PCB/CCL更新：高速铜箔会成为另一个瓶颈吗？ PCB/CCL 更新：高速铜箔是否会成为下一个瓶颈？

China (PRC) | Technology PCB/CCL Update: Will High-speed Copper FoilBecome Another Bottleneck? We estimate HVLP demand to expand from ~1.3kt/mo in 2025 to >6kt/mo in 2030, driven by 30-40% CAGR of AI CCL demand for infra buildout.Spec upgrades from HVLP1/2/3 to HVLP4 and wider adoption of DTHare key drivers of soaring ASP. Industrywide supply tightness to create Copper foil to dance with AI PCB/CCL.Echoing our previous initiation on PCB (Link), given weforecast ~60%/70% CAGR of AI PCB/CCL TAM in 2025-30E driven by tech giants' rising capexplans on AI infra buildout, this trend has also brought structural changes to electrolytic copperfoil as one of key upstream materials. We estimate AI CCL monthly demand at ~1.8m sheets/month in 2025 and expect 30-40% CAGR to reach >9m sheets/month in 2030. As a result, we Soaring ASP from spec upgrade a key driver.Major AI players (NVIDIA/Google/Amazon) willlargely transfer their copper foil spec from HVLP1/2/3 to HVLP4 on their upcoming new AIservers in 2H26, creating significant demand on the latter. The outlook from Mitsui on its HVLPsales growth CAGR at 15-20% in 2025-30 seems conservative, potentially creating spilloveropportunities for other vendors. We also see rising demand on DTH as another advancedcopper foil driven by memory and optical transceiver. We estimate HVLP4 could reach >10xas of traditional HTE on pricing, and DTH could even be roughly 2x as of HVLP4. As demand AI copper foil supply gap could be there, but Chinese vendors are gaining traction to fill it up.With industrywide supply tightness caused by surging AI-related demand, we think domesticplayers could demonstrate their advantage in production capacity and potentially enable themto gain more traction on high-end copper foil. We anticipate notable supply gap in the next1-2 years for HVLP4-equivalent demand if we only count international players' capacity. But byincluding TGCF/Defu as emerging suppliers on high-speed copper foil, we now expect global Implications on the industry & our coverage.We believe such trend will benefit those copperfoil and equipment vendors technically redied.TGCF/Defuare now leading Chinese players inAI copper foil in customer verification and shipment volume. For TGCF, its RTF/HVLP alreadytook up the majority of its gross profit in 2025, making it almost a direct AI play. For Defu,in addition to capabilities for high-speed copper foil, we see an active capacity expansionplan (another 50kt capacity in 2027-28 focusing on RTF/HVLP), which may demonstrateits strength in acquiring critical tools. Equipment makers such asTaijin New Energycould Jacky He * | Equity Analyst+852 3743 8084 | jacky.he@jefferies.com Edison Lee, CFA * | Equity Analyst852 3743 8009 | edison.lee@jefferies.com Nick Cheng * | Equity Analyst+852 3743 8750 | nick.cheng@jefferies.com Matt Ma * | Equity Analyst852 3767 1109 | matt.ma@jefferies.com Annie Ping, CFA, FRM * | Equity Associate+852 3767 1273 | annie.ping@jefferies.com Copper Foil's Revival: Riding the Tide of Booming AI PCB Demand Copper foil to ride on booming AI PCB/CCL demand.As indicated in our initiation on severalPCB names (Link), we forecast ~15% CAGR in 2025-30 for the global TAM of PCB, mainly drivenby ~60%/70% CAGR of AI PCB/CCL TAM, as AI infrastructure growth is likely to continue to besupported by tech giants' rising capex plans. We believe this trend has also brought structuralchanges to electrolytic copper foil, which acts as one of key upstream materials for PCB/CCL to be We forecast CAGR of 30-40% for AI HVLP shipment.To meet the rising requirement of datatransmission, HVLP (high-volume low-pressure) copper foil as a high-end material has alreadybecome the mainstream solution for AI infra, which has significantly higher value and technicalbarriers compared with traditional copper foil, and we see continued product upgrade for strongerperformance going forward. Based on current AI chip volume and allocation to each player (NVIDIA,CSP, etc.), AI PCB spec adopted and future roadmap, we estimate AI CCL monthly demand at~1.8m sheets/monthin 2025 (including GPU/ASIC server, high-speed, and others), translating Moving towards Higher-end: From HTE/RTF to HVLP/DTH Materials upgrade to push PCB/CCL's evolution.The major end devices that adopt high-end PCBinclude AI server (mainboard, OAM, UBB, etc.), high-speed switch, and optical transceiver (>=400G),and copper foil generally takes up ~30% of CCL's cost and another <5% of PCB's cost (adoptedon both PCB/CCL individually). While HTE (high-temperature elongation) acts as a commodity-likeproduct with wide applications in many downstream markets and RTF (reverse-treated foil) used HVLP to migrate from gen 1 to gen 4; International leader's outlook seems conservative.Asa typical high-end copper foil, HVLP is generally differentiated by the surface profile (including will be for HVLP. After years of product evolution, HVLP has been upgraded from the initial gen 1to gen 4, which