SMM May 14th: AI wave or will bring new opportunities to copper, some institutions predict that the demand for high-speed copper cable will grow and other news, driving the high-speed copper cable connection concept plate intraday strengthening, as of 13:24 on May 14, the copper high-speed connection concept plate rose 2.03%, its index reported 972.96. In terms of individual stocks: Shenglan shares, which had a 20CM daily limit in the intraday, narrowed their gains to 15.05%, and Shenyu shares, Zhaolong Internet, Chuangyitong, and Aofei Data were among the top gainers.
Message plane
Some institutions predict that the sales of high-speed copper cables will continue to grow. High-speed copper cable shipments are expected to reach 20 million by 2027.
Nvidia announced the GB200 superchip, GB200NVLink Switch and Spine at the previous GTC conference, which are fully interconnected by 72 Blackwell GPUs with NVLink and 5,000 NVLink copper cables (with a total length of more than 2 miles). According to NVIDIA's official website, NVIDIA® Mellanox® LinkX® InfiniBand DAC copper is the lowest-cost way to create high-speed, low-latency 100G/EDR, 200G/HDR, and 400G/NDR links in InfiniBand switching networks and NVIDIA GPU-accelerated AI end-to-end systems. The market believes that the use of copper connectors will improve heat dissipation efficiency and signal transmission quality, and is expected to drive the demand growth for backplane connectors.
Many companies have also issued statements that the market is more concerned about whether they are related to copper cable connections.
Wufang Optoelectronics said on the investor interactive platform on May 10 that the company has no copper high-speed connection products.
Guancheng Datong said on the investor interactive platform on May 6 that the company currently does not produce or is developing copper high-speed connectors.
For the question "Does the company have a business related to copper high-speed connection?" Is there a related product application on PC or mobile phone? Goertek said on the investor interactive platform on March 29 that the company was not involved in the business you mentioned.
For "the company has R&D, production and sales of copper high-speed connectors? Anjie Technology said on the investor interactive platform on March 29 that there is no at present.
Zhongneng Electric said on the investor interactive platform on March 26 that the company's products do not involve copper high-speed connectors.
Dalian Electric Porcelain said on the investor interactive platform on March 26 that the company does not have copper high-speed connector products and related technologies. At present, the company's main business is still the research and development, production and sales of porcelain and composite insulators for high-voltage transmission lines, porcelain and composite insulators for power stations, and electric porcelain fittings.
ECT said on the investor interactive platform on March 25 that the application of the company's high-speed cable products in servers is mainly for high-speed connection from the server motherboard to the backplane, high-speed connection from the motherboard to the accelerator card, and data center equipment interconnection. The copper high-speed connectors you mentioned are not covered yet.
Baili Electric said on the investor interactive platform on March 25 that the company is not involved in the business related to copper high-speed connection and copper high-speed connection.
Hexing Co., Ltd. said on the investor interactive platform on March 22 that the company currently has no copper high-speed connector products.
Shenglan Co., Ltd. said on the investor interactive platform on March 22 that the company has developed and produced high-speed connector products suitable for optical modules, and has produced copper high-speed connector products that can be applied to computing equipment such as servers.
Asked, "Does the company supply high-speed connectors to Amphenol, a close partner of NVIDIA?" Chujiang New Materials said on the investor interactive platform on March 21 that the company supplies precision copper strips and copper conductor materials to Amphenol. In addition, Chujiang New Materials said on the investor interactive platform on March 21 that the company provides copper-based materials such as precision copper strips and copper conductor materials as raw materials for key components to downstream electronic components, electronic connectors, precision instruments and other enterprises, and downstream customers include Zhaolong Interconnection, Xinya Electronics, Amphenol, Jinxinnuo and other related enterprises. >> Click here for details
On the evening of March 21, Xinya Electronics issued a stock trading risk warning announcement, saying that the company has recently been included in the media copper high-speed connector concept stocks, after the company's self-inspection, the company does not produce connector products including high-speed connectors, the company's main business is research and development, manufacturing and sales of consumer electronics and industrial control wires, automotive cables, communication cables and data cables, new energy series cables and components.
Regarding the question of "whether the company's high-frequency and high-speed connectors use copper cables" that investors are concerned about, Shenglan Co., Ltd. said on the investor interactive platform on March 21 that the company has R&D and production of copper high-speed connector products. Shenglan shares also said on the investor interactive platform on March 21 that high-speed connectors can be applied to flying cars.
For the layout of copper connector products and downstream customers, Dingtong Technology Securities Department said in an interview with the media that the company provides customers with high-speed backplane connector components and I/O connector components, however, whether the relevant components have been applied to copper connector products needs to be confirmed with downstream application customers.
Huafeng Technology said on the investor interactive platform on March 21 that the company's main products are optical and electrical connectors and cable assemblies, and there are no DAC high-speed cable products for the time being.
Under the wave of AI, the copper market space is huge
Zhou Mingliang, director of the Research Center of Shenzhen Connector Industry Association, shared the application and prospect of copper in connectors at the 2024 (19th) SMM Copper Conference and Copper Industry Expo - Copper Bar Industry Development Forum, jointly organized by Shanghai Nonferrous Metals Network (SMM) and Shandong Hengbang Smelting Co., Ltd. Referring to the huge space of the copper market under the wave of AI, he said:
Hotspot: NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 Architecture:
►NVIDIA's new chip GB200 adopts copper interconnection technology to improve AI performance and reduce energy consumption, and the copper cable market space is expected to grow significantly in 2025.
►Copper cables have low cost and fast speed in short-distance transmission within the data center, and the copper interconnection solution for a single server is of high value.
►In the next two years, GB200 NVL72 shipments are expected to reach 3,000 units and 50,000 units, respectively, and the market space for copper interconnection solutions is increasing year by year.
►With the upgrade of network equipment to 800G, silver-plated copper wire may become the mainstream due to its excellent performance, making up for the shortcomings of traditional materials in high-frequency transmission.
►The market space for copper alloy materials is huge, and the global demand for copper alloys is expected to be about 60,000 tons in 2025.
Last week, cable enterprises started to increase sharply It is expected that this week's cable starts will continue to increase month-on-month
》Click to view the SMM metal industry chain database
In addition to the pursuit of the concept of high-speed copper cable link in the capital market, in the spot market, the operating rate of cable ports showed some resilience last week when copper downstream consumption was suppressed by high copper prices. According to SMM research, from the production and new orders of some domestic wire and cable enterprises last week (5.3-5.9), on the whole, the comprehensive operating rate of cable enterprises last week was 82.84%, an increase of 9.16 percentage points compared with the expected operating rate last week (4.26-5.2). Last week, the operating rate of copper cable enterprises rebounded sharply, mainly driven by a large enterprise in the sample, according to the company, this week's production and orders rebounded mainly due to the post-holiday copper price pullback when some downstream customers placed orders enthusiasm has increased, but for the sustainability of orders, enterprises are not fully sure. In addition, companies also said that although production rebounded this week, it was at a low level in the same period of previous years, and the situation has not been reversed.
SMM expects that this week (5.10-5.16), the comprehensive operating rate of wire and cable enterprises will increase month-on-month. Judging from the SMM survey, the recent State Grid orders can remain stable, photovoltaic and wind power orders some companies said that the overall is still in a growth trend, this year's performance has continued to be weak real estate, infrastructure orders also have companies said that the near future or will recover slightly, mainly because near the middle of the year, some downstream projects will also face the mid-year assessment node, downstream demand or will grow slightly, but on the whole, most companies are still lower than the same period in previous years. However, the issuance of ultra-long-term treasury bonds has brought confidence to many cable companies that real estate and infrastructure demand is expected to improve. >> Click here for details
Voices from all sides
In its research report entitled "AIDC, New Opportunities for Copper", Guojin Securities pointed out that the growth of global copper supply is limited, the supply disturbance of leading mining enterprises has intensified, and the supply and demand of copper have maintained a tight balance. The growth of computing power brought about by generative AI has increased the long-term demand for copper from the supply side (data center) and the transmission side (5G base station). It is expected that in 2024-2026, the amount of copper used in global data center + 5G base station PCB + GB200NVL72 will reach 89/108/1.29 million tons respectively in the case of high and 39/50/630,000 tons in the low case, and the AI wave will bring long-term growth in copper downstream consumption.
Huayuan Securities commented on the weekly report of the new material, saying that from the perspective of prosperity, it continues to be optimistic about the soft magnetic and copper alloy tracks. In terms of electric power, the prosperity of new energy and power grid investment continues to be transmitted, such as the terminal application of alloy soft magnetic powder core station stable optical storage tram pile, and amorphous alloy benefits from distribution transformers and overseas export demand; In terms of electronics, the trend of the computing power industry has driven the demand for high-performance soft magnetic materials, such as high-power and low-loss chip inductors and their corresponding magnetic materials. The basic disk of copper alloy materials benefits from the pro-cyclical economic recovery, and the incremental logic is expected to be driven by the computing power server to realize the long-term demand for copper cables and copper connectors.
Morgan Stanley previously said in the report that with the rapid development of AI technology, copper demand will grow significantly, of which AI data centers will become a new growth point for copper demand. By the fourth quarter of 2024, copper could rise to $10,500/t, up 18% from current levels. Morgan Stanley wrote in the report that the demand for power in global AI data centers will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18% from 2024 to 2027. Copper demand for AI data centers is likely to grow from 200,000 tonnes to 500,000 tonnes per year in 2023 to 500,000 tonnes to 1.2 million tonnes in 2027, at a compound annual growth rate of 26%. By 2027, AI data centers could account for 3.3% of global copper demand (compared to 5.2% for electric vehicles), which will drive copper prices upward and have a profound impact on the global copper market. >> Click here for details
Commodity trader Trafigura said copper demand related to artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers could reach 1 million tonnes by 2030, exacerbating supply shortages. The energy transition, including electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies, is expected to drive a surge in copper consumption in the coming years as the world phases out carbon emissions. Trafigura's chief economist Rahim said the 1 million tonnes were "on top of our belief that there will be a shortfall of 4 million to 5 million tonnes by 2030 either way" and that "not everyone will actually take this into account when assessing the balance between supply and demand".
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