A leading chip company worth 50 billion yuan buys an entry ticket
Since 2025, semiconductor industry mergers and acquisitions have been announced almost weekly on the A-share bulletin board. This level of activity not only provides an early exit channel for early-stage institutions but also accelerates the integration and evolution of the semiconductor industry.
On October 13th, a merger came to light. Siling Microelectronics Co., Ltd., the leading company in analog chips, acquired 77.54% of the shares of Yicunxin Semiconductor, and the industrial and commercial changes were recently completed. Since the scale of the merger did not reach the mandatory disclosure standard, there was no price or official announcement for this transaction. The acquired company, Yicunxin, is relatively unknown and has never conducted external financing.
Even so, Siling Microelectronics' stock price soared by 5.77% on that day, and its closing market value reached 52.8 billion yuan.
The Chip Tycoon from Zhangjiakou
Like many early semiconductor companies, Siling Microelectronics is a story of domestic breakthrough led by a technical expert.
Zhang Shilong, the founder, was born in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province in 1966. After completing his undergraduate studies in China in the 1990s, he chose to pursue further studies in the United States and obtained a doctoral degree. After graduation, Zhang Shilong stayed in the United States and joined Texas Instruments as an electronic design engineer. He also served as a member of the Quality Review Committee and the rotating chairman for two terms.
As an electronic design expert, Zhang Shilong holds multiple invention patents and has valuable industry experience. In 2003, at the age of 37, Zhang Shilong gave up his high salary in the United States and returned to China to start a business. He founded Harbin Siling Microelectronics Co., Ltd. in Harbin, targeting the domestic analog chip market, which was then a blank area.
At the beginning of its establishment, Siling targeted various industrial applications as its core customers. Starting with operational amplifiers and LDOs, it gradually expanded its product line. Moreover, from the very first product, Siling chose TSMC as its wafer foundry partner, which ensured the high quality and stable production of its products.
This is closely related to Zhang Shilong's ambition. He is determined to build a world-class analog IC company, taking companies such as ADI, LTC, Maxim, and TI as examples to learn from. However, he also emphasizes that while continuously learning, Siling adheres to innovation, increases R & D investment, and strives to develop its own characteristics, aiming to produce world-class products in niche markets.
Four years later, Zhang Shilong moved the company to Beijing and established Siling Microelectronics (Beijing) Co., Ltd. He also set up a red - chip structure with plans for overseas listing. At that time, China was in a period of rapid economic development and was the world's largest electronics product market. Zhang Shilong keenly realized the importance of being close to customers and the supply chain. Eventually, in 2017, he gave up overseas listing and Siling became the first listed company on the A - share market dedicated to analog chip design.
After listing, Siling Microelectronics further expanded its business through acquisitions and investments.
In the first half of 2018, Siling Microelectronics acquired Dalian Alpha Co., Ltd. for 10.86 million yuan, expanding its domestic R & D team. The company also took a stake in Yutai Semiconductor, a power management chip company, to further broaden its power management products. In 2019, it acquired 67.11% of the equity of Shanghai Pingsheng Microelectronics and 53.85% of the equity of Hangzhou Shen'an Microelectronics, gradually entering the RF product field. In 2020, the company continued to acquire 78.47% of the equity of Suzhou Qingxinfang, and in 2021, it completed the acquisition of 100% of the equity of Shanghai Fangtai. In the same year, the company entered the testing sector by establishing a subsidiary in Jiangyin for special testing.
In 2021, Siling reached its peak. Financially, its revenue and net profit growth rates reached 87.07% and 142.41% respectively, setting the largest increase since its listing. In this year, Siling's stock price also reached a historical peak, and its market value exceeded 90 billion yuan.
After the peak, a setback followed. From 2022 to 2024, affected by the overall downturn in the global semiconductor industry and the weak demand in downstream consumer electronics, industrial control, and other fields, the company's revenue and net profit both declined.
Today, Siling's products are well - known in the market for their "diversity, completeness, and segmentation", covering two major fields: signal chain and power management. As of the semi - annual report in 2025, the company has launched more than 5,200 product models available for sale and plans to launch more than 6,600 models (including those under development) in 36 major product categories. These products are widely used in industries such as industry, networking, consumer electronics, data centers, electric vehicles, robots, and renewable energy, forming a certain leading advantage in the domestic market.
According to data from Frost & Sullivan, in 2024, Siling Microelectronics ranked first among Chinese manufacturers in the integrated analog chip field and sixth globally. From 2014 to 2024, the company's annual compound revenue growth rate reached 26.2%, far exceeding the industry's growth rate of 9.7%.
Hidden Concerns in the Semi - annual Report
At the same time when this acquisition news was reported, two other major moves by Siling also attracted market attention. One of them was the release of the semi - annual report in 2025.
According to the financial report, Siling's revenue in the first half of 2025 was 1.819 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 15.37%, with a significantly slowed growth rate. Its net profit was 201 million yuan, a year - on - year increase of 12.42%, with a sharp decline in the growth rate. The non - recurring profit after deduction was 134 million yuan, a year - on - year decrease of 14.98%.
Looking more closely, its net asset per share decreased from 8.76 yuan in the same period last year to 7.64 yuan, and its operating cash flow per share was 0.39 yuan, a significant drop from 0.67 yuan in the same period last year. This means that the company's "financial foundation" has weakened, and its cash flow has also declined.
This set of major financial data shows that Siling's profit - making speed is slowing down, and the profitability of its main business has also declined. All these phenomena point to an essential fact: Siling needs to find new growth points.
Fortunately, Siling has a deep pocket. Its monetary funds increased by 260 million yuan compared with the beginning of the year, a 32% increase.
According to the official statement, Siling Microelectronics is actively allocating resources to high - growth emerging application fields. Its products have achieved good sales performance in fields such as automotive electronics, artificial intelligence, robots, new energy, next - generation mobile communication, and the Internet of Things, successfully expanding its high - quality customer base. Especially in high - threshold markets such as electric vehicles and industrial control, the company's technical strength and market response speed have been recognized by customers.
This seems not enough. In the first half of this year, Siling's R & D investment reached 508 million yuan, accounting for 27.9% of its total revenue. Of course, Zhang Shilong set a red line for Siling in the early days, requiring R & D investment to be no less than 18% of the revenue.
This is because analog chips have unique advantages. Unlike digital chips, which are updated rapidly, analog chips have a longer lifecycle (more than 10 years). For example, Texas Instruments' audio operational amplifier NE5532 has been on the market for more than 40 years, and more than 50% of ADI's revenue comes from products that have been on the market for more than 10 years. Therefore, once a good product is successfully developed, it can bring continuous orders for decades.
If high R & D investment is a regular move for Siling, then small - scale mergers and acquisitions are more like shortcuts to gain speed. In addition to Yicunxin, in March this year, Siling Microelectronics also took control of Sensory Intelligence, a magnetic sensor enterprise. In October last year, it acquired Chuangxin Micro, a power management chip manufacturer, for 1.06 billion yuan. These two acquisitions were aimed at quickly filling Siling's existing gaps.
It seems that Zhang Shilong is in a hurry.
Going Public in Hong Kong, Siling Needs a New Story
As for why he is in a hurry, let's first go back to this merger.
It is understood that Yicunxin was established in March 2018. It is a chip design company focusing on the R & D and sales of high - performance, high - reliability non - volatile memories, high - quality analog, and mixed - signal products. The core team has more than 20 years of experience in the Chinese and American semiconductor industries. Yicunxin adopts a differentiated competition strategy, focusing on small - capacity non - volatile memory chips such as EEPROM. EEPROM chips can be widely used in fields such as automotive electronics, smartphones, Bluetooth modules, WIFI modules, industrial control, communication equipment, computers, and medical devices.
There are reports that Yicunxin's automotive - grade products have passed relevant technical certifications. Moreover, Yicunxin's automotive - grade products can synergize with Siling's automotive power management chips, filling Siling's gap in the memory chip field and further improving its "analog + memory" product matrix.
Of course, the deeper reason lies in the increasing demand for automotive - grade memory chips and the growing demand for high - reliability memory chips in the field of industrial automation. In addition to the industrial level, at the macro level, with the support of anti - dumping policies, the advantages of overseas giants have been weakened, and the pattern of domestic analog chips is improving. Data shows that "if the price of US chips rises by 20 - 30% due to anti - dumping investigations, the localization rate of Chinese analog chips is expected to jump from 15% to 25%, releasing a substitution space of more than $6.3 billion."
On one hand, the financial report shows an urgent need for new growth points. On the other hand, a new wave of market space is being released under the wave of domestic substitution. The answer to how to layout is obvious.
Moreover, at the end of September, Siling Microelectronics submitted an application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for listing in Hong Kong. Relying solely on the existing story may not be appealing enough. After all, overseas enterprises are dominant in the analog chip market. Texas Instruments, which has the highest market share, has nearly 140,000 products, and its barriers in the high - end market are unbreakable.
In comparison, Siling still has a long way to go. Multiple acquisitions in the past year have also increased the imagination space for Siling's valuation. When the news of the acquisition of Yicunxin came out, there were also rumors that Siling would enter Tesla's supply chain. Coupled with the fact that it was once a supplier to Apple, the outside world seems to have glimpsed the prototype of Siling's new story. This article is from the WeChat official account "East 40th Street Capital", author: Zhang Xue, published by 36Kr with authorization.