Guotai Junan Securities: Strong demand for AI computing power continues, focus on semiconductor autonomy and controllability, Apple supply chain, and AI-driven beneficiary industrial chains

Zhitong
2025.07.20 12:29
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Guojin Securities released a research report, focusing on companies with strong performance growth sustainability and the AI-related industrial chain, including AI-PCB, computing power hardware, semiconductor autonomy, and the Apple supply chain. The demand for AI-PCB is strong, and high growth performance is expected to continue in the second half of the year. Taiwan Semiconductor has raised its growth rate forecast for 2025, with Q2 revenue of $30.07 billion, a year-on-year increase of 44.4%, and a net profit of $12.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 60.7%. The company guides Q3 revenue to be between $31.8 billion and $33 billion, with growth mainly driven by HPC AI demand

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, Guojin Securities has released a research report focusing on companies with strong performance growth sustainability, AI-PCB and computing power hardware, semiconductor self-control, Apple supply chain, and AI-driven beneficiary industrial chains. AI-PCB is experiencing a demand resonance, with several AI-PCB companies currently seeing strong orders, full production, and sales, and are actively expanding production. High growth in performance is expected to continue in the second half of the year. The demand for AI copper-clad laminates is also strong, and with the ramp-up of NVIDIA's GB200 and ASIC, AI servers and switches are increasingly adopting M8 materials, with the future potential for M9 materials. Due to the slow expansion of overseas AI copper-clad laminates, leading manufacturers of copper-clad laminates in mainland China are expected to benefit actively, and core beneficiary companies are viewed positively.

Sub-industry prosperity indicators: Consumer electronics (steady upward), PCB (accelerating upward), semiconductor chips (steady upward), semiconductor foundry/equipment/materials/components (steady upward), display (bottom stabilization), passive components (steady upward), packaging and testing (steady upward).

Guojin Securities' main viewpoints are as follows:

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has raised its growth rate forecast for 2025, with strong and sustained demand for AI computing power. In Q2 2025, TSMC achieved revenue of $30.07 billion, a year-on-year increase of 44.4% and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 17.8%, with a gross margin of 58.6%, up 5.4 percentage points year-on-year and down 0.2 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, achieving a net profit of $12.8 billion, up 60.7% year-on-year and up 10.2% quarter-on-quarter. The company guides Q3 2025 revenue to be between $31.8 billion and $33 billion, representing an 8% quarter-on-quarter growth and a 38% year-on-year growth. The company has raised its full-year revenue growth guidance in USD to around 30%, with growth drivers mainly coming from strong HPC AI demand and advanced process demand. TSMC stated that the increase in the number of tokens and the use of AI models means more computing demand and more chip demand, indicating strong AI demand, including strong sovereign AI demand.

Jensen Huang revealed during the expo that NVIDIA will resume sales of H20 chips to China, and the company has received a large number of H20 chip orders. Oracle announced that it will invest $3 billion in Germany and the Netherlands over the next five years to enhance its infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing services in the European market. The company expects its capital expenditures for the fiscal year 2026 to exceed $25 billion, with most of the spending allocated to data center infrastructure and AI.

The firm believes that GB200 will see rapid shipments in the second half of the year, and GB300 will also ramp up quickly. Additionally, B200 and B300 are actively pulling goods, and the industrial chain is entering a peak season for demand. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta are rapidly developing ASIC chips, and the firm expects that by 2026, the number of ASIC chips from these three companies will exceed 7 million, with manufacturers like OpenAI and xAI also vigorously promoting ASIC chips. The rapid ramp-up of NVIDIA's Blackwell and the vigorous development of ASIC will drive sustained strong demand for AI-PCB. NVIDIA is also actively advancing the research and development of orthogonal backplanes, which, if adopted, will significantly increase the value of single-rack PCBs. Currently, several AI-PCB companies have strong orders, full production, and sales, and are actively expanding production, with high growth in performance expected to continue in the second half of the year The demand for AI copper-clad laminates is also strong. With the mass production of NVIDIA's GB200 and ASICs, AI servers and switches are increasingly turning to M8 materials, and there is hope for an evolution towards M9 materials in the future. The technological upgrade brings continuous value enhancement. Due to the slow expansion of overseas copper-clad laminate production, leading manufacturers in mainland China are expected to benefit actively. Overall, it is recommended to focus on sectors with strong performance growth sustainability, including AI-PCB, core computing hardware, self-controllable technologies, the Apple supply chain, and industries benefiting from AI.

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