Environmental Uncertainty And Financial Distress Of Listed Companies In The Semiconductor Industry

With the rapid rise of my country's semiconductor industry,the uncertainty of the industry environment is also increasing.The continuous escalation of the US technology blockade against China,the continuous shortening of industry technology iteration cycles,and the intensified market competition have directly increased the environmental uncertainty of the semiconductor industry.At the same time,the semiconductor industry has the characteristics of high technology intensity,large proportion of R&D investment,strong cycle,and national service strategy.These characteristics make the semiconductor industry more vulnerable to changes in environmental uncertainty than other industries.Based on the above background,this article first summarizes and summarizes on the basis of case analysis,and derives three research hypotheses,which are:(1)Customer concentration plays a mediating role between environmental uncertainty and semiconductor companies' financial difficulties;(2)The abovementioned regulatory effects will vary with the different links in the industry chain of semiconductor companies;(3)The reasons for the above-mentioned differences are related to their R&D intensity.Furthermore,this article uses the 2015-2019 listed companies in the A-share semiconductor industry as a research sample,and draws on the idea of Wen Zhonglin's intermediary effect test and the Bootstrap method to verify the above three hypotheses.The research process and conclusions are as follows:(1)The mediating role of customer concentration between environmental uncertainty and semiconductor companies' financial distress is concealed,that is,from the perspective of total and direct effects,environmental uncertainty and semiconductor companies' financial distress The possibility is positively correlated.However,after adding customer concentration as an intermediary adjustment factor,environmental uncertainty is negatively related to the possibility of semiconductor companies experiencing financial distress,and the direction is opposite to the total effect and the direct effect;(2)In order to explore the reasons for the obscuration effect,this article On the basis of case analysis,the research sample is divided into two groups: the core industry chain and the supporting industry chain according to the industry chain where it is located.It is found that both groups have a partial mediation effect,but the mediation effect is in the opposite direction: in environmental uncertainty Under the situation of aggravation,semiconductor companies located in the core industry chain can reduce the possibility of financial distress by increasing customer concentration;semiconductor companies located in the supporting industry chain may have financial distress after increasing customer concentration But it went up.This explains to a certain extent the reason for the masking effect;(3)In order to study the reasons for the opposite direction of action between the two,this paper divides the whole sample into three groups according to the level of R&D intensity based on case analysis,and conducts The mediation effect test showed that only the high R&D intensity group had a partial mediation effect,and the direction of the mediation effect was the same as that in the core industry chain,while the medium or low R&D intensity group had a masking effect.It also corresponds to the conclusion that the R&D intensity of supporting the industrial chain is relatively low;(4)In summary,the mediating effect of customer concentration is affected by the link in the industrial chain where it is located,but essentially by its R&D intensity.Based on the above research conclusions,this article gives four countermeasures from the perspectives of government and enterprises.(1)At the government level: First,government departments should formulate targeted industrial policies and hedging policies based on the links in the industrial chain where local semiconductor companies are located;second,government departments should actively guide semiconductor companies to conduct R&D and innovation to help semiconductor companies improve Technical strength to respond to changes in the external environment.(2)At the corporate level: First,semiconductor companies should actively increase their R&D intensity,continuously accumulate their core competitiveness,and mitigate the adverse effects of fluctuations in environmental factors;secondly,semiconductor companies need to actively manage customer concentration,especially in supporting industries Chain semiconductor companies,they need to pay more attention to the problem of excessive customer concentration,so as to grasp the bargaining power and initiative to a certain extent,in order to reduce the possibility of financial distress.In addition,the above research conclusions can also provide a corresponding theoretical basis for investment in the semiconductor industry,and have certain reference value in target screening and post-investment management.The main innovations of this article are as follows.(1)Innovation in the research perspective: This article considers the formation mechanism of corporate financial distress from the perspective of the outside of the company,that is,from the outside of the company to the inside of the company,rather than the traditional from the inside to the inside;(2)Innovation in the research content : The characteristics of the semiconductor industry determine that the environmental uncertainty it faces is much higher than that of other industries.This article uses this as an entry point to expand the content of the article with a combination of case analysis and empirical analysis;(3)Research Methodological innovation: This article uses the coefficient of variation of sales revenue and the degree of divergence of securities analysts to measure environmental uncertainty,and strengthens the conclusion through mutual verification of the two.