In the first five months of this year, profits of electronic specialty material manufacturing enterprises above designated size increased by 665.4% year-on-year. Expert: The electronic materials consumed by AI servers are about 3 to 10 times that of regular servers.

Professor and economist Wan Zhe from Beijing Normal University stated in a telephone interview with reporters that there is a limited number of manufacturers of electronic specialized materials, with high technological barriers and long certification cycles, making it difficult for production capacity to expand rapidly in the short term. This gives electronic specialized materials manufacturers a strong pricing power in the industry chain, allowing them to effectively pass on costs to downstream, thus achieving excess profit growth. In contrast, terminal application end faces great cost pressure, hence profits are somewhat suppressed. It was noted by reporters that the cumulative profit growth rate of computer, communications, and other electronics manufacturing enterprises above a certain scale in the first five months was 103.9% year-on-year, lower than the 107.7% in the previous four months and 124.5% in the previous three months. Will the positive trend in the semiconductor industry chain continue? In response, Wan Zhe pointed out that from a supportive logic perspective, current AI servers, HBM storage, and advanced process orders have been scheduled until the end of this year, and some high-end production capacity delivery cycles have been extended. Wafer foundry prices and prices of independent chips are expected to continue rising throughout the year, with new production capacity not concentrated until the second half of 2027 at the earliest. The industry growth engine is transitioning from consumer electronics to AI computing power, automotive electronicization, humanoid robots, and other diverse application scenarios, significantly enhancing the resilience of the industry crossing cycle. Major global wafer fabs are continuing to increase capital expenditure, and demand is continuously being transmitted upstream to equipment and material segments.