News Briefing 
　　AT & S, a major manufacturer of PCB and IC substrate, announced in June that it will invest 1.7 billion euros (about NT$57.5 billion) to build a new base for ABF production in Southeast Asia. The construction period will be from 2021 to 2026. 

Impact Analysis 
　　The rise of applications such as 5G, AI, IoT, and Big Data has triggered the demand for HPC chips, while related chip packages still also require ABF substrate. Since the production of ABF requires higher technical thresholds, and high-end equipment and materials, these supporting facilities can easily increase the expansion of investments that cost billions of dollars. As such, this has also resulted in ABF substrate manufacturers adopting rather conservative strategies in the past few years. Furthermore, it was not until after the second half of last year that they had confirmed the growing market demands for ABF substrate. Consequently, these industries have announced their respective investment plans.

　　While we seek to understand the expansion plans announced by various ABF substrate industries, it should also be noted that Taiwan, Japan, and Europe have shown their unwillingness to lose in this wave of ABF competitions when viewed from the regional perspective. From what can be understood, the amount of investments has reached as much as NT$40 - 50 billion in 2021. Currently, only Daedeok Electronics has released small-scale investments in South Korea. On the other hand, Samsung Electro-Mechanics and LG Innotek - both major benchmarking manufacturers - have not made any specific indications about the expansion of investment. If we analyze the timetable of expansion with each of the manufacturers, the production capacity will gradually be delivered from 2022. With this in mind, the market will certainly continue to sustain a shortage of ABF at least until 2023.