On November 2, Guohai Securities published its review of ASR Microelectronics’ (SSE STAR: 688220) 2026 third-quarter report. The company posted Q3 revenue of RMB 1.363 billion, up 38.76% year-on-year; net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 274 million, an increase of RMB 356 million; and non-GAAP net profit of RMB 144 million, up RMB 280 million—its first single-quarter non-GAAP turnaround. For the first three quarters, revenue reached RMB 3.814 billion, up 32.43%, with attributable net profit of RMB 358 million, up RMB 686 million. Profitability improved in tandem: Q3 gross margin hit 33.25%, up 6.60 percentage points year-on-year and 4.42 points quarter-on-quarter; Q3 R&D spending was RMB 240 million, down 28.55%, with the R&D-to-revenue ratio falling to 17.62%—revenue growth, business-mix optimization and lower R&D expenses together drove the operating improvement.
On business structure, custom ASICs and smart SoCs are the twin growth engines. The ASIC business posted H1 revenue of RMB 322 million, up 155.47%, and roughly 948% year-on-year growth in Q3 alone; as of end-Q3, backlog rose from over RMB 1.5 billion at mid-year to RMB 2.85 billion, with mass-production orders climbing from under 20% to nearly 50% of the total—the business is shifting from design and acceptance toward volume supply. Cloud and edge AI projects account for about 70% of backlog, 6nm and 4nm advanced-node projects about 80%, and the company has taken on more than one cloud computing ASIC project adapted to 3D DRAM architectures, entering delivery and acceptance from Q4 2026. On smart SoCs, the first-generation 4G octa-core has achieved scaled commercial use extending into smartphones, tablets and smart vehicle systems; the second-generation 4G octa-core integrates a 20 TOPS discrete NPU supporting local deployment of mainstream large models. The first 5G smart SoC continues field testing, with the second-generation 5G SoC expected to tape out in Q1 2027. Cellular basebands remain the revenue base: H1 revenue of RMB 2.022 billion, up about 23%; Q3 own-brand product revenue grew about 28% to over 85% of total; 5G eMBB chips shipped over 500,000 units in Q1 and roughly 1.5 million cumulatively by end-H1, with 5G RedCap entering volume shipment across IoT and wearables. Guohai forecasts 2026-2028 revenue of RMB 5.234/6.897/9.136 billion and attributable net profit of RMB 504/824/1,144 million, maintaining a “Buy” rating.
Seen from the industry landscape, ASR’s inflection point mirrors the bifurcation of domestic chip design business models: one camp scales standard products to dilute costs, while another turns “custom ASIC + Turnkey delivery” into a new growth curve. The AI compute boom is simultaneously amplifying customization demand at both cloud and edge—cloud vendors want self-developed accelerators and device makers want differentiated AI chips, and platform design houses with advanced-node large-scale SoC design, in-house IP and Turnkey delivery are capturing this structural dividend. A second backdrop is on-device AI penetration: as large models sink into phones, AIoT and smart terminals, demand keeps rising for high-compute, low-power SoCs, and octa-core SoCs with discrete NPUs are becoming the new baseline for mid-to-high-end terminals. ASR’s three-layer structure—”baseband cash cow + high-elasticity ASIC + on-device AI new products”—offers a reference path for the majority of domestic SoC designers still hovering near breakeven.
For Junyi Microelectronics, the maturing of on-device AI SoCs and cellular chips directly expands the room and cost headroom for system selection: the edge AI inference scenarios addressed by K-series edge AI boards and the AI-BOX-3588 edge computing host are gaining ever more domestic SoC candidates with integrated NPUs, improving both supply and cost flexibility; the “5G connectivity + local compute” form of the 5G-EDGE-3399Pro echoes the price-decline trend represented by ASR’s scaled 5G eMBB shipments (about 1.5 million cumulative), pointing 5G edge systems toward more affordable cost bands; the Rockchip ecosystem underpinning the J-3568/J-3576/J-3588 core boards and the ASIC customization route complement each other, giving Junyi’s differentiated system designs both a “ready-made SoC” and a “custom chip” path; and the wireless modules (4G/5G module selection) of the IPC-i5-1235U industrial mini PC and touch-panel all-in-ones likewise benefit from cellular chips’ falling volume prices. The overall profitability improvement of domestic chip designers will ultimately transmit into more diverse and cheaper edge-system BOMs.
Source: http://k.sina.com.cn/article_5953740931_162dee0830670445pq.html (November 2, 2026)