China’s first-half semiconductor earnings were not confined to one breakout company. A reported aggregation of 186 A-share-listed semiconductor companies shows how a powerful period for memory, foundry services and chipmaking equipment reached across several parts of the domestic supply chain.
TrendForce, citing the Chinese semiconductor outlet ijiwei, reported that the companies generated combined net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 160.51 billion in the first half of 2026, up 607.2% from a year earlier. That figure is a calculation for the covered group, not a government statistic and not evidence that every Chinese semiconductor company grew at the same rate. Still, it gives scale to a performance that Nikkei Asia described as more than a 600% increase in Chinese chipmaker earnings.
The numbers put the sector’s earnings cycle in a different frame. CXMT supplied the largest company-level contribution in the reported rankings, while Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, or SMIC, posted a separate gain in foundry revenue and profit. Equipment makers NAURA and AMEC also appeared in reporting on the spillover, suggesting that the improvement extended beyond chip producers themselves.
A 186-company profit calculation sets the sector’s scale
The TrendForce report gives the broadest numerical view available in the fact set. Across the 186 companies, combined net profit attributable to shareholders reached RMB 160.51 billion during the first half. The 607.2% year-over-year increase is precise within that reported calculation. Nikkei’s report used a 620% headline framing, so the two figures should not be treated as competing measurements without regard to their different presentation.
The distinction matters because CXMT’s results are much larger than the average implied by the aggregate, while the aggregate combines CXMT’s result with the results of the other companies in the covered set. The sector total therefore describes a distribution of earnings, not a uniform outcome. It also keeps the story from becoming a simple claim that artificial intelligence lifted every company by the same amount.
Nikkei linked the broader rise to the AI boom and China’s national campaign for technology self-sufficiency. TrendForce’s framing included memory-market conditions, AI demand and domestic substitution. Those are reported explanations rather than a causal decomposition that assigns a specific share of the increase to any one factor.
The result builds on the domestic manufacturing theme explored in EastFrontier’s earlier coverage of China’s chip self-sufficiency target. In this earnings cycle, the relevant evidence is not a policy target but reported company performance and the way gains appeared in multiple parts of the production chain.
CXMT’s memory results show how pricing and capacity affected earnings
ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, ranked first by revenue and net profit within the company set covered by TrendForce. The report put its first-half revenue at RMB 150.31 billion, an increase of 873.64% year over year. Global Times independently reported the same revenue and growth rate from CXMT’s interim report.
The profit figures preserve a small source-specific difference. TrendForce reported net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 77.61 billion. Global Times reported RMB 77.60 billion and said the result reversed a RMB 2.332 billion loss in the first half of 2025. These are reporting and rounding differences, not a material disagreement over the direction of the result.
Global Times said CXMT attributed demand to mainstream markets including servers, smartphones and PCs, as well as emerging smart-vehicle and wearable-device segments. The company also attributed tight global DRAM supply and substantial price increases in the first half to growth in computing-power demand and capacity reallocation by major global manufacturers. Those explanations belong to CXMT and should not be presented as independently established causation.
CXMT’s product disclosures provide a second, company-specific marker of its expansion. In its September 20 newsroom announcement, the company said its G5 Platform, its fifth-generation DRAM technology platform, entered mass production. CXMT said gross die per wafer was at least 50% higher than on the previous platform when normalized to an 8Gb density baseline. It also said two G5-based LPDDR5X products had 24Gb per-die capacity, 50% above the previous equivalent generation, and were in mass production.
The announcement is a primary company claim about technology and manufacturing status, not an independent assessment of market share or competitive position. That boundary is important alongside EastFrontier’s previous reporting on CXMT and China’s memory-chip expansion, because product milestones and financial results answer different questions.
SMIC and equipment makers broaden the earnings signal
SMIC’s first-half results show that the earnings surge was not limited to memory. Yicai reported operating revenue of RMB 38.635 billion, up 19.4% year over year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 4.467 billion, up 94.2%. TrendForce gave the revenue as a rounded RMB 38.64 billion while retaining the same growth rate.
Yicai’s summary of SMIC’s half-year report attributed the company’s operating context to strong demand for chips supporting AI, returning overseas orders and stronger localized manufacturing. It also said SMIC negotiated higher prices with customers in product categories where demand exceeded supply. These are explanations reported from SMIC’s own account of its operations, rather than a general description of every foundry in China.
The contrast between CXMT’s explosive revenue growth and SMIC’s more measured top-line increase is analytically useful. It shows why the 607.2% sector figure should not be used as a shorthand for every company. CXMT’s memory exposure and the conditions it described coincided with one earnings profile; SMIC’s foundry business showed another, SMIC cited demand for AI-supporting chips and stronger localized manufacturing, while CXMT attributed its results to the end-market, supply and capacity conditions relayed by Global Times.
The equipment side adds another layer. TrendForce reported that NAURA generated RMB 20.16 billion in first-half revenue, up 24.90% year over year, while AMEC’s net profit attributable to shareholders rose 300.22%. Nikkei’s standfirst described the earnings bonanza as spilling over to those two chip-tool makers. The available reporting does not establish that their figures are included in the 186-company aggregate, so they should remain a separate, attributed signal.
For investors and industry observers, the most defensible conclusion is narrower than a claim of universal prosperity. A reported 186-company aggregation, CXMT’s interim results, SMIC’s half-year report and equipment-maker figures together indicate that first-half 2026 gains reached several semiconductor segments. The next question is whether memory pricing, demand for AI-supporting chips and localization can sustain those results after the conditions cited by the companies change.