The Sino-U.S. trade war has intensified. Although the Sichuan-Xiwei hotline is expected to take place at the G20 summit in the near future, there are deep trade differences between the two sides and it is not easy to resolve them in the short term. Next year, focusing on the 5G infrastructure construction of telecommunications companies in various countries is a relatively safe investment direction in this uncertain era. Among them, in the 5G base station construction business opportunity, PCB (printed circuit board) specifications will be greatly improved, and those who can develop high-specification PCBs will benefit.

Observing the development schedule of 5G spectrum in various countries, South Korea, Japan, China, and Europe will release the frequency band between 3GHz and 6GHz in the first half of 2019, which is much higher than the highest 4G frequency band of 2.7GHz. In order to make the high-frequency signal work smoothly, the PCB specifications of 5G equipment will be improved: the upstream CCL material (copper foil substrate) of the PCB must use Low Dk (dielectric constant) and Low Df (low dissipation factor) material specifications, which can Only those who provide such high-end PCBs can win 5G business opportunities.

In addition to Low Dk and Low Df, when the 5G frequency band is developed to 40GHz and 80GHz millimeter wave high frequency, the original soft board antenna will be limited, and the ultra-fine pitch solution with a width of less than 0.5mm will be adopted. In addition, 5G uses 4*4 array antennas Design, the demand for IC substrates has also increased, which will stimulate the back-end support business opportunities for 5G base stations.

The Taishin research team believes that as consumers' demand for network audio and video and quality requirements increase, and the demand for data traffic has exploded, there will still be great demand for related broadband construction in the future.

U.S. Netcom system manufacturers predict that 2019 will be the first year of 100G heavy volume. When the price comes to a sweet spot, brand manufacturers are more willing to switch from 40G to 100G Switch. Taiwan supplies Netcom high-end Switch PCB manufacturers, such as copper foil substrate manufacturers. Yao, PCB board manufacturer Jinxiang Electronics, etc., are expected to benefit from the trend of 100G heavy volume, which will drive business growth.

Under the influence of the Sino-US trade war, high-end PCBs will return to Taiwan for production, instead of being affected by tariffs. The third stage of the US tariffs is expected to increase from 10% to 25% on imports of US$200 billion of goods imported from China from January 2019, which will affect Netcom products, motherboards, PCBs and power supplies, etc. Vendor.

In the past, tariffs on PCB products sold to the United States were mostly lower than 5%. In the future, more companies will be forced to shift their production positions from China. Among them, Netcom’s enterprise-level switches and high-end servers have a gross profit margin of 20-30%, which will be exported from Taiwan to The US tariff is lower than 5%, and it is still profitable to move assembly OEMs back to Taiwan for production.

Niche-type Netcom PCB board factories, Netcom copper foil substrate material factories, such as high-end Netcom PCB manufacturers such as Taiwan Yao and Jinxiang Electronics, in addition to high gross profit, Taiwan also has production bases that can transfer production capacity, so that high-end technology can be transferred. Rooted in Taiwan, secondly, enjoy the advantage of future orders (product technology upgrade).

Benefited from the development of PCB's high-frequency transmission to 5G, 100G high-speed transmission, and the impact of Sino-US trade policies, it is expected that more and more Netcom, server-related EMS, and ODM manufacturers will move high-end Netcom production capacity back to Taiwan for production and reshape High-end Netcom's PCB industry cluster, high-end Netcom Data Center, Switch supply chain, including PCB copper foil substrate suppliers Tai Yao, Tai Optoelectronics, PCB board factory supplier Jin Xiangdian, 5G high-frequency material soft board developer platform County, 5G base station IC carrier board supplier Jingsus, etc., will start the layout from Q4 this year to Q1 next year, making contributions to the performance of servers, data centers, and high-end 100G Switch, and driving revenue and profit growth from Q2 next year.