半導體產業垂直整合與分工模式的經營績效與經濟價值之實證研究

Abstract

受惠於科技的持續創新、產業標準的形成、產業分工秩序與專業化等因素，使得過往高度垂直整合(Vertical Integration)的產業，逐步朝向垂直分工(Vertical Specialization)的產業體系發展，也使得整個半導體產業的經濟價值得以持續擴張，並且透過規模經濟化的成本降低，使得科技產品被廣為使用，並成為帶動社會新消費文化與習慣的媒介與賦能者。 針對此一從垂直整合的產業結構演進到高度垂直分工的體系，過往的歷史文獻與研究報告多從財務報告的會計利益，以及分工體系下的策略最優選擇來解釋此過程。本研究則以價值創造的角度，以經濟利潤(Economic Profit)與資本投資回報率(RoIC)為兩個核心指標，實際剖析兩種經營模式的成本與獲利結構，以及經濟價值創造的程度與差異。本研究以美國上市公司從1980年到2018年會計年度的次級資料，經過嚴謹的數據分析，對產業經營模式的差異，建立若干重要的觀察。 在財務分析的基礎上，本研究嘗試比較垂直整合業者(IDM)與垂直分工後的廠商(Fabless、Foundry)兩者之間差異及其根本原因。其後，為了做對等性的比較，本研究將Fabless與Foundry的財務報告數字經過推導計算後，完成一份虛擬Fabless+Foundry的財務報表，以資產負債表與現金損益表的指標與IDM比較，用來解析垂直分工體系下的利潤分配的趨勢與根本原因之探討。 以Fabless、Foundry和IDM三個產業觀察，Foundry的RoIC最高，但經濟利潤相較Fabless或IDM卻為最低。Foundry在半導體垂直分工體系扮演著關鍵的驅動角色，使得Fabless整體產業的經濟利潤持續成長。從三個產業中的領導廠商觀察，在Fabless與Foundry的垂直分工體系與IDM的垂直整合架構動態發展下，在各個分工體系下的經濟利潤壟斷地位已經被TSMC (100.2%的2018年Foundry經濟利潤)和Intel (63%的IDM經濟利潤)所佔據。而Fabless相較而言，也呈現經濟利潤的集中度現象，但是並沒有Foundry和IDM這麼明顯(Broadcom、Qualcomm和Nvidia佔有70%的Fabless經濟利潤)。據此，本研究對不同類型的廠商，提供若干重要的策略建議。 在思考垂直整合走向垂直分工的必然趨勢下，企業策略定位應該與經濟利潤或者資本投入回報率做目標的同步。希望本研究所提供的系統性分析，能對於半導體產業的既有企業，在思考轉型或重要策略的擬定時，多一層的思考維度而有所助益。

Benefiting from continuous technological innovation, emergence of industry standardization and economics of division of labor and specialization of labor, the traditionally vertically integrated semiconductor industry has been transformed into a highly vertically specialized structure. The overall economic profits resulted from semiconductor industry has thus been expanded, while the electronic products built upon semiconductor devices has being widely adopted with constantly lower average selling price as a result of scale economy of semiconductor production. The convenience and capability of technologies associated with these electronic products further advance people’s life and enable what’s not possible before. Previous literatures explored such kind of structure evolution and differential business models mostly focus on accounting profit and choice of strategic preference. The present thesis will tackle this issue from the angle of economic value creation by adopting two performance variables, Return on Invested Capital (RoIC) and Economic Profit, to evaluate relative competitiveness among IDM, fabless and foundry models. Our empirical setting covers all public semiconductor companies in US stock market from fiscal year 1980 to 2018 for those fabless, foundry and IDM companies. Based on detailed and rigorous analytical results, we would like to explore reasons underlying their performance differences. Furthermore, we undertake a comparative performance study between IDM and a virtual combination of fabless and foundry organization form. By comparing the RoIC among Fabless, Foundry and IDM models, Foundry’s RoIC is the highest among the three while contributes less economic profits than Fabless and IDM. The foundry model plays a crucial role to trigger and elevate the explosive growth of Fabless players. Our study further observes that the leaders in the semiconductor industry segment dominate most of economic profits in the Foundry (TSMC shares 100.2% economic profits among all foundry players in 2018 fiscal year) and IDM (Intel takes 63% of total economic profits out of IDM companies). The competitiveness of Fabless models is not so obvious than the other two models, however, it does show the same tendency that only a few companies dominate most of economic profits (Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Nvidia took over nearly 70% of economic profits among all Fabless players). Based on our analytical results, suggestions for each types of players are also provided. Overall, the thesis suggests that corporate leaders consider the alignment of growth strategy and performance measurements, e.g., Economic Profit and RoIC. We hope that our systematic studies could significantly help their strategic thinking and corporate transformation initiatives.