Yuden is probably cleaner MLCC bottleneck exposure, it's broadening past AI servers this month.
And all indicators looks like MLCC will get more bottlenecked with lead times increasing.
Main problem is Japanese suppliers don't like to price hike very much.
TLDR: - Low MC relative to global MLCC production - MLCC Bottleneck broadening to eg. consumer/automotive recently - Early cycle of price hikes.
Is probably why SA took positions.
They dont really need to win AI server market share, since MLCC is tightening into broader cateogries, and this company has 11.4% share of total market (which becomes a lot more strategically valuable).
Still looking into the sector more, these are just initial thoughts
As the top 3 suppliers, making it the 3rd largest MLCC manufacturer.
-> Murata is a little big ($101B MC) -> Samsung not the cleanest exposure, eg. robotics, and others ($81B MC), -> Taiyo Yuden is the smallest player (~$9.5B), which highest exposure to MLCC.
Lot of people were making fun and saying Murata/Samsung make up majority of the AI exposure, so it's stupid to buy Taiyo Yuden.
They don't have as much AI DC exposure as the others, but relative to the MC it's higher than people think.
Since there was a note that that Murata/Samsung were combined 85%, and every other supplier combined would be 15%, but even smaller exposure would be meaningful given MC.
I also kinda treat MLCCs somewhat similar to HBM with memory players, and legacy NAND/DRAM like MLCCs for other segments as an investment model:
eg: earlier in 2026, Trendforce stated broader consumer MLCCs were underutilized.
But this month, Trendofrce stated production resources shifted toward AI servers, causing material constraints/inventory shortages with automotive/industrial/etc (broader MLCCs that Taiyo touches given that 11.3% market share).
And then theres Samsung Electro-mechanics broad 30% price hike the other month. Taiyo 10-30% high capactance auto products, 6-13% hikes on consumer products, price revision for Sept shipments, with LTA indicators.
For their own forcases Taiyo said AI server MLCC sales grew around 30-35% in FY March 2026, and indicated 80% growth for Y/Y. So looks like its an early part of the MLCC cycle
on a side note: emerging business were microbatteries, fuel cells, solar cells which is kinda interesting.