The Price And Quantity Of PCB For 5G Base Station Are Increasing

In recent years, 5G and HAS become the new main force to drive the growth of PCB business.

From the perspective of product structure, the multilayer board still occupies the mainstream position in the current PCB market. With the rapid development of electronic circuit industry technology, the integration function of components is increasingly extensive, and electronic products have more prominent requirements for PCB density. High-end PCB products such as high multilayer board, flexible board, HDI board, and packaging substrate gradually occupy a dominant position in the market.

From the perspective of the downstream application, due to the wide application range of PCB products, they are less affected by a single industry periodically and mainly change with the macro-economic fluctuations and the overall development status of the electronic information industry. The overall growth rate of PCB follows the macroeconomy.

If the demand is estimated, the price and quantity of PCB used in 5G base station will increase, which will strongly pull the demand for PCB. Guosheng Securities estimates that, based on the comparison between 4G and 5G, the number of 5G base stations maybe 1.1 to 1.5 times that of current 4G base stations, and the number of micro stations may exceed 9 million. At the same time, it is estimated that the PCB value of 5G base stations is about 12,500 yuan, which is about three times that of previous 4G base stations.

According to the research of the electronics industry, in the future, the market share of the multilayer boards will still be the first in the market, providing important support for the overall development of the PCB industry. The proportion of HIGH-TECH PCBs, such as flexible board, HDI board, and packaging substrate, will constantly increase and become the mainstream of market development.

According to the 2018 annual report, PCB product structure optimization offset the adverse impact of Nantong factory’s capacity climb, and the gross margin increased by 0.71 percentage points year on year. Packaging substrate revenue increased 25.52% and gross margin 29.69%, up 3.5 percentage points year on year, mainly benefiting from the rapid growth and increasing proportion of fingerprint and RF module products. The growth of the demand for products in the communications field boosted the revenue of electronic equipment joint venture by 27.08% year-on-year.

In the first half of 2019, the number of copper-clad lamination sold by Shengyi Technology increased by 4.02% year-on-year, and the number of semi-cured tablets sold by Shengyi Technology increased by 2.13% year-on-year. However, the combined sales revenue of these two products decreased by 2.32% year-on-year, which also showed the phenomenon of product volume rising and price falling.

It is worth noting that the gross profit margin of Shengyi technology’s copper-clad and binder business increased, up 4.4 percentage points year on year to 22.96%, although the unit price declined somewhat. The increase of gross margin is mainly due to the decrease of raw material cost and proper control of unit manufacturing cost, and the company has shipped part of 5G high-frequency copper-clad products in the first half of the year.