Knowing that he is known, there is no war. Based on this principle, the author briefly analyzes CREE, one of the world's top five LED manufacturers, and hopes to help the industry practitioners.
Founded in 1987, CREE is a Nasdaq listed company. The company is principally engaged in the development of SiC, GaN and Si substrates and is one of the largest companies in the world in the production of GaN substrate materials. The company's profits are mainly from the production of LED products and SiC, GaN substrate materials, the most prominent is the contribution to the blue LED. The company has a patent for growing GaN epitaxial wafers on SiC substrates to make blue chips. Because Blu-ray is the basis for generating white light, the company currently holds a central position in the upstream of the LED industry.
In the second half of 2010, CREE product sales revenue increased by 40% year-on-year to reach 474,065 thousand US dollars, accounting for 90% of the company's total revenue. The average integrated selling price of LED products (LED components, LED lighting products, LED chips) increased by 50% compared with the same period of last year, mainly due to the increase in the price of LED components and LED lighting products. RF product sales revenue increased by 68% year-on-year, mainly due to sales growth of SiC Schottky diodes and GaN microwave integrated circuits.
Table 1: CREE product revenue and its proportion in the second half of 2009 and 2010
Throughout the historical data, even during the financial crisis, CREE still showed strong growth momentum, and achieved a 14.99% increase in fiscal year 2009. (Note: CREE "fiscal year" is different from China's "year" concept, fiscal year 2010 refers to 2009 From June to June 2010, and so on, the same below).
Table 2: CREE sales revenue and growth in fiscal year 2008-2010
As can be seen from the table below, due to the financial crisis, the gross profit and net profit margins fell sharply in 2008 and 2009. In 2010, CREE's consolidated gross profit increased by US$838.27 million to US$251,675 thousand. The increase in gross profit margin was mainly due to the increase in selling price and scale effect.
Table 3: CREE product gross margin and net profit margin for 2007-2010