Wedbush Asia Supply Chain Research: NVIDIA B200 Chip in Short Supply, Future Growth Potential Remains
Wedbush Securities analyst report indicates that the demand for NVIDIA's B200 chips exceeds supply capacity, with growth potential in future quarters. Despite capacity increases, the supply of PCIe solutions based on B200 remains tight, and NVIDIA prioritizes shipments of the GB200 series. This strategy may benefit model builders and data center demand. Non-AI-driven server demand is growing, but it remains to be seen whether this can be sustained until 2025. In the hard drive market, Western Digital and Seagate Technology will benefit from demand growth, and future hard drive supply shortages may become the norm
According to the Zhitong Finance APP, after completing an in-depth investigation of the Asian semiconductor supply chain, Wedbush Securities analysts recently released a report indicating that the demand for NVIDIA (NVDA.US) B200 chips continues to exceed supply capacity, suggesting that there is still room for growth in future quarters.
Analysts Matt Bryson and Antoine Legault emphasized in the investor report that although NVIDIA's production capacity continues to improve, the supply of its B200-based PCIe solutions remains tight, and the company seems to prefer prioritizing shipments of the GB200 series. This strategic adjustment may benefit model builders, NeoCloud, supercomputing centers, and sovereign data centers' demand for NVIDIA servers, as these deployments require more network functionality support and rely more on OEM manufacturers for production, corroborated by Dell's (DELL.US) strong performance expectations for the second quarter, Gigabyte's sales growth, and Wistron's better-than-expected performance in May.
Demand for non-AI-driven servers is also showing growth, but analysts noted that it remains to be seen whether this trend can continue into 2025. Notably, Wedbush mentioned that AMD's market share in the CPU socket market may see significant expansion by 2025, although confirmation signals are still needed regarding its MI350 product receiving more positive market feedback.
In the hard disk market, Western Digital (WDC.US) and Seagate Technology (STX.US) are expected to benefit from growing demand. Analysts pointed out that due to limited head production capacity and the lack of expansion plans in the industry, hard disk supply shortages may become the norm in future quarters, creating conditions for manufacturers to raise prices and improve profit margins. Currently, the capacity advantage of Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) technology may make Western Digital benefit more significantly in the short term, but as Seagate shifts more capacity to Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology, the firm maintains its judgment that Seagate will be more competitive by 2026.
This investigation also revealed an interesting phenomenon: Asian fund managers are generally surprised by the recent strong performance of the U.S. stock market. In multiple discussions, respondents expressed concerns about potential policy risks in the U.S., particularly regarding the extension of reciprocal tariff policies and possible restrictions on GPU exports to Malaysia and Thailand, which could exert pressure on the macro environment and U.S. stock performance. This observation report from the industry front provides important reference for investors to understand the current supply and demand pattern in the semiconductor and storage markets
