Global PCB/Substrate — Takeaways from group conference call

Nomura hosted a group conference call on 14 October with the management team of Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik AG (AT&S), one of the few Western manufacturers of advanced printed circuit boards (PCBs) and IC substrates, with primary production footprints in Austria, China and Malaysia. On current fiscal year guidance, AT&S expects strong year-on-year revenue growth in FY26/27, EBITDA margins in the low-to-mid 30s percentage range, sizeable capex and low net debt/EBITDA. Its Ajinomoto build-up film (ABF) substrate capacity expansion is fully backed by long-term customer commitments and fully funded by customers, through prepayments, reservation fees and milestone payments for anything incremental. On capacity, the Chongqing site mainly debottlenecks embedded silicon substrates for a leading US CPU customer and prepares for localized manufacturing demand from Chinese customers, while the Kulim site serves a US CPU/GPU customer, ramps additional lines and builds Kulim 2 plus in-house