Guojin Securities: The market has fully reflected pessimistic expectations, and technology iterations continue to support future PCB expectations
The Zhitong Finance App learned that Guojin Securities has released a research report saying that up to now, the PCB sector has retracted sharply in stock prices, mainly due to the blocking of AI narratives and market concerns about long-term demand. However, the bank believes that the PCB sector's prosperity remains relatively high. Coupled with future goals, it can be expected that the PCB sector will still have technological innovation and changes in the future. Therefore, the bank believes that the PCB sector still deserves close attention.
Guojin Securities's main views are as follows:
Upstream materials: Price increases are flexible, and the profit level of glass fiber cloth has reached a historically high level
The average year-on-year growth rate of A-share copper foil's revenue/net profit without return to mother in 26Q3 was 83%/1416%/5564%, the month-on-month growth calculation average was 18%/86%/184%, and the average gross margin and net margin calculations were 10% and 4%; the average year-on-year growth rate of A-share fiberglass cloth in 26Q3 was 95%/745%/870%, and the average month-on-month growth calculation was 27%/57%/57% The average calculation of gross margin and net profit margin is 51% and 32%; A-share resin is The average year-on-year growth rate of revenue/net profit deducted from non-mother in 26Q3 was 42%/856%/1013%, the month-on-month growth calculation average was 8%/147%/97%, and the average calculation of gross margin and net interest rate was 21% and 10%.
CCL: 26Q3 continues to accelerate, and profit margin levels have surpassed historical highs
Looking at midstream CCL, the average year-on-year growth rate of A-share CCL's revenue/net profit net profit after deduction in 26Q3 was 118%/1165%/1604%; in 26Q3, the average month-on-month growth calculation of revenue/net profit without return to mother was 37%/182%/195%; profitability accelerated in Q2, and Q3 surpassed the historical peak. The average calculation of gross margin and net profit margin for A-share CCL in 26Q3 was 38% and 23%.
PCB: 26Q3 was the first accelerated quarter. It can be seen that the pressure of price increases is transmitted to the PCB
Looking at the downstream PCB process, the average year-on-year growth rate calculation for A-share PCBs in 26Q3 was 56%/320%/350%; the average month-on-month growth calculation for revenue/net profit without return to mother in 26Q3 was 25%/165%/267%; in terms of profitability, the average calculation of gross margin and net profit of 26Q3 was 27% and 11%.
System bandwidth expansion is a trend, and demand for high-end materials will increase significantly
With the expansion of the number of AI connections and network scale, bandwidth expansion has become an inevitable trend. As a key component of network connectivity in AI, the functions of PCBs will also gradually evolve into high-bandwidth application scenarios. Judging from examples of system solutions, the bank has observed that several AI terminal customers are adopting larger bandwidth designs. Judging from Nvidia and Google's mainstream solutions next year, 1) the system bandwidth of the expandable version of Nvidia Rubin Ultra NVL576 has increased significantly, leading to a doubling of PCB usage for a single GPU; 2) Google TPUV8, the inter-chip communication bandwidth has increased to 19.2 Tb/s, which is 2 times that of the previous generation. Therefore, the computer board specification has been raised to 34 to 36 layers, using Super Ultra low loss Grade copper-clad plate.
Improved cabinet integration puts forward multi-faceted requirements for PCB/CCL performance
Integrating AI chip nodes as much as possible is conducive to nearby connections between network nodes, improving assembly efficiency, and optimizing system-level performance. The bank observed that all major terminal manufacturers have tried various interconnection solutions, but judging from the development trend, the bank believes that PCB is still the core solution for first-layer network interconnection in the cabinet. 1) Nvidia Huang Renxun mentioned at the 2026 GTC conference that removing all wiring harnesses in the tray is beneficial to improving assembly efficiency, and proposed an orthogonal backboard scheme. According to industry chain tracking, the number of layers of orthogonal backboards is at least 70 layers, and up to hundreds of layers. The materials being tested include extreme low loss grade high-speed materials and PTFE grade high-frequency materials. Both the processing requirements for PCBs and the material grade requirements for CCL have been upgraded by leaps and bounds. 2) Google In the TPUV8 inference chip, Google introduced the Boardfly architecture. The physical layer matching relationship was changed to 2 calculation boards in 1 tray and 8 trays interconnected through copper wires. Further integration is the general trend in the future, and the importance of PCB interconnection within the cabinet is expected to increase.
Risk Alerts
AI capital expenditure falls short of expectations; changes brought about by model innovations such as DeepSeek; AI technology development falls short of expectations; competition intensifies.