Yageo, Taiwan’s biggest passive component maker, said demand for AI server components remains 'very, very strong', leading some customers to pay a premium to secure supply and sign Long Term Agreements (LTAs), media report, adding Yageo raised prices in the 2nd quarter to keep pace with rising materials costs, and may have to raise prices again. #Yageo# #TaiyoYuden# #SamsungElectroMechanics#

TAIYO YUDEN 6976: like a letter from a dead relative, the May-June runup (and subsequent collapse) is now explained. Good to know that SA was consistently poor in both trade execution and regulatory compliance.

14,641,148 shares of Taiyo Yuden (TSE: 6976) changed hands on 3 August. 10.8 percent of the company, in one day. Nobody who received them has to file anything. A correction before the rest. On 12 August I wrote that a Japanese large shareholding report does not name the counterparty. That was wrong. The 60 day table has a column for it, and Situational Awareness has now filed that detail. Five names took the block. Citadel Multi-Strategy Equities Master Fund, 3,335,335 and 1,287,985 shares at 9,397 yen Jane Street Financial, 1,882,020 at 10,225 JP Morgan Securities, 4,135,808 at 10,225 Barclays Bank, 4,000,000 at 10,225 Now count the slices. 3.05, 2.95, 2.46, 1.38, 0.94. Japan's disclosure threshold is 5 percent. Not one of them crosses it. And the seller finished that day at 4.41 percent, down from a peak of 16.61 on 21 July. That is also below 5. So both sides of the trade are now invisible. The fund has dropped under the line it was reporting from. The five who took the stock never crossed it. One more thing in the table. Two prices. Citadel paid 9,397 yen. The other three paid 10,225. Same day, same stock, 828 yen apart. The filing does not say why, so neither will I. And the selling started before the story did. 185,200 shares on 28 July, in the market. 1,700,000 on 30 July. The margin call reporting came on the 29th and 30th. What I still cannot tell you: three of those five are dealer entities. Where the stock went after them is not in any document I can read. Sources, in order: Situational Awareness LP, large shareholding reports on Taiyo Yuden, initial filing through change report No.8, EDINET. The 10.8 percent and the 9,963 yen weighted average are my arithmetic from that 60 day table, and the read is mine too. Not advice.

I didn’t know Leopold was a fellow MLCC bottleneck investor in Taiyo Yuden (6976) It’s been disclosed today that Situational Awareness owns 5.99% of the company with a ~ ¥17,446/share avg as of June 29th. Current prices are ¥9,797. I actually added some today to show support since Taiyo Yuden is one of the largest % MLCC manufacturers globally.

MLCCs 6981 6976 009150: MS going hard on the specks of clay this week. 40 pg report, upgrading Taiyo Yuden 6976 to hold, top picks Murata 6981 and SEMCO 009150. Key theme: MLCCs are still "early cycle" in late 2026.

MLCC spot prices are up 3-5x on scarce AI-server specs since April. Some individual models up 8-10x. Murata, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, and Taiyo Yuden all raising prices. Nearly every major MLCC manufacturer trades in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, or China. @roundhill launched $CCML today giving US investors direct access to those names.

In early August, MLCC suppliers experienced across-the-board growth in order intake and shipments, with Japanese and Korean suppliers—namely Murata, SEMCO, Taiyo Yuden, and Kyocera—seeing their order backlogs steadily mount. The MLCC industry’s overall BB ratio has climbed up to 1.1, compared to 1.08 in July. Among Japanese and Korean suppliers, Murata, Taiyo Yuden, Kyocera, and SEMCO have all posted BB ratios exceeding 1.2, with the exception of TDK at 0.95. Suppliers based in Taiwan and Mainland China have also benefited from the spillover of orders for mid-to-high-capacitance consumer MLCCs, lifting their average BB ratios above 0.9. Capitalizing on the voracious demand for high-end MLCCs used in AI servers, both SEMCO and Murata posted 2Q26 earnings that outperformed expectations. Murata has even revised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance upward to JPY 2.11 trillion, reflecting a 15% YoY increase. TrendForce projects that the supply-demand gap for AI server MLCCs will persist into 4Q26, signaling that the MLCC industry has entered the early stages of an upward cycle. 📊 For more:

One of the stranger AI infrastructure trades right now: A component that costs fractions of a cent is becoming a meaningful bottleneck inside multimillion-dollar AI racks. MLCC content rises from roughly $1,530 in GB300 to $4,320 in VR200. But the investment case is not simply "capacitors are scarce." Most MLCCs are not scarce. The shortage sits in a narrow band of high-capacitance, low-inductance parts that can survive the voltage, thermal and power-delivery requirements of AI accelerators. That creates a much more interesting question: Who actually captures the economics? 1. Murata has the strongest strategic position. 2. SEMCO is showing the clearest earnings conversion. 3. Taiyo Yuden is arguably the cleanest directional exposure. Same bottleneck, three very different equity setups. That is the part I think investors should focus on. (companies exposed to MLCC, from @tessara_ai)

I think we're seeing AI server MLCC demand cause an interesting effect... with tightening capacity for consumer/general-purpose MLCCs. If you get Vietnam flashbacks like I do to $MU / Samsung / SK Hynix -> Legacy DRAM: My thesis is we'll see the same thing here maybe late H2, early 2027 with consumer/broad MLCCs. From July 6th: "the crowding-out effect from AI-oriented high-end MLCC production has begun spilling over into both the automotive and consumer markets." July 28th: "AI Demand Pushes Japanese and Korean MLCC Suppliers to Record Monthly Shipments; Consumer-Grade Order Spillovers Continue to Surge" Aug 12: As [MLCC] capacity shifts from consumer grades to AI-oriented products... (Trendforce) Aug 12: China's electronics market channel checks found 22µF and 47µF MLCCs (used more broadly) out of stock. Then found and said certain manufacturers had stopped taking orders. (for reference: Walsin said high-volume smartphone/PC products such as... 22µF, so it's broader MLCCs) Obviously Samsung Electro-Mechanics/Murata are main beneficiaries of AI server MLCC ramp. But companies with large market share of overall MLCCs like Taiyo Yuden (6976, disclosure: I have positions) with less AI server share, would be a major beneficiary of this. Fun part is, we're only in H2 2026, so the next major bottleneck should be fun!

Just taking a look at Leopold's Situational Awareness Q2 13F latest holdings as of June 30th: 1. $SNDK - $5.674B 2. $MU - $5.574B 3. $BE - $1.899B 4. $TSM - $1.265B 5. $NBIS - $1.232B 6. $CRWV - $744.5M 7. $CORZ - $665.6M 8. $STM - $584.3M (new) 9. $APLD - $469.0M 10. $RIOT - $468.2M 11. $SHAZ - $456.8M 12. $IREN - $433.3M Less material positions includeed $CLSK, $KEEL, sei-network:native, $WYFI, $BTDR, $TE, $HIVE, $VSH, and others. Seems like Situational Awareness concentrated around memory (Sandisk, Micron), that have low forward multiples but high visibility into 2030. As well as Anthropic/energy/power adjacent from colo/neoclouds + Bloom. Some of the bottlenecks like the MLCC trade, he couldn't see play out (Taiyo Yuden, etc). due to July's liqudation. And some are new like $STM (eg. MCU price hikes). With core winners of everything such as $TSM (but less high-beta). This looked similar to my H2 2026/early 2027 portfolio with Nebius, Micron, TSM, colo players and others as core focus. (I've heavily concentrated on upstream networking/legacy memory currently, with a lot of name overlap). But always cool to see what others are doing.