Wus Printed Circuit Reports Strong Q1 2026 Results at Upper End of Forecast, Major Capacity Expansion Underway

Deep News05-05

Wus Printed Circuit(Kunshan)Co.,Ltd. released its first-quarter report for 2026. The company achieved operating revenue of 6.214 billion yuan in Q1 2026, representing a year-on-year increase of 53.91% and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 14.38%. Net profit attributable to shareholders reached 1.242 billion yuan, up 62.90% year-on-year and 12.44% quarter-on-quarter, landing at the upper end of the earnings forecast range of 1.18 to 1.26 billion yuan. After excluding non-recurring gains and losses, net profit was 1.163 billion yuan, increasing 56.02% year-on-year and 7.24% quarter-on-quarter. The gross profit margin was 35.63%, up 2.88 percentage points year-on-year and essentially flat quarter-on-quarter with a slight decrease of 0.03 percentage points. The net profit margin stood at 19.98%, up 1.09 percentage points year-on-year but down 0.37 percentage points quarter-on-quarter. Considering the company's recent developments, our analysis is as follows.

The Q1 2026 performance reached the upper limit of the guidance, and profitability continues its upward trend. First-quarter revenue of 6.214 billion yuan set a new historical high, increasing by 780 million yuan from the previous quarter. This growth was primarily driven by the continued volume increase of high-end products such as AI server high-speed switches and ASIC/GPU backplanes. The utilization rate of the Thailand factory has exceeded 90%, contributing incremental output. Despite facing a significant headwind from foreign exchange losses amounting to 148 million yuan in Q1, the net profit attributable to shareholders still achieved high growth exceeding 60% year-on-year, demonstrating strong earnings certainty and reflecting the company's pricing power and cost-pass-through capability in the AI computing PCB sector. The gross profit margin of 35.63% increased by nearly 3 percentage points year-on-year even amid rising costs of upstream CCL materials, indicating solid pricing ability. The net profit margin was 19.98%, up 1.09 percentage points year-on-year but down 0.37 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, with the sequential decline mainly attributable to the impact of foreign exchange losses.

On the expense side, the total period expense ratio for Q1 was 13.64%, an increase of 4.24 percentage points year-on-year. The core change stemmed from financial expenses, which shifted from -31 million yuan in the same period last year to +140 million yuan, largely due to foreign exchange losses. Excluding financial expenses, the combined ratio of selling, management, and R&D expenses was 11.38%, up only 1.20 percentage points year-on-year. Specifically, the selling expense ratio was 2.65% and the management expense ratio was 2.02%, both benefiting from economies of scale. R&D expenses reached 417 million yuan, surging 95.8% year-on-year, and the R&D expense ratio increased from 5.27% to 6.71%, reflecting the company's intensified investment in cutting-edge technologies such as CoWoP substrates, mSAP, and optical-copper integration.

Capacity investments exceeding 15 billion yuan are accelerating, positioning the company across the full AI product line and laying the foundation for medium-to-long-term growth. Starting from Q4 2025, against the backdrop of high demand in the AI industry, the company's operational strategy has undergone a significant shift, with a large-scale, high-end capacity expansion cycle now fully accelerating. The company's ongoing and planned capacity investments total over 15 billion yuan. These include a $300 million project in Changzhou, a 3.3 billion yuan high-end PCB project with a two-year construction period, a 5.5 billion yuan expansion for its subsidiary Huli Microelectronics, and a 6.8 billion yuan project in Kunshan focused on AI servers and next-generation switches. The third factory in Thailand is expected to commence operations by the end of 2027 or early 2028, continuously improving the overseas capacity layout. The company holds strong positions within the NVIDIA AI PCB product ecosystem. Its long-term growth logic is clear, aligning with the rapid development trend of downstream AI computing power to accelerate high-end capacity expansion domestically and overseas. The proportion of high-end products is continuously increasing, and profitability is expected to maintain a positive trend, driving rapid earnings growth.

Key development trends in the computing PCB industry include: 1) In data communications, high-specification hardware is driving the deep integration of processes like HLC and HDI. The technical boundaries between PCBs and advanced packaging are blurring rapidly, giving rise to new frontier architectures like CoWoP. 2) Although PCB peers are adjusting strategies and increasing resource allocation towards data communications, technological leaps in this sector are reshaping the competitive landscape and value distribution, likely resulting in a scenario with many entrants but few ultimate winners, concentrating demand for high-end PCBs towards leading manufacturers. 3) High-end PCBs are accelerating their evolution towards ultra-low loss resins, very low-profile copper foils, and special high-performance glass fiber fabrics. Products with very high technical barriers will continue to dominate absolute market growth. 4) The diversification of the global supply chain has not substantially weakened China's PCB production scale; China remains the core manufacturing center of the global PCB industry ecosystem.

Maintaining an "Outperform" investment rating. The company's long-term growth logic is clear. Risks include customer demand falling short of expectations, intensified competition, heightened geopolitical risks, slower-than-expected ramp-up of new capacity, and delays in new technology R&D progress.

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