Latest MLCC Market Shifts! Prices Keep Rising – How Are End Manufacturers Responding?

01 Where Does the MLCC Market Stand Now?

Price hikes for passive components actually started as early as the end of last year.

The first to move were resistors and ferrite beads, which were the first to issue price adjustment notices. Around New Year's, the spot market even saw a temporary halt in price quoting at one point.

However, MLCCs didn't show much of a response at the time—they barely saw any increases early in the year. The noticeable price rises were mainly confined to specific tight-supply items like polymer tantalum capacitors and high-capacitance, high-voltage ceramic capacitors, while standard general-purpose parts remained largely flat.

By May, even the regular commodity grades began to see widespread follow‑on price hikes. The end of May was particularly striking: "capacitor prices changed every day," "prices doubled in a single day," with some parts "rising 2 to 5 times, and even more for high‑capacitance types." There were even instances where foreign‑sourced goods were cheaper than domestic ones, and old stock from as far back as 2022 (DC 2022) was being brought out for sale.

That said, some distributors remained relatively cautious at the time, pointing out that actual shipment volumes had not expanded in tandem—much of the inventory was simply being "shuffled around" within the market, with far less actually reaching end users. Some agents also noted that transaction volumes in May were actually lower than in April.

From updates gathered last week (end of June), the market remained very active, with quoted prices still highly erratic: Japanese and Korean brands had risen roughly 2 to 8 times, domestic low‑capacitance parts by 2 to 10 times, and high‑capacitance types held up even better than low‑capacitance ones.

Take the highest‑volume specification 0402 104K 16V as an example: in March the price was still RMB 0.0026/piece, but by the end of June it had climbed to RMB 0.012/piece, with some quotes even reaching RMB 0.02/piece. In contrast, tantalum capacitors—which had started their price increases earlier—saw less dramatic rises. For instance, AVX's TAJA106K016RNJ was around RMB 0.4 at the end of last November and only went up to about RMB 0.7 by the end of June.

Customer acceptance also began to diverge at this point: clients producing high‑value‑added products and with ample order books were relatively price‑insensitive, while those making low‑end products found it significantly more challenging. Some traders also mentioned that buyers were becoming more inclined to wait and see, which in turn weakened actual transaction activity.

From this week's observations, the MLCC market remains hot, though some slight shifts are emerging. However, because everyone's customer base differs, perceptions of the situation are not entirely uniform.

Some distributors had differing views:

One distributor mentioned that in June they received quite a few large orders—including individual orders worth several million yuan—which is relatively uncommon under normal market conditions. Another distributor said that over the past month, fluctuations had been modest and their performance was still decent. A third distributor noted that this week, some capacitor prices had pulled back by about 10 percentage points. Others, however, said they had not observed any price correction, suggesting that the discrepancy might be due to differences in date codes (DC) or brand variations.

On customer acceptance:

One trader said that most of their shipments went to other traders, but this week some small end‑users had started to place orders—though mainly on an as‑needed basis. Others observed that more customers were buying only what they urgently needed, mainly because after waiting and seeing prices keep rising, they had chosen to stock up selectively, with those making high‑value‑added products showing greater price tolerance. Some industry participants felt that the current buying spree involved a significant speculative element, with traders simply trading among themselves, and that actual end‑demand might not be as strong as rumored—though they did concede that factories were indeed purchasing.

As for "locking up inventory" and withholding quotes, opinions were even more divided:

Some distributors said that inventory holds were still widespread, and that when they quoted, they had no stock to offer. Other channel sources reported that by this week, the practice of not quoting or not shipping had largely subsided. A component‑matching supplier also noted that while high‑priced capacitors were still available, resistors were harder to come by, with many suppliers unwilling to ship them—making it difficult for them to take on new orders recently, and leaving regular business very hard to conduct.

02 Review of the MLCC Price Rally

This round of MLCC price hikes has been spreading continuously since the second half of 2025. The rally started with small and medium-sized domestic manufacturers, followed by industry leaders, and later joined by major Japanese and Korean suppliers. The price surge initially hit resistors and ferrite beads before spilling over to MLCCs:

Q4 2025: Tai-Tech took the lead by raising ferrite bead prices and cutting production in November. In December, domestic resistor makers including Fojan and Hoketech issued batches of price adjustment notices with hikes mostly ranging from 8% to 20%.

Q1 2026: The price rally extended to leading manufacturers. Fenghua, Walsin and Yageo followed suit. Yageo lifted chip resistor prices by 15%–20% in February.

Q2 saw major Japanese and Korean vendors join the wave. In April, Murata raised prices of MLCCs for AI servers and high-end automotive applications by 15%–35%, while Samsung Electro-Mechanics implemented a 5%–10% price increase across its full product lineup. Taiyo Yuden followed up in May, bringing its cumulative price increase from last year to this year to 65%.

Nevertheless, what truly pushed the market into a frenzy was not these official price adjustment letters, but widespread rumors that component manufacturers had suspended order acceptance.

According to a Commercial Times report on May 27, Fenghua had fully suspended new orders from domestic distributors for its 0402 and 0603 chip resistors and MLCCs. The news instantly ignited market sentiment. (Fenghua later clarified on June 1 that it was not a complete suspension, but rather a partial postponement that had already been resumed.) With the groundwork laid by price‑increase notices, coupled with order‑suspension rumors and heated market sentiment, the spark of price hikes quickly spread across the board.

As for the specific price increases on MLCCs, beyond these direct triggers, there were likely three underlying reasons:

First, reduced shipments to distributors plus rising channel sentiment. Some distributors indicated that their incoming stock volumes had decreased to varying degrees over the past several months.

Second, major Japanese and Korean manufacturers were shifting capacity toward high‑end applications, reducing supply flexibility for consumer‑grade products. According to a survey by TrendForce, booming demand for AI chips has led to tight supply of high‑end MLCCs, which in turn constrained the availability of consumer‑grade MLCCs. This prompted some distributors to engage in preventive stockpiling, and suppliers responded by adjusting prices upward.

Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) data also reflected the strong demand for MLCCs. For the first quarter ended March 2026, Murata's company‑wide book‑to‑bill (BB) ratio rose to 1.24, with the MLCC segment alone hitting 1.36. Taiyo Yuden posted a company‑wide BB of 1.25, while its capacitor business reached 1.31, up from 1.08 in the previous quarter.

Third, major forecasts from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Around May 20, Morgan Stanley published a bill‑of‑materials (BOM) breakdown for NVIDIA's next‑generation Rubin platform, revealing that the MLCC value per rack jumped from USD 1,530 for GB300 to USD 4,320 for VR200—a surge of 182%, ranking second only to PCBs among all component increases. Goldman Sachs was even more direct, calling MLCCs the "next supply bottleneck" in the AI supply chain, estimating that AI server demand for MLCCs would grow roughly 4.3‑fold between fiscal 2025 and 2030, while industry capacity growth would barely exceed 10% annually.

Consequently, by the end of May, the spot market for MLCCs experienced what could only be described as a "crazy" rally.