The Only U.S. Pure-Play In An Asian AI Monopoly

Since we started this Substack we’ve been spotting bottlenecks in the AI supply chain before market priced them in. Optical networking with AAOI 0.00%↑ or even testing equipment with VIAV 0.00%↑ and AEHR 0.00%↑.

PCBs are the next one.

A printed circuit board is one of the oldest component in the history of electronics. These are copper layers that conduct electricity between chips, and are separated by sheets of insulating fibreglass, drilled with thousands of microscopic holes. For decades this was a low margin commodity, produced mainly in Asia.

There’s one publicly traded pure-play PCB manufacturer based in the US, and it just printed its first $1B revenue quarter. The company is TTM Technologies ($TTMI).

Before we begin, this Substack is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Never invest more than you can afford to lose. Our writers may hold positions in the securities discussed and may buy or sell them at any time without notice.

What’s Inside:

1. Introduction

2. What is a PCB

3. The PCB TAM

4. TTM Technologies ($TTMI)

   1. What’s Their Business

   2. PCB Supply Chain

   3. Customers

   4. ASP expansion

5. Q2 Earnings

6. M+N and NVIDIA

7. Valuation

8. Risks

9. Our Take

You should think of a PCB like a sandwich. There are thin sheets of copper foil which conduct electricity from one chip to another, and between those copper sheets sits an insulating layer (usually fibreglass cloth soaked in resin and baked really hard).

The insulating layer is called the laminate and it holds everything while also stopping the copper from short-circuiting (frying itself).

So, now imagine that a cheap board inside a microwave has one or two copper layers, at max. The board underneath an NVIDIA GPU has at least 30 of them. Each of these boards gets drilled with thousand of microscopic holes called “vias” that connect copper on each layer.

If one of these drilled hole lands a few microns off, you can throw away the whole board. And yield (which is the percentage of boards that come out without being ruined), is the entire game in high-end PCB manufacturing.

Furthrmore, per Morgan Stanley, the PCB content cost is surging by 233% (from GB300 to VR200). Naturally, the boards need far more copper layers stacked on top of each other, using special laminate grades (M7,M8, and M9) that keep signal quality at extreme speeds, because standard laminate would destroy the data. Edwin Roks (CEO of TTMI) talked about how does this affect pricing:

“Because of that complexity, our ASPs are going up, a factor of 4, maybe a factor of 8.”

The Global Electronics Association’s May 2026 data shows a book-to-bill ratio of 1.60, meaning for every $1.00 of boards shipped there was $1.60 of new orders came in (bookings were up 102.8% YoY).

Moreover, GF Securities estimates the AI server PCB TAM at roughly $13B in 2026, with expansion to over $29B in 2027, and PCB cost per GPU will reportedly rise from $400 to around $750 for Vera Rubin platform. And it’s not Nvidia alone, Google’s new TPU is estimated to have $800 to $1,000 in PCB costs per accelerator.

However, without laminate, there’s no board, and CCL is the raw laminate sheet that every PCB is built from. Per BofA, combined June sales for Taiwan’s biggest CCL manufacturers just doubled YoY. With that kind of demand and rising prices of E-glass cloth (key raw material inside the laminate) can lead to higher prices in PCB boards, as the cost for its making is going to be substantially higher.

As we mentioned in the title, this whole industry is a monopoly taken by Asia. Roughly 90% of global PCB production sits in the east, and China alone accounts for about 59%. NA holds around 4%, down from 30% (at some point in the history).

Luckily, TTMI is the only publicly traded, pure-play PCB company in the US.

The rest of our TTMI report is available to paid subscribers only.

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