TapTechNews, June 14. Kuo Ming-chi released an investment briefing today, stating that due to various factors such as AIPC, regular servers, and the increase in raw materials, the raw material CCL for mid-to-low-end printed circuit boards has generally increased in price.
Kuo Ming-chi said that as the CCL items below M4 have generally increased in price by an average of approximately 10%, while the high-end CCL above M4 currently shows no sign of price increase.
From the supply side, the demand for AI servers has skyrocketed in the past year, prompting CCL manufacturers to upgrade their production lines to meet the demand for high-specifications (above M4), indirectly resulting in a reduction in supply below M4.
From the demand side, for AIPC led by Qualcomm, the material of the mainboard has been upgraded from standard-loss to mid-loss, and the unit price has increased by 15-20%. Just like mobile phones, Qualcomm will specify the AIPC components/materials, and currently mainly uses Taiwan Union Technology's TU862S and Elite Materials' IT170GRA1. Except for Samsung (because it is very familiar with Qualcomm platform development and has the ability to choose suppliers by itself), almost all other brands (accounting for 90-95% of Qualcomm's AIPC shipments) basically follow Qualcomm's material suggestions.
The proportion of mid-loss CCL used in Intel and AMD's AIPC mainboards has also increased, and some models still continue to use standard-loss.
The recovery of regular server demand starting from the second half of 2024 also boosts the demand for mid-to-low-end CCL. Many companies have publicly stated (such as Broadcom, ASPEED Technology, etc.) that the regular server demand will begin to recover from the second half of 2024.
The increase in raw materials has a more obvious impact on the profit of mid-to-low-end CCL. Another reason for the price increase of mid-to-low-end CCL is to respond to the increase in upstream materials. This is of great help to profits, because the profit of mid-to-low-end CCL in the past few months has been eroded by the increase in raw material costs, and after the price increase, the raw material costs have been completely passed on to customers, and the profit will be significantly improved.
TapTechNews note: The full name of CCL is Copper Clad Laminate, which is the raw material for various circuits and printed circuit boards.
CCL is formed by laminating copper foil to both sides of a resin-impregnated glass fabric sheet. The final product after processing is an electronic circuit that is part of a printed circuit board.
Usage
Regular electronic circuit board applications
High-speed communication applications (4G-LTE, 5G base station/radar applications)
Automotive-ADAS_Radar applications
Avionics – radar applications