On September 21, Chaoying Electronic Circuit Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Chaoying Electronics”) submitted a listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The co-sponsors are CICC and Guolian Securities International. At this point, it is less than 11 months since it landed on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and the aftermath of surging over 395% on the first day has not dissipated. It has already stood in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange queue and officially launched the A+H layout.
Of course, what the market saw was not only a capital move, but also a strategic bet betting on an “intelligent long-term cycle.”
According to reports, Chaoying Electronics' growth story is not complicated — the company uses automotive electronics PCBs as the basic board, and is currently attacking high-end AI server boards, while also using overseas bases in Thailand to open up the global supply chain.
However, the most common mistake in capital markets is to directly equate “racetrack imagination” with “determining profit.” The real value test is never the moment the bell rings, but is hidden in the yield, cost, delivery, and continuous hematopoietic capacity of each circuit board. Who can turn the long cycle of intelligence into compound interest can be worthy of the long-term trust of the capital market.
I was wearing Aura, the leading PCB in the car, but the increase in revenue did not increase profit in three years
According to Zhitong Finance, Chaoying Electronics was founded in 2015. It is a world-renowned high-end printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer and one of the world's leading automotive PCB suppliers.
The company is committed to developing, producing and commercializing a series of high-reliability, high-complexity PCB products, including double-panel, multi-layer and high-density interconnect (HDI) boards. These products are the physical interconnection foundation of almost all electronic systems and can be used in automotive electronics, data storage, communications and AI services. Based on revenue in 2025, the company is the world's eighth largest supplier of automotive PCBs, the world's number one automotive HDI board supplier, and the world's third largest supplier of AI data storage PCBs and memory module PCBs.
However, looking over Chaoying Electronics' prospectus, it is easy to find that this manufacturer, which is deeply involved in automotive racing tracks, is clearly in a situation where revenue is not increasing.
From 2023 to 2025, the company's revenue grew from 3,656 billion yuan to 4.752 billion yuan, and remained steady for three years; net profit to mother rose from 266 million yuan to 276 million yuan and then fell to 231 million yuan, down 16.24% year on year in 2025. Entering the first half of 2026, revenue surged further to 2,912 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 33.29%, but recorded a phased loss of 191 million yuan.
The market's first reaction is likely to be “deterioration in fundamentals,” but after dismantling the structure, it will be discovered that short-term fluctuations in Chaowei Electronics' net profit are mainly a combination of multiple one-time and strategic factors, and cannot simply be equated with a downturn in the main business.
The first variable that bears the brunt is the pain of the Thai factory's production capacity climbing downhill. As the most important fulcrum of the company's globalization, the Thai base targets the overseas automotive electronics and AI server high-end board market, with the aim of circumventing trade barriers and meeting the localized supply requirements of leading overseas customers. However, the new plant itself has to go through a long cycle from construction, equipment commissioning, and process replication to personnel run-in; insufficient capacity utilization, unit depreciation, and high manufacturing costs in the early stages of production directly put pressure on phased losses. Combined with significant exchange losses in the first half of 2026, the impact on the profit side was further amplified.
The second is active product and capital expenditure choices: the company is continuously tilting resources towards high-end HDI and high-speed multi-layer boards, and R&D, equipment investment, and certification and proofing costs are rising simultaneously; large-scale raw materials such as upstream copper foil and copper-clad plates are fluctuating cyclically, causing continuous disturbances in gross margins.
Combined with multiple forces, Chaowei Electronics' profit performance clearly formed a combination of “reversible factors (exchange), phased factors (climbing in Thailand), and structural factors (pressure on the gross margin of the automobile board)”. The first two will subside over time, while the third party will require longer technical upgrades and product restructuring to hedge.
Along with the decline in profits, Chaoying Electronics' liquidity pressure has also increased visibly: as of the first half of 2026, the company's cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period was approximately $1,093 million, net current assets were $32 million, and the balance ratio was as high as 75.6%.
From the above performance, it is easy to see that Chaowei Electronics has not lost its undertone of growth: No. 1 in the world for automotive HDI, No. 3 in the world for AI data storage/memory module PCBs, revenue growth is still high, and the Thai base is also pointing to high-end overseas markets. However, declining production capacity, exchange losses, fluctuations in raw materials, and gross profit pressure on the auto board, compounded a balance ratio of 75.6% and net current assets of only 32 million yuan, putting pressure on profits and liquidity in the short term. And whether the pain of growth can be resolved with the release of production capacity and technological upgrades will determine when the company moves from “increasing revenue” to “increasing profits.”
The old engine is turning off, the new engine is speeding up
If the profit statement tells the pain of the “old story,” then the changes in the revenue structure tell the starting point of the “new story.”
In the first half of 2026, revenue in the data storage sector surged 133.5% year on year, and the share of communications and AI server revenue increased from 4.3% in 2023 to 10.0%. The share of HDI board revenue jumped to 43.8% from 23.4% in 2023. There is a clear logic behind these numbers: Chaowei Electronics is shifting its product focus from low-end car boards to high-end HDI and AI server boards.
The rationality of this migration path needs to be understood in the coordinate system of the entire PCB industry.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, the compound growth rate of the global PCB market between 2021 and 2025 is only 2.8%, but from 2026, the growth curve has clearly steeper. Looking ahead to 2026 to 2030, the global PCB market is expected to grow from US$102 billion to US$144.6 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 9.1%.
By product type, HDI boards are the fastest growing category, with a compound annual growth rate of 9.4% from 2021 to 2025, and the market size increased from US$11.3 billion to US$16.2 billion. The core driving force comes from the demand for high-density interconnections in communication and AI servers and automotive electronics; the compound annual growth rate of multilayer boards is 3.6%; and the compound annual growth rate of packaging substrates is 2.3%. The compound annual growth rates of single/double panels and flexible panels over the same period were — 3.2% and — 0.9%, respectively. It is estimated that by 2030, HDI boards and multilayer boards will grow steadily to US$30 billion and US$58.6 billion at CAGR of 10.8% and 9.8% respectively.
As can be seen, whether judging from the market growth rate or market capacity, Chaoying Electronics is definitely a forward-looking move to shift its product focus from low-end car boards to high-end HDI and AI server boards.
Of course, Chaoying Electronics' card slots on the above track also have a certain technical background. The company has completed 50-layer AI server PCB technology certification, has a maximum processing capacity of 60 layers, and 7+N+7 multi-stage HDI has passed mass production verification. Among domestic PCB companies, there are only a few companies that have the ability to mass-produce multi-level HDI and any layer interconnect HDI. The MSAP advanced process production line at the P5A plant in Thailand is scheduled to be completed and put into operation in the fourth quarter of 2026, and customer verification will be carried out.
However, the supply bottleneck for AI server PCBs is not nominal production capacity, but “effective production capacity.” The production process for PCBs with more than 30 layers, M9 level CCL, and high-end HDI is more complicated. The yield is lower than that of ordinary products. New equipment requires debugging, and customer certification takes time. This means that once Chaoying Electronics takes the lead in completing technical certification and production capacity climbing, it will enjoy a certain first-mover dividend.
As can be seen, Chaoying Electronics is migrating to high-end HDI and AI servers, and the direction is in line with the general trend of the industry. The technology and revenue structure have shown first-mover potential, but effective production capacity, yield, and customer certification will still take time to be realized.
epilogue
As the “mother of electronic products,” the PCB industry is ushering in structural growth opportunities driven by AI computing power infrastructure and automotive intelligence. The growth rate of high-end products is significantly ahead of traditional categories. Chaoying Electronics is actively planning the product layout of high-end HDI and AI servers, which is clearly a forward-looking move in line with the general trend of the industry. However, it should be noted that as more and more manufacturers bet their resources on in-vehicle and AI servers, the high value-added range will gradually be pressured by increased competition in the next 2 to 3 years.
Therefore, it is easy to see that Chaoying Electronics' listing in Hong Kong is at the crossroads of “short-term pain and long-term growth.” In the short term, the company faces a financial dilemma of “increasing revenue without increasing profit”; in the long term, the company's two high growth tracks, AI computing power and automotive electronics, are betting on a “long intelligent cycle”. The technical barriers are deep, the production capacity expansion strategy is clear, and there is potential for growth through the industry cycle. However, this listing in Hong Kong is not a simple act of financing; it is a key part of its globalization strategy and production capacity expansion strategy. Through the H-share listing, the company can optimize its capital structure, support the expansion of its high-end production capacity, and enhance its international influence.