TTM Technologies, a manufacturer of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and high-frequency RF and microwave components, plans to close factories and lay off staff.

The company warned of a slowdown in the data center market and an "ongoing weakness in the semiconductor market," CEO and president Thomas Edman said in an earnings call.

Edman said that data centers represented 14 percent of total sales in the fourth quarter, but the company expects revenues to fall to 12 percent in the first quarter "due to a slowdown in the data center market."

He added that "For the full year, data center computing grew 16.7 percent as we saw continued solid growth across our data center customers following 25 percent growth in 2021 and 9.1 percent growth in 2020. In 2023, we expect to be below the forecasted end market growth of nine percent to 12 percent, driven primarily by inventory digestion in the data center market."

But, after a strong year for data centers, there is now "a pronounced weakness in data center," he said.

Both data centers and semiconductors more generally are performing poorly, he said, and are "really showing signs of weakness. In the case of data center, [there is] a lot of discussion around inventory control and digestion" after companies stockpiled equipment in the face of shortages.

TTM plans to close three manufacturing facilities in Anaheim and Santa Clara, California, and in Hong Kong. It will also lay off around 750 employees, around five percent of its total workforce.

But the company is building a new facility in Penang, Malaysia, that "will assist customers in our commercial markets, such as networking, data center computing, and medical, industrial, and instrumentation."

While TTM's comments are focused on its PCB and RF business, which is impacted by a glut in semiconductor supplies, the wider data center industry is cautiously watching the impact of a cloud growth slowdown amid global economic uncertainty.

The CEO of power management company Eaton this week said: "We have lots of visibility into the data center market, and it feels good."