Silicon wafer prices are set to rise 10%, the first major price hike for this key semiconductor material in over 3-years, media report, adding the hikes cover all sizes, 6-inch, 8-inch, 12-inch. End market demand has finally soaked up supply as the AI trend continues to draw in materials. Prices of specific products will continue to vary, but the overall impact on company revenues is expected to be average pricing up 10%. #SUMCO# #ShinEtsu# #GlobalWafers# #WaferWorks# #semiconductors#

China imposed provisional anti-dumping measures on Japanese dichlorosilane, a critical gas used in semiconductor and LCD production, requiring importers to pay guarantee deposits of up to 99.2%. The measures primarily target Shin-Etsu Chemical and Denka's subsidiary.

China reportedly halts some rare earth shipments to US. Not a new blanket ban, or any mention of specific rare earths. But… if I had to guess, Japan is usually a decent indicator of what’s actively important since Japan: - “sources virtually all of its dysprosium and terbium from China.” - gallium, dysprosium, terbium and yttrium from China to Japan all stood at “zero” in June. - Shin-Etsu Chemical has reportedly suspended acceptance of new orders for magnets containing dysprosium. - Global magnet producer Proterial had received no export licenses for Chinese dysprosium as of last month The Reuters piece mentioned yttrium, gallium, terbium, indium phosphide, and tungsten as historical examples (doesn’t say what’s being targeted now). On a side note, $LYC.AX is becoming one of the most important alternatives, as Japan has locked up 75% of Lynas’s medium/heavy rare-earth output. (8 tons of dysprosium + terbium in Q1) Something fun I also read is that Japan’s deep sea resource is enormous (est. at 16 million tons of rare earth rich mud, but commercialization is post-2028) But in the meantime, China seem to be choking off feedstock that would materially affect Japan. Since you’ve already seen the WF6 Japanese industry stressed from tungsten related halts. And indium/others earlier this year that is used to make InP substrates from Sumitomo/JX. But still gradually allowing exports directly eg. $AXTI -> $LITE to allow US/China trade to continue, kinda disrupting that from time to time, then using that as leverage. It’s interesting since Japan has so many different monopolies like ABF, so we’ll see if they do anything back. But if I had to give a prediction, it does look like the US has a countdown timer until China becomes self-sufficient on semiconductors. TLDR: - rare earth disruption to US - China actively targeting Japan for upstream feedstock (which goes to Us supply chains), probably want to focus on that - many many second/third order effects from disruptions - we’ll see what US/Japan wants to do back, but supply chain wars are being fought upstream.

almost every high performance motor on earth turns on a sintered rare earth magnet: airpods Phone haptics EV drive units robot wrists missile fins cmpressor fans in a hall full of GPUs the bottleneck in three numbers: - China mines about 60% of the magnet rare earths - it refines about 91% - it makes about 94% of the sintered permanent magnets having deposits might be a comforting idea, it's still just a small part of the strategy. Ore is not the product. The product is basically a brick that keeps its field when the motor gets hot. Building that brick means separating periodic table twins, alloying them, powdering, sintering, machining, magnetising. China built that middle when the west treated it like a dirty job nobody wanted at home. so who owns separation, and a sinter line a customer will actually trust? A few names sit on those steps: - $MP : Fort Worth metal + magnets, 10X campus behind it - $LYC (Lynas) : the non-Chinese oxides that already ship Energy Fuels + VAC: magnet craft bolted onto a US feed - Noveon: already shipping sintered magnets from Texas - Japan (Proterial, Shin-Etsu, TDK): the houses that never forgot how Educational, not investment advice

Taiwan's GlobalWafers: "Supply constraints have emerged in 12 inch wafers" Taiwan's GlobalWafers has formally acknowledged a shortage in silicon wafers. At its second quarter earnings conference call on the 4th, GlobalWafers said an imbalance between supply and demand in the semiconductor wafer industry is already underway, adding that its 12 inch (300mm), 8 inch (200mm) and 6 inch (150mm) lines have effectively reached maximum utilization and that supply constraints have already emerged for some advanced 12 inch products. Orders have surged on rising demand from AI semiconductors, high bandwidth memory (HBM), silicon photonics and advanced packaging. The company explained that the shortage has become a reality as logic makers, not only memory makers, move to secure long term capacity. The shortage is appearing across the wafer industry. Germany's Siltronic said in its earnings release on the 30th of last month that inventories at memory and logic customers are normalizing and that customers have begun rebuilding wafer safety stock, adding that this restocking is expected to increase wafer demand further and that new customers as well as existing ones are requesting 300mm volumes. Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical, the global number one, also said in its earnings release on the 24th of last month that 300mm wafer shipments grew at double digit rates both year over year and quarter over quarter. Japan's SUMCO likewise assessed in May that customer inventory adjustment was entering its final stage. SK Siltron is expanding capacity by bringing equipment at its new fab online in stages, but the pace of order growth is understood to be outrunning that. The way long term agreements (LTAs) are struck is also changing. In the past the purpose was for customers to secure stable volumes, but recently they have taken on a stronger character of locking up capacity ahead of a shortage. Contract terms are also lengthening from around three years to five to eight years. Last month GlobalWafers signed a 10 year LTA with Micron, the longest in the wafer industry. The contract begins next year and includes strategic financial support in the nature of a prepayment. Most of its revenue in the second half of this year and the first half of next year is also expected to come from LTAs. Shin-Etsu Chemical said it currently supplies all of its 300mm wafers under LTAs. Siltronic supplies two thirds of its volume through LTAs. Memory customers are requesting volumes for delivery two to three years out. Moves to raise prices are also emerging. With supply tight, prices have begun to rise first in the non LTA (spot) market. Siltronic said prices for 300mm non LTA wafers have started to rise. GlobalWafers also expects spot prices in the second half of this year to be higher than in the first half. Price increases are expected to spread to LTAs as well. GlobalWafers said it is discussing price increases with customers to reflect higher raw material, energy, logistics and labor costs, adding that while LTAs already signed will maintain their contracted prices, new contracts will reflect not only price and volume but also price adjustment mechanisms, product mix and market changes. Siltronic likewise stressed that with some LTA renegotiations coming up in 2027 and 2028, prices need to recover to levels that allow reinvestment, and that broad and meaningful price increases are necessary. The wafer industry had previously gone through roughly two years of simultaneous shipment declines and price pressure as customer inventories built up sharply from 2023. Customer inventories of 300mm wafers then turned lower from late 2025, and months of inventory also declined from the first quarter of this year, completing the inventory correction. The industry is understood to have turned from the second quarter of this year. A deeper shortage and full scale price increases are expected to appear from the second half of 2027. Rising utilization at existing semiconductor lines is currently driving shipment growth, but once new memory fabs from Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron come online, wafer demand is expected to rise to roughly double current levels.