r/valueinvesting
半导体行业的利润率似乎不可持续
作者质疑半导体行业超高利润率的可持续性，指出AI效率提升、产能扩张及中国竞争带来的风险。
- AI上下文窗口的持续扩展推动了对算力和内存的稳定需求。
- 算力需求增长的每一步都解锁了新能力，维持了当前的周期。
- 当前50-70%的营业利润率在历史上前所未有，可能会均值回归。
- 风险包括AI模型效率突破、产能增加以及中国企业的竞争。
- 科技巨头资本开支的任何放缓都可能导致利润率不成比例地大幅下降。
美光的运营利润率已扩大至约50%，预计还将攀升至约70%。而近期历史数据的平均值在20%至30%之间。
SK 海力士目前的运营利润率已达60%，同样预计会向70%靠拢。
英伟达过去曾有高达20%的运营利润率，但如今已长期维持在60%的高位。
台积电历来利润率不错，处于30%以上的高位，如今已进入中位数50%的运营利润率区间，并预计将进一步升至60%左右。
这些利润率从历史标准来看都显得异常高。
一个重大风险是模型领域出现重大效率突破。这可能在不大幅增加算力的情况下提升性能，实现更高的性价比。
另一个风险是，确实有更多产能正在涌入市场，至少来自主要的内存芯片公司。台积电则以较慢的速度扩展产能。
第三，如果中国在关键技术上实现有意义的追赶，也将带来影响。如今中国已有数十家GPU初创企业，以及众多内存芯片制造商。它们无需达到SK海力士在内存领域的水平，也无需达到英伟达在GPU上的高度，只要能将足够多的芯片串联起来，并将相对不那么密集的任务分配给它们，就足以对利润率造成冲击。
最后，若大型模型厂商中的任何一个放缓资本开支扩张，都可能导致利润率出现不成比例的大幅变动。
在我看来，算力需求一直在稳步上升，每一步都解锁了更多功能。
特别是，最近人工智能功能的大幅提升，很大程度上得益于上下文窗口的持续扩展。随着上下文窗口进一步扩大，对内存的需求也将越来越多。
但总有一天，我们是否会出现扩展上下文窗口的边际效益递减？届时，对内存芯片的增量需求又会如何变化？
They aren't sustainable.
Once the data center demand an AI hype subsides, these margins will necessarily compress.
yep.
people have short memories. remember the "picks and shovels" of the dot com era? cisco, jds uniphase, corning, juniper, sun, emc, .... - all of them saw their stocks collapse by 90%+ and most of them never recovered ... and most of these companies had better moats then mu, sndk, and wdc.
Did these companies have a crazy run with high margins during the dot com era ?
Cisco had a forward P/E of around 10, same as a lot of the RAM/SSD makers today, funny thing about forward P/E is that it’s just a prediction not a fact….
Pretty much yes. It's not a perfect match but it's quite close. The biggest difference people harp about is the companies this time are profitable vs the early dot com companies not being profitable.
The issue with that argument is the picks and shovels in both cases were profitable. The attached businesses this time are profitable. The AI portion of the businesses however are not as a group profitable. Amazon without its AI business is profitable. Amazons AI business by itself is not. Same thing applies to Google and Microsoft. Meanwhile openAI isn't profitable. SpaceX isn't profitable.
Right now we are somewhere between 1998 and 2000 on the charts. There are big macro economic differences which might let this run go longer or bring it to a halt sooner but when this falls apart I won't be surprised if we plunge back to the long term trend line that was tapped in April 2025.
One thing to take into account is Jevon's paradox which is basically increased efficiency and reduced pricing increases demand.
People keep misunderstanding this. Jevon's paradox means increased total consumption, not increased demand. Demand will be falling at some point.
Consumption increases as supply increases and demand decreases. Demand is willingness to pay. Hyperscalers won't be willing to pay high prices forever, they will cut costs to become profitable, however the total consumption can increase if supply increases and price falls.
Great question and points you make. My personal take is that this will eventually end with oversupply, because the semiconductor supply chain is so complex and has such long lead times it's hard to have a soft landing.
But we don't know how many years it could take. A few observations:
\- We are currently supply constrained. That means there really are companies willing to buy up every bit of supply there is.
\- Apple just increased their prices. My sense is if this were short term, they would address the crunch differently.
\- Jevon's paradox has held here to date. Cheaper tokens means more use cases that AI is cost-effective for.
\- Nvidia has maintained gross margins of \~75% since late 2023.
\- A big difference from the dotcom buildout: unlike fiber, every bit of compute is getting used. There's evidence that even A100s and older chips are still being utilized, and prices to rent them have gone up.
All of this suggests this could go on a bit longer (it could also unwind without much warning). But one thing that could prolong this whole buildout more than anything else is TSMC's supply. It will take years to get enough advanced node compute online, which prevents the rest of the market from growing as fast as it could. Ben Thompson at Stratechery has written about this as TSMC providing a brake for growth of the rest of the market. The guys at SemiAnalysis have some good content on this whole buildout, both written and on YouTube.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the fact that we're supply constrained means that the buyers in this market would actually like to buy even more, and growth would be even faster if it weren't constrained. It's hard to wrap one's head around this...
lasted a good 3 years before everyone woke up.
a few catalysts for the stock market collapse: (1) fed interest rate hikes cut off cheap money (mind you, fed funds rate was 5%+ back then, and it actually peaked at 6+% in may 2000, a couple of months after the stock market collapse began); (2) no more spending related to y2k (remember the world was going to end when the clock hit 1-1-00?; (3) the insiders at many of these companies knew the jig was up and started selling most of their positions; (4) many retail investors were also looking to sell in order to pay their tax bills for any long and short term capital gains they had incurred during the huge run up in 1999.
the AI boom has all the hallmarks of history repeating itself.
None of that is HBM which is structural now
At this point it’s just a transfer of wealth from hyperscalers to memory/infrastructure. Theres no broadening of downstream revenue base that cost can be passed down to. At what point does the money run out if all these chips depreciate and get replaced every 4yrs, which we are now already in a replacement cycle. The bull case is that these are necessary and they’ll keep paying whatever price forever, except until they don’t or can’t because they can’t forever burn billions each year on compute. This is worse than the telecom companies laying copper and fiber that went bust back in the 90s and 00s at least that was like a 20yr investment. But it won’t take that long before big money figures out hyperscalers can’t or wont foot the next trillion bill for depreciating consumables like chips/memory. Short term bullish but this could change in a quarter and it will be quick.
When it comes to China, I have a slightly different perspective.
Clearly, China is pouring all its resources into developing various semiconductor products and is striving to narrow the gap with Western (U.S., Taiwan, South Korea...) products.
However, it is highly likely that most of this output will be used to meet China’s own domestic demand rather than being exported to the global market. This applies to everything China produces, from DRAM and HBM to GPUs and AI boards. Since China is developing AI models and expanding its infrastructure to a level capable of competing with the U.S., it will likely need hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of semiconductors.
I think the margin risk is real, but I’d frame it less as “AI demand goes away” and more as “the bottleneck eventually moves.”
Right now memory and advanced packaging still have pricing power because everyone is trying to buy the same scarce capacity at the same time. That never stays clean forever.
For me the signal is when customers stop begging for allocation and start negotiating again. That’s usually when the margin story changes.
Omg sell everything now!!!!