Main points
“Mother of electronic products” with cycle and growth attributes
PCB is a mature electronic product with a history of nearly 100 years, which has both cycle and growth attributes: on the one hand, the PCB market shows a certain periodicity dominated by factors such as supply and demand, global economic growth and raw material prices; On the other hand, enterprises whose downstream applications are dominated by high growth tracks such as automobiles and servers, and enterprises whose product types are dominated by high-frequency, high-speed, carrier sector and other high-end products will show strong growth toughness. From the perspective of 21q3, PCB sector presents a certain structured market.
Upstream raw materials: what about the future price? Copper foil, resin and glass fiber cloth, which account for more than 60% of the cost of raw materials, increased by more than 50% in 2021. Due to the weak bargaining power and the mismatch of price adjustment cycle, the gross profit margin of PCB manufacturers showed a downward trend quarter by quarter in 21 years. With the price level of raw materials peaking and falling, the overall raw materials (especially resin and glass fiber cloth) are expected to fall by a certain extent in 22 years. According to our calculation, the price drop of the three main materials in 2022 will lead to the increase of the average gross profit margin of PCB company by 1.5-3pct.
Downstream applications: what are the golden tracks?
① automobile PCB: the golden track under the double blessing of electrification and intelligence. With the increasing penetration of new energy vehicles, the continuous upgrading of ADAS and the increasing application of intelligent cockpit, the consumption of single vehicle PCB is increasing. The value of single car PCB also surged from 400 yuan for traditional fuel vehicles to 2000-3000 yuan for intelligent electric vehicles. At the same time, the market expects that the trend of automobile core shortage will gradually ease in 22h2, and a major constraint factor in the automobile market in 22 years is expected to be eliminated. According to prismark’s statistics and prediction, the Global Automotive PCB market will be US $6.132 billion in 2020, and will grow at a compound growth rate of 9% from 2020 to 2024. By 2024, the Global Automotive PCB market will reach US $8.736 billion.
② server PCB: cloud computing traffic is rising, and the volume and price of server PCB are rising at the same time. In terms of quantity: in the post epidemic era, data traffic continues to grow, and the capital expenditure of cloud computing giants at home and abroad maintains a compound growth rate of 15% – 20%, which lays a solid foundation for the growth of upstream server PCB demand. In terms of quality: Intel expects to launch a new generation of CPU in Q3 in 2022, and will also implement pcie5 Application of 0 bus standard. The increase of transmission rate will have higher requirements for PCB materials and layers. We predict from PCIe 4 During the upgrade from 0 to 5.0, the PCB value of a single server will increase by more than 100%.
It is suggested to pay attention to: PCB manufacturers with high proportion of downstream vehicles and plans to expand their vehicle share in the future, such as Wus Printed Circuit (Kunshan) Co.Ltd(002463) , Shenzhen Kinwong Electronic Co.Ltd(603228) , Aoshikang Technology Co.Ltd(002913) , Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing Co.Ltd(002384) ; High quality suppliers of data communication server PCB, such as Shennan Circuits Co.Ltd(002916) , Wus Printed Circuit (Kunshan) Co.Ltd(002463) , Shengyi Electronics Co.Ltd(688183) , Victory Giant Technology (Huizhou)Co.Ltd(300476) ; Main suppliers of HW Kunpeng server PCB, such as Bomin Electronics Co.Ltd(603936) ; High quality supplier of carrier sector, such as Shenzhen Fastprint Circuit Tech Co.Ltd(002436) .
Risk tips: 1) downstream demand is less than expected; 2) Increased competition leads to the decline of manufacturers’ profit margin; 3) The price of upstream raw materials continued to rise.
