The computing hardware supply chain staged a collective surge today, with the copper clad laminate (CCL) sector leading the market with a 9.88% gain—all 17 constituent stocks rose without a single one falling behind, and five directly hit their daily trading limits. Even heavyweight Shengyi Technology surged by 12%. A sector that was languishing in the "basement" just a month ago has now erupted in a wave of limit-up trading.
Rewind to July, and the CCL sector was a completely different story. As the AI hardware hype faded, the sector trended downward: Shengyi Technology fell over 26% for the month, JinAn International and Nanya New Materials were basically halved, while WUS Printed Circuit and Shennan Circuits also lost more than 30%. Even the major shareholder of industry leader Kingboard Laminates was still reducing its stake in June, with disclosed holdings at the time amounting to approximately HK$11.8 billion. Market sentiment back then was so bleak that "no one wanted it" was an understatement.
The turning point came on August 6. A report from Goldman Sachs turned bullish, dramatically raising its 2028 market size forecast for CCL from $48 billion to $84 billion, and boosting the expected growth rate for AI-related high-end materials from 148% to 161%, specifically calling out high-end materials like M9. The sector that was abandoned by capital just a month ago was suddenly back on the table for the same group of foreign investors.
Fundamentals are also aligning with the narrative. Kingboard Laminates has already raised prices six times this year and plans another hike in August; upstream electronic cloth prices have surged by 118% to 165% from the start of the year. CCL is used in downstream AI servers and can smoothly pass on price increases, giving leading players the pricing power that serves as the strongest backbone for this rally.
The most extreme case is Baoding Technology. The company issued an announcement on the evening of August 6, clearly stating that it "currently has no AI CCL related business." Yet, this did nothing to stop capital from pushing its stock into six limit-up days in five sessions. A limit-up that even an official announcement couldn't halt shows that in this rally, sentiment has long since run ahead of fundamentals.
Those who were cutting losses just a month ago are now staring at a screen full of limit-up stocks, likely kicking themselves. But the script of Baoding Technology—"no AI business, yet six limit-ups in five days"—serves as a reminder: when sentiment has already outpaced fundamentals, is this "comeback" a value recovery after a deep sell-off, or just another game of expectation flipping? The answer will have to wait for the next price hike notice and earnings report to reveal.