Taiwan's automotive PCB makers may see short-term impacts on their revenues from deferred deliveries of shipment to car vendors who are forced to suspend production due to shortages of automotive chips, according to industry sources.

The makers have kept receiving additional orders from automakers since late 2020 along with growing recovery of global car sales, with order visibility extended to 3-4 months promising them good revenue momentum in first-half 2021. But their actual shipments are being affected by the increasingly short supply of automotive chips, the sources said.

The sources continued that automotive clients may have advanced their placement of orders to avoid further copper foil price rises and to thicken inventories in preparation for upcoming long-term growth in car sales.

It remains to be seen whether the strong order momentum will persist in the second half of the year, but automotive PCB makers, who cut labor forces to cope with sluggish car sales in the past few years, are now recruiting more employees to ramp up capacity utilization, the sources said.