Infineon CEO Jochen Hanebeck emphasises need for customer commitments for semiconductor expansion - ET Manufacturing

Hanebeck's stance is a reckoning with the 2021-2022 panic-capex cycle. With power and automotive MCU inventory still normalizing, unanchored capex is effectively a declaration of war on shareholders. The technical ripple is immediate: equipment orders for power-device fabs shift from prepaid lock-in to milestone-triggered disbursement, amplifying cash-flow volatility for ASML and Lam Research. More critically, if customers demand dual- or triple-sourcing as a geopolitical hedge, single-fab utilization ceilings are artificially compressed, and the fixed-cost amortization model that justified these expansions collapses. Competitively, STMicroelectronics and NXP will likely mirror the commitment-for-capacity playbook. Meanwhile, UMC and Powerchip in Taiwan, China may go the opposite direction—subsidy-backed demand guarantees paired with aggressive pricing to poach Infineon's hesitant accounts. Over the next 18 months, the power-semi segment will stratify by commitment tier: top-tier Tier-1s lock in multi-year offtake; mid-tier customers get squeezed out. Fabs without anchored orders will almost certainly slip past 2026. This is not caution—it is a paradigm shift from capacity as power back to demand as power.