The top 100 PCB manufacturers in the world in 2019

The global PCB industry has experienced strong growth as well as huge international transformations over the last 20 years. This report describes how the USA and Japan dominated PCB production just 20 years ago and how they are now inexorably losing this leading role to China. Not only is sales growth being determined there, but PCB giants are emerging that are eclipsing everything that has gone before. One of the main reasons for this is the immense demand for boards for the upcoming 5G networks and the associated high-performance servers. Europe's PCB manufacturers are increasingly left to supply a specific technology-oriented market and concentrate on special applications in a corona-disrupted economy.

Introduction

This year's NTI 100 report is the result of six months of work and the 25th edition since it was first published. As often mentioned in the past, it is becoming increasingly difficult to compile an NTI 100 list, as many new entries come from growing Chinese manufacturers and only a quarter of the companies listed in this overview are publicly traded.

Unfortunately, the latter sometimes publish their annual reports at a time that does not always correlate with the purpose of these reports. The data for most unlisted Chinese manufacturers comes from the 'Top 100 Makers' published by the Chinese PCB Manufacturers Association (CPCA). As valuable as the CPCA list is, it has certain shortcomings: some of the important manufacturers are simply overlooked, other entries in the list come from individual factories but not directly from the manufacturers. Without the CPCA data, however, the current NTI 100 report would not be possible. The data from the Taiwanese PCB Manufacturers Association (TPCA) is also important, but only refers to listed manufacturers. Therefore, the author had to contact those manufacturers directly who are not publicly listed. Fortunately, they provided him with their sales data. Similarly, only AT&S and Schweizer Electronics published their annual reports. The other European companies KSG, Somacis and Würth Elektronik provided the author with their sales figures. The board manufacturers in Southeast Asia did the same. The author would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who provided the important data.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of guesswork in this report, especially for those manufacturers that are part of large companies. Normally they do not mention their PCB part of the business separately. The author had to make educated guesses in these cases. Therefore, there are some major or minor errors. He takes responsibility for this. However, he hopes that PCB manufacturers can still compare where they stand between competitors, and that equipment and material manufacturers can see where they can 'attack'. In defense of his position, the author cautions readers to assume that Table 8, the overall NTI-100 for 2019, is a reasonably accurate representation of the world's leading PCB manufacturers. Complete accuracy cannot be guaranteed.

In recent years, more and more rigid PCB manufacturers have entered the assembly business (PCBA). For some time now, major PCB manufacturers involved in EMS activities have also been manufacturing flex boards for Apple products, but times are changing. The rough estimate of PCBA value added by 'PCB manufacturers', i.e. not EMS specialists, in the assembly of flexible or rigid boards is around $6 billion. It is no longer possible to accurately separate the PCBA value from the total output of PCB manufacturers. Therefore, the total sum of the 122 manufacturers includes the PCBA value. It is important to keep this in mind when evaluating the NTI 100 overview so as not to come to the wrong conclusions.

Of the 122 manufacturers in Table 8 with sales of at least $100 million in 2019, 52 manufacturers, or around 43%, recorded negative growth. However, their losses were offset by the gains of the others. In the past, the names of the manufacturers were given as they are in their home countries. If readers would like to know these, they are welcome to contact the author.

Average exchange rates for dollar conversion

The exchange rates of most major currencies in 2019 were roughly the same as in 2018, with the exception of the Chinese RMB and the South Korean Won. The average exchange rates are calculated by adding the daily exchange rates listed on www.exchangerates.com and dividing by the number of days, i.e. approximately 260 days per year excluding Sundays and Saturdays(Table 1).

NTI Summary from www.exchangerates.com

To see the growth or decline of each manufacturer in local currencies, 2018 revenues were converted to US dollars at 2019 exchange rates. Therefore, one may notice slight differences in the revenues listed in the NTI-100 2018 report.

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Comparison of the top manufacturers between 2000 and 2019

Before looking at the NTI-100 2019 list, it may be interesting to compare the year 2019 with the year 2000. At that time, the author presented the leading 200 manufacturers, from which the leading 122 manufacturers have now been extracted for comparison purposes in order to compare them with the 122 entries from 2019(Tab. 2-4). InTables 2 and 3 , the countries and regions were sorted according to the size of the turnover, while in Table 4 they were sorted according to the number of entries. It should be noted that in the 2000 NTI list, the author did not yet require companies to have a turnover of at least USD 100 million in order to be included - as is now the case in the more recent NTI lists (including for 2019). The reason for the change at that time was to reduce the number of companies to be included and thus make it more practicable to determine the data for the NTI list. Interestingly, the exchange rates in 2000 did not differ significantly from the exchange rates in 2019, with the exception of the RMB, which simplifies approximate comparisons.

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Europe - slight decline

In Europe, the number of top 100 companies remained at five, as in 2018. Table 5 contains the corresponding excerpts from the 2019 NTI 100 list and compares the rankings in the 2018 and 2019 lists. Only Würth Elektronik was able to move up to 80th place by increasing its turnover. The other four producers have more or less dropped down the list. KSG's fall from 81st place (2018) to 105th place (2019) is particularly glaring. The case of Somacis shows that a small increase in sales can be achieved while still losing position in a crowded field of competitors. These changes are also an expression of the highly dynamic nature of the regional and global PCB market. Companies such as KSG manufacture a great deal regionally for the regional market.

*Plus 9/2019, p. 1354ff

* FPC producerN. T. Information Ltd

Back to the present

The following is back to NTI-100 2019, i.e. the present. According to Table 3, Taiwan is the world's largest PCB manufacturing country, with a total production of more than $22 billion in 2019. However, about 65% of its sales come from production in China, and Taiwanese PCB manufacturers continue to expand in China despite the tense political relations between the two countries - China sees Taiwan as a province of itself. Since the start of the trade war between the US and China and the Covid-19 pandemic, reshoring has been an issue in Taiwan, as it has been in the US. But the Taiwanese PCB industry seems to be paying little attention to the reshoring voice, as the business opportunities in China are still huge, especially as the Chinese government is increasingly enticing companies to stay and expand with some benefits or perks.

Chinese PCB manufacturers are also continuing to invest heavily in the construction of new facilities, calling them 'smart factories'. Many of them are mega-sized in every sense of the word. One could now complain that this move is leading to 'overcapacity'. But what can we do about it? Regardless of how we see the situation, we are becoming more and more dependent on China for PCB supply sources.

Although the growth rate of the top Chinese manufacturers is high and the big companies are getting bigger, they will not be able to take over the top position of Zhen Ding Technology (ZDT Tech), as ZDT tops the current NTI 100 list (Table 8). The company was listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange as ZDT (Chinese name: 瑧 鼎 科技). It is also listed separately on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as Avary Holding (Chinese name: 鵬 鼎 股份). ZDT announced the purchase of Taiwanese manufacturer Boardtek (ranked 64th in the 2019 NTI 100 list), a medium-sized PCB manufacturer with high-performance microwave board technologies. The official purchase is planned for next October. Simply adding the sales of both manufacturers would amount to $4128 million. With ZDT increasing sales at the time of writing (end of June), total sales could reach more than $4200m in 2020. Unless some mega-mergers take place, no Chinese manufacturer can easily overtake this monster, at least not for now. The weakening US-based TTM Technologies in second place on this list would then have a sales gap of around $1.5 billion to the leading ZDT.

There are many PCB forecast reports in the industry. As the author is only familiar with publicly presented reports, he does not know how they were compiled. They all agree on the trends they show. From the NTI-100 2019 table(Table 8), the trend can be understood more easily if readers know what the manufacturers in the table are doing. The author has included some notes to help with this.

This table contains the overall NTI-100 overview for 2019. 2018 data has been adjusted with the exchange rates for 2019. N. T. Information Ltd
The column 'Author's notes' has been left in the original text for simplicity.

5G as a driving force

If you follow the manufacturers that have made significant gains in sales from 2018 to 2019, such as Shennan Circuits, Wus Group (although listed as a 'Taiwan' producer, the author has difficulty dealing with its nationality), Dongguang Shengyi Electronics, etc., you can see that they are all involved in 5G-related infrastructure boards for base stations, servers, routers, switching networks, etc.

Another group of winners are manufacturers of IC substrates for high-end servers, computers, storage, etc., which also have something to do with 5G wireless communication. Ibiden, Unimicron, SEMCO, Shinko Denki, Nanya PCB, etc. are important substrate manufacturers. AT&S is striving to be a major player in this field, spending €1.1 billion to expand its Chongqing plant within the next five years. However, it seems that they have not reached the technological level of their competitors.

In general, PCB manufacturers that are heavily dependent on the automotive market fared poorly in 2019. And in this year characterized by Covid-19, it is even harder, as automotive sales continued to decline, although the amount of PCBs used in vehicles is increasing. For example, CMK, Meiko, Chin Poon, KCE, Ellington, etc. are major automotive PCB manufacturers. To cope with the situation, they are trying to diversify. However, it is not possible for the author to explain each manufacturer in the top list. The simple remarks included in the text will have to suffice.

The author is not well versed in accounting, but looking at some of the annual reports, it seems that when the cost of goods sold exceeds 90% of the price, the line to the red zone is passed. Manufacturers that depend on a few big customers in certain markets tend to grow fast, but at the same time they might fall sharply.

It seems that Chinese manufacturers play by different rules. For example, purchased equipment is depreciated within 10 years, while in most other countries the depreciation period is usually 5 years. This has an impact on profits. Competitors jokingly mention that Chinese equipment manufacturers 'leave' their machines with their customers for free and do not receive payment for quite a while. How do equipment manufacturers survive without payment? Probably with government financial support. The author is too reticent to ask direct and penetrating questions to the people concerned about such issues. Good or bad, however, PCB production in China, including foreign manufacturers, will continue to grow.

The survival and growth of machine and material manufacturers depends on the Asian market...

Fortunately, PCB manufacturers outside China will survive in their respective countries if they engage in prototyping, express service, small batches with large board variety, production for specially protected application areas and a very specific technology-oriented market. These and mass production under one roof, for example, are unthinkable. The TTM plant in Chippewa Falls may be one of the few exceptions.

The survival and growth of machine and material manufacturers depends on the Asian market, especially China. A large proportion of suppliers of PCB chemicals come from the Asian market. Sales of mechanical machines and laser drilling machines come mainly from the Asian market. Direct imaging equipment sales are relatively good in the US, Japan and Europe, but volumes are relatively low compared to Taiwan and China. All of these major changes outlined here have taken place in the last twenty years. How do you think the trend will develop over the next twenty years?

What will it be like in 2020?

It is impossible to make a useful forecast for PCB production in 2020. However, the author dares to try and uses the NTI-100 2019 and the latest production data from the PCB market as a basis. However, he may be either too optimistic or completely wrong with his assessment as shown in Table 7. He therefore assumes that global PCB production in 2020 will remain at roughly the same level as in 2019 despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, although there are already signs of slight negative trends in some countries and regions of the world. It is important to note that, as explained above, the sales figures already include assembly services provided by board manufacturers as an additional service.

* incl. assembly services by PCB manufacturers, in particular FPCN.T. Information Ltd, Europe by Michael Gasch

Information from

Translation, editing and additions: Dr. Hartmut Poschmann

Additions and further information to this article. After completing the NTI-100 from 2019, Dr. Nakahara will go into more detail about the NTI-100 from previous years.

Email of the author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.