STM business & production sustainability forecast?

[Mecanix]

Despite its up-trending equity and healthy appearances very few we've spoke too as of late are getting accurate forecasting relevant to STM manufacturing and parts' stocks. This makes business planning difficult at our end and production impossible with those rather questionable long wait-periods.

Will this unplanned shortage situation improve soon? or do we need to start looking at hardware alternatives as per risk-management contingency already?

A word from corporate on this matter would be reasonable and much appreciated. Thank you.

[Tesla DeLorean]

Unlikely to get official position here, being business sensitive and all, better to speak with your local rep.

Also, as lead times push out it is going to get increasingly difficult to predict what all the orders in front of you are going to do with their parts. And those going to distributors might get allocated to high value clients, or via quota.

ST has indicated that things are getting better in Q1, but the knock on effects surely are going to push into Q3/Q4 with 30-40 week lead times being quoted.

And also that a) buyers/arbitrage players paying more attention have got a lot of orders on high demand parts ahead of you, b) fab capacity is going to probably favour high yield/high margin devices due to the supply/demand premiums, c) the speculative buying is going to drive non-returnable/non-cancelable contracts.

[Mecanix]

Thanks for the heads up, Tesla. Local rep tells us as much as half year to a year lead time on some parts, more or less for others, while alternative/equivalent from competitors are currently in stock. 'Incentive-wise' this situation unfortunately leaves us no other choice but to move away from STM. And hence why I'm asking if there is any light at the end of this non-sense.

Sensitive issue I understand. Let's see if anyone has any scoops on the issue.

[Tesla DeLorean]

As I understand the issue it is not limited to ST, I see others using TSMC having delays, China having bought out capacity. The Auto companies have significant order back-logs across the spectrum.

The fire at the AKM fab has knock on effects for a lot of other critical parts

[Mecanix]

By that I gather its all down to the foundry's fault, they'll probably acknowledge that rumor. Regardless, and if true then it's unacceptable. All up for pumpin' equities and all that however let's not forget about supply-chain, folks. Perhaps worth looking into UMC and SMIC as alternatives...

Let's see. 2021/22 business plan is not looking good. Bet many need to have an official answer on planning soon or we're switching this to their competition until they get their stuff back together.

[waclawek.jan]

> it's unacceptable

Well, then don't accept it.

If you want to make a rational decision, then simply assume no STM32 will be available for purchase through the usual channels for next 6 months, for whatever is the reason.

If your business model can't sustain this, then make whatever decision is necessary, including migration. Not soon, but today. And forget about upcoming weekends and holidays. After all, it's about paying your bills, how would assigning guilt assist in that?

Yes, I'm annoyed by this situation, too; but life goes on.

JW

[Mecanix]

Hi, waclawek.jan

Thanks for your answer. However I can't understand how this is even remotely relevant to the initial question, which is for corporate to answer ideally. I welcome speculations and thoughts, although I'd rather built opinions (and business/production planning) based on facts and official info. Much like thousands of other businesses left in total darkness as to what's truly happening to STMicroeletronics and its incapacitated manufacturing (bankruptcy?! who really knows...).

On a positive note; I do agree with you on the life goes on part. Good luck with everything!

[AndyJT]

Hi,

Looks like your "worst possible scenario" is upon us now (December 2021)

We've spent the last year designing two solutions around the STM32L496,STM32F469 and L6470 stepper driver - all are out of stock and at least 6 month lead times now. (Stock of STM32F469 expected January 2023 by Avnet/Farnell)

As we don't use huge quantities we don't have an STM rep so are pretty much in the dark about how, when or if we can do anything about this ?

We expected things might be improving by now but it appears everyone is redesigning and buying up stock of any STM32 version they can lay their hands on

Any advice or information welcome !

PS - ST's newsletters emails are really starting to grate now, what's the point of promoting something like the STM32U5 when you can't actually buy any ???

[Tesla DeLorean]

You really should have ordered parts at the beginning of the process rather than the end, given that the lead times were already pushing out and quoted by the retail distributors.

​

E​ven if you changed the part selection you'd have parts to sell, trade or barter.

[AndyJT]

We changed the design once already and picked a less popular STM32, one with stock everywhere (at the time) and bought enough until mid 2022.

Looks like it probably wasn't enough but what were we supposed to do ? Buy everything we could find and make the situation worse for everyone ?

It would be nice to have an insight on which of the F4 and L4 family (64pin,144pin LQFP) will be in stock soonest ?

Regards

[Tesla DeLorean]

Others have got multiple hedging orders out into 2023 at this point. Other buyers have been staging/laddering orders based on the lead times provided.

Hard to gauge real demand, as this is mostly a futures market at this point, but without the physically delivery issues you'd have with Oil, Corn, Orange Juice or Pumpkins. You could take physical delivery of a $1B of semiconductors into a storage locker or small office suite.

Now the real question is who has parts/when, and are excess parts going to get into the hands of brokers, or secondary markets.

That's going to be the real inflection point where the dominos start falling.

The shortage isn't only on the IC side, but also for metal lead-frames. And probably other IC and clocks taking parts from the burned AKM facility.

There are shipping capacity issues with Walmart commendering boats to ship in tat for Christmas. One supplier told us boats turned around mid-ocean and came back to port because they could get 3x rates.

[waclawek.jan]

> enough until mid 2022

Avnet/Farnell's estimates may be wrong, or may apply only to Avnet/Farnell. Ask around. Place orders and wait, you have a couple of months before going into panic mode.

> It would be nice to have an insight on which of the F4 and L4 family (64pin,144pin LQFP) will be in stock soonest ?

I don't think this is something anybody, including ST, can tell.

> Buy everything we could find and make the situation worse for everyone ?

This is quite the definition of reasons of current shortage, but - yes, be selfish.

JW

[Tesla DeLorean]

>> It would be nice to have an insight on which of the F4 and L4 family (64pin,144pin LQFP) will be in stock soonest ?

Free stock at retail distribution, that's a *long* way off, anything that shows up is going to be snapped up by piranhas, because it can be turned around for at least 3x the price, last items I had altering at DigiKey were gone in under 24 hours.

Remember time through a Fab is 12 weeks, it's only ever less if they are using slack time to build speculatively, and we're way beyond that scenario at this point.

If you have orders on the books, at least you have a place in line, and push-out or take at your discretion. From here on out, we're still 18 months for this to all work itself out.

Pick something the auto manufacturers have a lot of orders/capacity focused on as they are the biggest gorillas in the room.