memory chips and their derivatives, microcontroller products and sensor modules. The sensor business comes from Siliwei, which was acquired by the company in 2019. According to the annual report, the company’s operating income in 2019 increased significantly, mainly due to the increase in market demand during the reporting period. The company continued to expand new customers and new markets, introduce new products, and optimize and adjust product structure. In 2019, the sales of memory chips increased by about 717 million yuan. The controller’s revenue in 2019 increased by approximately RMB 39.2 million compared with the revenue in 2018. In addition, in the 2019 annual report, the company contributed 203 million yuan to Siliwei’s consolidated revenue.

In 2019, Zhaoyi adjusted the company’s organizational structure according to the business operation, and completed the structure of three major business units with storage + MCU + sensor as the core. The existing business layout is divided into three directions: storage, MCU and sensor.

In terms of NOR Flash, in 2019, thanks to the technological innovation of Zhaoyi’s innovative Flash products and the increased demand for NOR Flash products driven by TWS headsets, according to industry research by CINNO Research, the company’s NOR Flash global market share achieved a breakthrough in the second quarter. It rose to fourth in the world and jumped to third in the third quarter. At present, the cumulative shipment of Zhaoyi’s innovative NOR Flash products has exceeded 10 billion, and the supply of NOR Flash capacity is still tight.

At present, Zhaoyi’s innovative NOR Flash product technology is at the mainstream technology level in the industry, and the process node is mainly 65nm, and there are a small number of 55nm process node products. In 2020, we will focus on promoting 55nm advanced process node series products on the existing basis, maintain continuous competitiveness in the low-end and mid-end markets, increase R&D efforts to promote high-capacity, high-performance and high-reliability products, and increase the market share of high-end products. Improve the company’s competitive advantage in the NOR Flash market.

In terms of NAND Flash products, the current mainstream process node of SLC Nand is 19nm-38nm, the company’s mature process node is 38nm, the product capacity covers mainstream capacity types from 1Gb to 8Gb, the voltage covers 1.8V and 3.3V, and provides traditional parallel interface and new SPI interface Two product series, providing a complete line of high-performance, high-reliability NAND Flash products for embedded applications. The company will continue to invest in the research and development of the 24nm NAND Flash process node, promote the research and development of NAND Flash products based on the 24nm process node, and continuously improve product competitiveness.

In 2019, the cumulative shipments of Zhaoyi’s innovative MCU products exceeded 300 million, and the number of customers exceeded 20,000. In 2019, the company successfully developed the world’s first general-purpose RISC-V MCU GD32V product series, and innovatively used the RISC-V architecture core to develop general-purpose MCUs.

At the same time, in terms of optical fingerprint sensors, in 2019, Zhaoyi Innovation actively promoted the integration with Siliwei, actively optimized lens-type optical fingerprint products, and launched LCD-screen optical fingerprints, ultra-small packaged lens-type optical fingerprint products, Ultra-thin optical fingerprint products and large-area TFT optical fingerprint products have also made phased progress in the research and development of MEMS ultrasonic fingerprint sensors.

Zhaoyi Innovation stated that it attaches great importance to and always maintains a high level of R&D investment. In 2019, the company’s R&D investment reached 378 million yuan, accounting for 11.8% of operating income, an increase of 64.33% compared with the same period in 2018.

Zhaoyi Innovation has accumulated a large number of intellectual property patents while launching a full range of products with technology and cost advantages. As of the end of 2019, the company has accumulated 1,195 valid domestic and foreign patent applications covering key chip technologies such as NOR Flash, NAND Flash, MCU, and fingerprint identification, of which 201 new patent applications have been submitted in 2019, and 156 new patents have been granted. , which is a powerful guarantee for the company to improve its technical level and product competitiveness.

Zhaoyi Innovation Flash Memory Chip NOR Flash

Link to this article：GigaDevice’s net profit increased by 49.85% last year. How did the three major business directions benefit it?