Innoscience Welcomes The Strongest Lock-up, And STMicroelectronics Is Fully Betting

On June 30, Innoscience, a leading gallium nitride power semiconductor company, issued an announcement disclosing that its shareholder STMicroelectronics Limited (hereinafter referred to as STM) voluntarily extended its commitment to sell 12.59 million H shares (accounting for about 2.56% of the total number of issued H shares) that would otherwise be lifted on June 29, 2025, and STM voluntarily promised not to reduce its holdings in the next 12 months. As the largest cornerstone investor in Innoscience's IPO, STM holds a whopping 27% of the company's outstanding shares. This decision to "actively lock positions" sends a strong signal to the market about Innoscience's long-term development prospects. This move is also considered a shot in the arm for the market. In the context of the turbulent international situation and the rapid evolution of the technology cycle, the continuous trust of industrial capital is of great significance. Since its listing, Innoscience has been heavily covered by many leading institutions, including Caitong Securities, Sinolink Securities, CMB International, etc., all of which have given "buy" ratings. Among them, CMB International expects the company's revenue compound growth rate from 2024 to 2027 to reach 55.2%, and Guojin Securities has significantly raised its net profit forecast for 2027 to 238 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 265%. The dual recognition of institutions and industrial capital stems from Innoscience's technical depth and strategic initiative in the field of GaN power devices. In the context of the rapid growth of demand for high-performance power devices in emerging industries such as electric vehicles, AI computing power, and data centers, Innoscience is on the eve of the outbreak. At the end of last year, Innoscience announced that the company planned to offer 45.364 million H shares globally, and the IPO will be from December 18 to December 23, 2024, with an expected pricing date of December 24. According to the prospectus, the company's cornerstone investors include STM, Jiangsu State-owned Enterprise Mixed Ownership Reform Fund (Limited Partnership) ("Jiangsu State-owned Enterprise Mixed Ownership Reform Fund"), Jiangsu Suzhou High-end Equipment Industry Special Fund of Funds (Limited Partnership) ("Suzhou High-end Equipment") and Suzhou Oriental Chuanglian Investment Management Co., Ltd. ("Oriental Chuanglian"), of which power giant STM accounts for half of the total amount of cornerstone investment. In April this year, Innoscience signed a joint development agreement with STM to promote the widespread implementation of GaN technology in consumer electronics, data centers, automotive electronics and industrial power supplies in the coming years. The agreement also enables "complementary interoperability" at the capacity level: Innoscience can use STM's overseas manufacturing capacity, and STM can use Innoscience's wafer manufacturing capabilities in China to jointly build a more resilient global supply chain. This not only enhances Innoscience's global operational capabilities, but also indicates that its GaN products are about to achieve greater mass production and global penetration. STM's increase is not accidental. In recent years, the European power semiconductor giant has continued to deepen its "China for China" localization strategy. At the investor summit last November, STM made it clear that it would increase its investment in Chinese manufacturing. Following the cooperation with HHGrace and San'an Optoelectronics, Innoscience has become its core partner in the field of gallium nitride. STM itself is the world's leading supplier of automotive power chips, and its silicon carbide devices have long been adopted by Tesla's Model 3. As applications such as traction inverters evolve from silicon carbide to gallium nitride, STM keenly captures the explosive potential of gallium nitride in low- and medium-voltage fields such as power conversion. Therefore, investing in Innoscience is not only a technical layout, but also a pre-position for the leading position of the supply chain. Innoscience, Inc. has launched a number of automotive-qualified (AEC-Q101) GaN chips, which are used in cutting-edge fields such as lidar and electric drive systems. Its INN100W135A-Q and the new generation of small package INN100W800A-Q, which will be launched at the end of 2023, have shown excellent conduction resistance, switching losses and package integration, and have attracted the attention of car manufacturers. In the volatile and volatile global supply chain landscape, Innoscience's growth path is quite exemplary. First of all, it is one of the very few third-generation semiconductor companies in China that takes marketization as the leading development. From the early reliance on local government and bank loans, to the subsequent market-oriented financing and the introduction of cornerstone investors, its financing path has obvious private capital color, which provides another possibility for China's semiconductor to get out of policy dependence. Secondly, since its establishment, it has adhered to the IDM (vertically integrated manufacturing) model, which runs through the whole process of design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, bypassing the "shortcomings" of the traditional Fabless model in terms of process limitations. Although the initial investment and management of this strategy are large and complex, this highly integrated model has proven to be more conducive to yield control and rapid iteration. STM's voluntary extension of the restriction commitment, as the main cornerstone investor, is not only a recognition of Innoscience's existing strength, but also represents its optimism about its future internationalization potential. This model of cross-border cooperation and capacity interconnection is exactly the "ecological closed loop" required for the third generation of semiconductors to go global and move towards mass production.