Nan Ya Confirms Electronic Materials Cumulative Price Hikes Have More Than Doubled This Year, with Fiberglass Cloth Shortage Being the Most Severe
Nashnova编辑部
Taiwan's Nan Ya Plastics confirmed its electronic-materials prices have more than doubled cumulatively this year, with fiberglass cloth facing the worst shortage; a structural supply-demand gap driven by AI-server demand shows no sign of closing soon.
What actually happened with the price hike?
A leaked letter circulated in the market suggesting Nan Ya planned to raise substrate and base-material prices by 20% each from September 1. Nan Ya clarified: the document was not an official notice — likely an email excerpt from negotiations with a specific customer.
The company confirmed the substance, however: raw-material costs for copper foil, fiberglass cloth, and resin have surged, and Nan Ya has raised electronic-materials prices multiple times this year in a phased, customer-by-customer approach, with cumulative increases exceeding 100%.
This means → the price hikes are real, but the story is not "a one-off 20% increase." The actual cumulative move is far larger than the leaked letter suggested.
The news sent Nan Ya's stock to the daily limit up, closing at NT$207.5.
Which materials are in shortest supply?
Fiberglass cloth faces the worst shortage. Electronic-grade fine yarn and specialty weaves — low-dielectric, low-CTE (low coefficient of thermal expansion) — are especially tight. Nan Ya is raising prices even as it ramps capacity.
Copper foil is close behind. High-frequency copper foil — the grade used for high-speed signal transmission — sees strong demand; order share is rising, processing fees are up across all specs, and the market is in a "price and volume both rising" mode.
In plain terms = the two most critical layers in a circuit board — fiberglass cloth as the skeleton, copper foil as the wiring — are both in short supply. Prices naturally keep climbing.
How does the shortage ripple downstream?
Fiberglass cloth and copper foil together constrain supply of CCL — copper-clad laminate, the core base material for circuit boards. Competitors cannot secure enough raw materials, so the market's inquiry and order share is shifting toward Nan Ya.
Nan Ya's response: accelerate the shift toward higher-end products while adjusting mid-to-low-end prices in line with input costs. The company expects this to lift August and Q3 revenue further.
This means → Nan Ya holds pricing power in this shortage — not only is volume growing, but the product mix is tilting toward higher margins.
Why is AI-server demand driving this cycle?
The four major US cloud providers — Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, and Meta — continue to expand capital spending, directly pulling upstream electronic-materials demand.
What makes AI servers different: larger chip area, more layers, and sharply higher signal speed and power draw. Demand for mid-to-high-end electronic materials far exceeds that of conventional servers.
In plain terms = AI chips keep getting bigger, circuit boards keep stacking thicker, and every layer needs better materials. This demand is structural — it will not be absorbed by a single order wave.
How long can this pricing cycle last?
The key bottleneck: new capacity expansion is constrained by equipment suppliers' own delivery timelines, making it hard to close the supply-demand gap in the near term.
Nan Ya's outlook: strong electronic-materials momentum, combined with solid results at affiliate Nanya Technology, point to second-half profits likely exceeding the first half.
This reflects a structural mismatch — equipment expansion cycles cannot keep pace with the AI demand surge. When the supply-demand gap begins to narrow will be the market's core checkpoint for judging how long this pricing cycle lasts.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.