Comparing CITIC Securities’ report with LPKF’s Q2 earnings call

By Jin

This is a summary of CITIC Securities’ recent report on glass core substrates.

I am genuinely pleased to see a well-known brokerage finally publish an analysis that aligns closely with the thesis behind my investment in LPKF.

In a way, it feels like I recognized the value of glass substrates too early and paid the price for it. In any case, today’s topic is CITIC Securities’ report and how it compares with LPKF.

Below, I go point by point through where the two views converge and where they don’t: the commercialization timeline, the 2030 penetration rate, and which process steps CITIC flags as the critical bottlenecks. All of which map onto the exact processes LPKF is targeting.

I also address a distinction that’s easy to get wrong: CITIC’s TAM and LPKF’s TAM are not measuring the same thing, and conflating the two will lead you to the wrong conclusion about what this report actually implies for LPKF’s revenue opportunity.

Finally, I lay out the three risks I think investors should keep in mind before treating CITIC’s numbers as validation of LPKF’s upper-case scenario, along with the specific indicators I’ll be watching over the next few quarters to see whether this thesis is actually playing out.