SMIC Q3 Revenue Rises 6.1% to $3.19B as Gross Margin Hits 29.9%
SMIC reported third-quarter revenue of $3.19 billion and a 29.9% gross margin, both above guidance, but guides fourth-quarter margin back to 26% to 28% as its fabs run at 97.3%.
Chips & Power DeskEdited by Ege Erten
2 min readAI-assisted
A wafer in a fabrication tool, from SMIC's company photo library. The image is illustrative and is not specific to the quarter's results.
Image: SMIC
Source · Press image from the SMIC website, used for news reporting.
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $3,190.0 million on November 12, up 6.1% from $3,005.6 million in the second quarter and above the 2% to 4% growth it had guided in August.
Gross profit was $953.2 million, for a gross margin of 29.9%, compared with 25.3% in the second quarter and 22.0% a year earlier, according to the company's results release. The margin also beat the 26% to 28% range SMIC gave in August. Revenue was 33.9% higher than the $2,381.8 million of the third quarter of 2025, by Voltgrid's arithmetic from the release.
SMIC's gross margin rose to 29.9% in Q3 2026 from 25.3% in Q2 and 22.0% a year earlier, and the company guides 26% to 28% for Q4.
Illustration (AI-generated)
Reuters reported that net profit reached $428.4 million, up 123.4% from a year earlier and above the $418.4 million that analysts polled by LSEG expected. Reuters also said revenue beat a $3.09 billion consensus. The net profit figures come from Reuters' report, not from the release text Voltgrid read.
What the fourth-quarter guidance says
SMIC guided fourth-quarter revenue up 4% to 6% sequentially and gross margin of 26% to 28%. On Voltgrid's arithmetic, that is revenue of roughly $3.32 billion to $3.38 billion, with gross profit of about $0.86 billion to $0.95 billion. The top of that range sits just below the $953.2 million earned in the third quarter, so SMIC is guiding to more sales but no more gross profit. The company did not give a reason for the lower margin in the release.
Utilization, wafers and China mix
Reuters, citing the company's figures, said monthly capacity rose 1.8% from the prior quarter to 1.1 million eight-inch-equivalent wafers, with utilization at 97.3%, up 3.6 percentage points. SMIC shipped 3.03 million eight-inch-equivalent wafers, up 5.7%. Capital spending was $1.09 billion, down from $1.84 billion in the second quarter.
China accounted for 90.8% of revenue and the United States for 7.8%, down from 8.2%, according to Reuters. A fab running at 97.3% has little room to add output without new capacity, which is why the lower capital spending and the guided margin dip are the numbers to watch.
The release says SMIC is expanding capacity in response to customer demand and building its portfolio of premium products. In August it said AI-driven industrial momentum would keep supporting demand for chip manufacturing.
Why it matters for China's AI chips
SMIC is the foundry the country's accelerator designers depend on, and its limits on advanced-node wafers shape how fast they can ship. As Voltgrid reported, the Huawei Ascend 950's ceiling is set by HBM yields and SMIC wafers. The quarter shows a fully loaded foundry, but SMIC does not split revenue by node in the release text read here, so it is not possible to say how much comes from AI parts.
What is not confirmed yet
SMIC holds its earnings call on November 13 at 08:30 local time. The net profit, capital spending, utilization and China-mix figures above come from Reuters, not from the release text. A Chinese-language report on the exchange filing gives net profit attributable to shareholders in yuan with a different growth rate of 87.6%, which Voltgrid has not reconciled with Reuters' 123.4% because it has not read the filing itself. The reason for the guided margin drop and the node mix are not yet stated.
