At a November 13, 2026, earnings briefing, SMIC co-CEO Zhao Haijun said third-quarter sales reached a record $3.19 billion, up 6.1% from the previous quarter. He said stronger-than-expected demand for AI-supporting chips, including BCD chips, specialty memory and controllers, helped push third-quarter sales above the upper end of SMIC’s guidance.
Under International Financial Reporting Standards, sales rose 33.9% from a year earlier, while gross margin reached 29.9%, up 4.6 percentage points from the second quarter. In its yuan-denominated financial results, SMIC reported revenue of 21.983 billion yuan, up 28.1% year on year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 2.847 billion yuan, up 87.6%.
Zhao said both shipments and average wafer prices contributed to the quarterly sales increase. Shipments exceeded 3 million 8-inch-equivalent wafers for the first time, up 5.7% from the previous quarter, while the average wafer price rose 1.8%. Capacity utilization reached 97.3%, up 3.6 percentage points; Zhao said the resulting scale effects helped offset higher depreciation costs and lift gross margin.
For the fourth quarter, SMIC projected a 4%–6% sequential increase in sales but a lower gross margin of 26%–28%, citing cost pressures and increased engineering and research wafer runs. Based on its results for the first three quarters and the midpoint of its fourth-quarter guidance, the company expected full-year 2026 sales to exceed $12 billion. Zhao also warned that longer equipment delivery times could disrupt the execution of annual capital spending, though he said they would not affect this year’s capacity-expansion plans.
