TLB, a printed circuit board (PCB) company planning to be listed on the KOSDAQ, announced that it will dominate the PCB market for next-generation DDR5 DRAM modules.
At a press conference held in Yeouido, Seoul on the 26th, Baek Sung-hyun, CEO of TLB, said, “We plan to mass-produce DDR5 PCBs and SSD PCBs for business customers in 2021. We will also enter the PCB market for semiconductor equipment.”
TLB, whose main focus is on memory semiconductor substrates, has completed the development of DDR5 memory module PCBs to be supplied to SK Hynix. PCB for DDR5 is scheduled to be mass-produced from next year. SK Hynix commercialized DDR5 DRAM for the first time at the beginning of last month. With big data, artificial intelligence, and autonomous driving, demand for ultra-high-speed, high-capacity DRAM is expected to increase, leading to increased demand for DDR5.
CEO Baek Baek emphasized that “the memory semiconductor market is favorable due to the increase in data usage and traffic.” DDR5 performance is double that of DDR4 based on maximum data processing speed. By 2023, the market share of DDR5 is expected to outpace DDR4.
In the memory module PCB market of SK Hynix last year and in the first half of this year, TLB’s share was the first with 34-35% of sales.
SK Hynix’s acquisition of Intel’s NAND business is also promising for TLB. The share of NAND in the global memory semiconductor market is larger than that of DRAM. TLB can be expected to benefit from SK Hynix’s NAND division sales expansion and DDR5 demand expansion.
TLB plans to invest in building a new plant for DDR5 PCB. The new factory will cost 28.4 billion won. When the factory is completed in 2022, the monthly production capacity will increase from 27,000 square meters per month (324,000 square meters per year) to 40,000 square meters per month (480,000 square meters per year). The production capacity of domestic competitors is 50,000 square meters per month for Simtech and 35,000 square meters per month for Korea Circuit. Overseas competitors include Taiwan Unimicron and Tripod. These companies share demand from Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron.
TLB also enters the PCB market for semiconductor equipment. TLB developed the semiconductor front-process PCB’ATE (Automatic Test Equipment) wafer board’ and the semiconductor post-process PCB’ATE final test’ board. It also plans to mass-produce them from next year.
The drawback is that the memory module PCB, which accounts for 60% of the company’s sales, is affected by gold prices. 15% of the memory module PCB cost comes from gold plating. This year alone, gold prices have risen from $1,400 per ounce at the beginning of the year to $1,800 recently. There is also a prospect that it will rise further next year. Last year, the share of sales by product was 59.1% for memory module PCBs, 37.7% for SSD module PCBs, and 3.2% for other products.
TLB was founded in 2011 by spin-off of 60 people from Daedeok Electronics. The main TLB executives were from Daedeok Electronics. CEO Baek Baek-hyun has been leading the company since the establishment of TLB in 2011.
The headquarters is located in Ansan, Gyeonggi-do. It has 287 employees. The cumulative sales for the third quarter were 142.4 billion won and operating profit 13.4 billion won. This year, it is expected to achieve sales of 180 billion won. Last year’s results were 149.1 billion won in sales and 11.1 billion won in operating profit.. As of last year, the company’s sales accounted for 52.5% to SK Hynix, 29.1% to Samsung Electronics, and 18.4% to others.
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