Speaking to investors on Friday, CEO Zhao Haijun said the Russia-Ukraine war and China's COVID lockdowns have massively dented demand for consumer electronics and home appliances, which in turn has led to a "serious" adjustment in chip orders for those segments.
"Many smartphone, PC and home appliance companies had exposure in Russia and Ukraine, and their revenues from those markets are now gone. Sales in their home market of China have also fallen due to the COVID situation domestically," Zhao said.
He thinks things are going to get worse with more than 200 million units of smartphones that will disappear suddenly this year and the majority of them are from domestic Chinese phone makers.
Demand for consumer electronics "dropped like a rock.”
“Some of our customers are holding more than five months of inventory." However, Zhao said SMIC's factories are still running at 100% capacity, as the company has been allocating resources to products that are still in great shortage, such as power management chips and microcontrollers used in green energy, and electric vehicles and industrial applications.