Price increases are spreading across the passive component industry. According to Economic Daily News, sources say YAGEO has notified customers of price increases across its entire capacitor solutions portfolio, effective July 1. The hike covers MLCCs, aluminum electrolytic capacitors, tantalum capacitors, polymer aluminum capacitors, film capacitors, and supercapacitors, marking the company’s broadest price increase in recent years.

Institutional investors cited by the report say capacitors account for about half of YAGEO’s revenue and expect the latest price hike to boost both revenue and profitability while also benefiting other Taiwanese passive component suppliers.

Commercial Times also notes that YAGEO is raising MLCC prices for direct customers for the first time, extending the increase beyond distributors to both contract and spot pricing. Given that direct customers account for more than half of the company’s revenue, the report says the move is expected to provide a meaningful boost to sales.

As for the scale of the increases, Shanghai Securities News, citing industry sources, reports that YAGEO has raised its official prices for capacitor products by around 50%, with even steeper increases in the spot market. The report also notes that spot-market prices have continued to climb since May, with prices for high-end capacitor products rising by as much as nearly tenfold within a month. Delivery delays have also become increasingly common, affecting not only YAGEO but major MLCC brands across the industry.

Cost Pressures Drive Broad Price Hikes

As noted by Economic Daily News, the price hike reflects rising manufacturing costs driven by geopolitical risks, elevated energy prices, and higher raw material costs. The report says YAGEO had previously absorbed these pressures through process optimization and supply chain integration, but ongoing tensions in the Middle East and volatile freight rates have prompted the company to adjust prices.

The increase is also broad in scope. The report adds that it spans YAGEO’s entire capacitor portfolio, covering products used in AI servers, consumer electronics, automotive, industrial, renewable energy, aerospace, power, and energy storage applications.

AI Reshapes the MLCC Market

Meanwhile, institutional investors cited by Economic Daily News note that continued growth in AI servers, high-performance computing (HPC), and electric vehicles is driving both the volume and specifications of high-end passive components. The report says demand for higher-capacitance, higher-voltage, and higher-reliability products is increasing overall capacity consumption.

Commercial Times also notes that as thermal design power (TDP) and power requirements for AI server racks continue to rise, particularly with the fourth-quarter ramp of NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform, passive components are playing an increasingly critical role in 800V HVDC power architectures. As a result, passive components have climbed from near the bottom of the bill of materials (BOM) cost ranking to second only to GPUs and memory.

Against this backdrop, Commercial Times further notes that YAGEO is expected to be the largest beneficiary of MLCC order transfers as Murata and Samsung Electro-Mechanics shift capacity toward higher-value AI MLCCs. High-capacitance MLCCs require 500–1,300 layers, compared with 50–100 layers for low-capacitance products, making them more capacity-intensive and reducing yields. With Japanese and South Korean manufacturers already operating at full utilization, the report says supply of conventional MLCCs is becoming increasingly constrained.

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(Photo credit: YAGEO)