Samsung Electro-Mechanics is trying to spend its way into the AI substrate market and finding that the equipment is harder to buy than the demand. The company’s KRW 6.78T expansion of flip-chip ball grid array production is running into long lead times and component shortages at the machinery vendors building the lines, according to DigiTimes.
The Korean component maker says the programme is proceeding as planned and that no production delay has been confirmed. That denial is doing real work. Substrate capacity is one of the tightest links in the AI supply chain, and any sign of slippage moves customer allocation.
The financial case for pushing through is easy to see. Analysts surveyed by FnGuide expect third-quarter operating profit of KRW 621.4B, more than double the year-earlier figure, on revenue of KRW 3.7951T. The company reports on October 28.
MLCCs are carrying a large share of that. Utilization on those lines is estimated in the high 90s, and Murata is weighing expansion beyond a planned JPY 80B programme while its order-to-bill ratio approaches 1.5. That combination of full lines and rising orders is what gives the pricing power behind the forecast.
FC-BGA is the slower-moving half. Substrates for AI accelerators require tighter line widths, larger body sizes and far better thermal behavior than the parts made for phones and PCs, and the tooling to make them is concentrated among a handful of suppliers already booked out by TSMC’s packaging buildout.
