Mint @mintia006

$3002.T Gunze mainly known for underwear and textiles, is expanding production of semiconductor cleaning components. Main points of what i've found so far. - New 5,900m² building completed in Aichi in August with ¥2.2B invested in the building alone, with production equipment being added gradually - Growing AI data centre demand, with management also pointing to physical AI and drones as future growth drivers - No production capacity targets disclosed yet Kinda unexpected to see a traditional Japanese textile manufacturer expanding towards ai but could be a cool watch for the future

日本経済新聞 電子版（日経電子版） @nikkei

3 days ago

グンゼ、半導体洗浄部品を増産　フィジカルAIやドローン需要見込む nikkei.com/article/DGXZQO…

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Sorry for not being active lately. I just saw NVIDIA's latest semiconductor supply chain expansion plans and few things that stood out to me. • Amkor ($AMKR) 300%+ expansion in advanced packaging capacity by 2028. • IBIDEN, Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Unimicron 2.5x substrate capacity expansion over the next three years. • KYEC, New semiconductor testing facilities in the US, backed by a $1.1B capacity reservation advance from NVIDIA. • SPIL 15x optical-engine capacity by mid-2027, with plans to double again by the end of 2028. • Semiconductor testing — NVIDIA expects overall testing capacity to double between 2026 and 2027. Some interesting implications for Japanese semiconductor companies here, especially exciting for IBIDEN ($4062.T) which I've covered before, may be time to revisit.

ASML Q3 earnings are pretty interesting, especially for Japanese semiconductor companies. Revenue came in at €11.7B (+55% YoY), net income €5B (+134% YoY) and gross margin 57.5%, up from 51.6% a year ago. Earnings beat expectations, although revenue came in slightly below consensus. ASML also raised its full-year revenue outlook to €44–45B, with Q4 revenue expected between €14.2–15.2B. New lithography system sales increased to 113 units, compared to 86 in Q2 and 66 a year ago. So overall pretty strong results, but the biggest takeaway for me isn’t just the earnings themselves. It’s what ASML is saying about future demand. Apparently their planned production capacity won’t even be enough to fully meet customer demand in 2027–2028, despite plans to expand capacity by around 30%. Some customers are already discussing orders for 2029–2030. That’s pretty significant considering how far ahead semiconductor manufacturers are planning their investments. The interesting part for Japan is how this translates into demand across the semiconductor supply chain. A few companies worth watching: • Tokyo Electron (8035) — deposition, etching and other semiconductor manufacturing equipment. More fab investment could mean more demand for TEL. Lasertec (6920) — EUV photomask inspection. Probably one of the more interesting Japanese names to look into given its exposure to advanced lithography. SCREEN (7735) — wafer cleaning equipment. Another potential beneficiary if semiconductor manufacturers keep expanding capacity. Advantest (6857) — semiconductor testing equipment. More advanced chip production could eventually translate into greater testing demand. Shin-Etsu Chemical (4063) — silicon wafers and semiconductor materials. Worth watching if the investment cycle translates into higher wafer demand. It’s worth distinguishing between ASML’s equipment demand and the broader semiconductor industry. Not every increase in lithography spending translates into the same level of demand for other equipment suppliers. The key is whether the current AI-driven investment cycle starts spreading more broadly across semiconductor manufacturing, rather than staying concentrated in a relatively small number of advanced chipmakers. ASML’s results are encouraging here. Revenue is growing rapidly, margins are expanding and customers are planning capacity years ahead. But I think the more important thing to watch is whether other equipment manufacturers start reporting similar order growth and stronger guidance. Tokyo Electron reports on October 30, so that’ll be a pretty useful comparison. Want to see whether its orders and guidance support what ASML is saying. For me the main takeaway is that ASML’s earnings aren’t just relevant to ASML. They’re another piece of evidence for understanding where semiconductor capex is heading and which Japanese companies could capture that spending over the next few years.

$6981.T Murata is considering accelerating MLCC capacity expansion as AI server demand continues to surge. Its Izumo factory, previously expected to reach capacity around 2030 could reportedly fill up this year. Murata is already having to turn down some MLCC orders, with its book-to-bill ratio still near 1.5. Looking more like AI infrastructure demand is starting to put real pressure on Japanese component suppliers, not just GPU and memory manufacturers.

Polymarket Japan @polymarketjapan

2 weeks ago

【速報】村田製作所、AI需要急増で電子部品工場を拡張へ ・AIサーバー向けMLCCの増産に向け、投資前倒しを調整 ・2030年までに生産能力が埋まる想定の出雲工場が「今年で埋まりそう」 ・10月末までに増強計画の詳細を固める方針

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NTTがアンソロピック向けデータセンター　日本初、大阪で開設へ nikkei.com/article/DGXZQO…

Potentially a huge catalyst for Japanese names. $9432.T NTT is reportedly in final talks to build Anthropic's first Japanese data center in Osaka, potentially costing up to ¥1 trillion ($6.5B). NTT DATA is already working with $6367.T Daikin on AI-driven data center cooling. Other names that could be worth watching are $6504.T Fuji Electric (power infrastructure) and $6361.T Ebara (cooling and pumps). Looks like another opportunity for Japanese infrastructure suppliers as AI investment expands further. nikkei.com/article/DGXZQO…

Elon Musk says the problem is now RAM supply. Tesla already cut RAM on AI5 and AI6 earlier this month just to secure enough volume for Optimus production. So it basically looks like this. AI servers → HBM AI phones/PCs → LPDDR Autonomous vehicles → DRAM Humanoid robots → DRAM Japan doesn’t really have a direct listed DRAM producer anymore. So I’ll be looking underneath the memory manufacturers themselves.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

3 weeks ago

@zephyr_z9 Problem is RAM supply

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@CarsonTalkMoney $4194.T Visional, cool Japanese pick

@MrrrOzi @StockMKTNewz Yep, it's still very early to call but would be interesting if the production side starts to show up

Update on $6762.T TDK. Nikkei now reports TDK has begun negotiations with Toshiba and Seagate over the sale of its HDD magnetic heads. Seems like antitrust and economic-security reviews are now being flagged as potential hurdles, which makes sense given how concentrated HDD head supply already is. Also a pretty good timing for TDK to explore a sale while AI/data center demand is pushing up the value of the business. TDK still hasn’t formally decided on a sale, but this looks like it’s going to move.

日本経済新聞 電子版（日経電子版） @nikkei

3 weeks ago

TDK、磁気ヘッド事業の売却検討　独禁法や経済安保への対応も焦点に nikkei.com/article/DGXZQO…

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$5016.T JX Advanced Metals adding another AI data center angle here. Group company Tatsuta Electric Wire is expanding production of leak detection systems used in AI data centers, targeting ~2.5x end-2026 capacity by Sep 2027. They've only announced a 30% capacity expansion in August but demand has already been running above expectations. Now pushing them into another round of investment in just two months. Makes sense as liquid cooling keeps becoming more important for high-density GPU servers meaning leak detection becomes a more critical part of the infrastructure. JX is continuing to build a pretty interesting AI data center stack with probably more to come.

ＪＸ金属株式会社【公式】 @JX_NMM

3 weeks ago

ＪＸ金属のグループ会社であるタツタ電線は、京都工場においてAIデータセンター等に使用される漏水検知システムの生産能力を増強します。2026年8月に発表した増強に続く追加投資で、2027年9月までに生産能力を2026年末比で約2.5倍に引き上げる予定です。 jx-nmm.com/newsrelease/20…

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I've come across $6526.T Socionext where the earnings still haven’t really caught up with what’s happening underneath that has some potential. Socionext is a fabless custom-SoC company, basically helping customers design custom chips for specific applications. What I'm liking rn is their shift toward data center & networking. In FY26, data Center & networking jumped to 53% of NRE revenue from just 18% the year before. NRE is basically the development revenue before these chips move into proper volume production, which is why that shift caught my eye. One of Socionext’s major data center CPU products is now scheduled to enter mass production in 2H FY27, and management says customer demand is already expected to exceed what they originally forecast when they won the design and they’re now working with the customer to secure leading-edge foundry capacity. It also doesn’t look like this is just one CPU project. They've talked about a hyperscaler CPU project, several US AI SoC design wins, and additional wins across switches/networking. Their roadmap also spans, - Advanced nodes - High-speed SerDes - Chiplets - CPO - Advanced packaging What makes this more interesting to me is why the stock hasn’t really rerated yet. The costs are showing up before the production revenue. Q1 R&D was up 19% YoY to ¥17bn, while they posted a ¥0.7bn operating loss as advanced-node development, testing and early production costs weighed on margins. So right now it looks like, AI design wins → development revenue → heavy development costs → mass production. Rather than, AI demand → product revenue → operating leverage. The question is whether Socionext is sitting right before that transition. Definitely one I’m going to keep watching.

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Nice little graphic on the TDK situation. Pretty easy to see why both Seagate and Toshiba would want control of the only independent HDD head supplier.

Nikkei continues to rip higher Semiconductors are again leading today, - Tokyo Electron +~5% - Advantest +~4% The Nikkei Semiconductor Index is up over 3%. The question from here is whether this keeps broadening downstream into the smaller Japanese AI infrastructure/supply-chain names that haven’t rerated nearly as aggressively yet.

Bull Theory @BullTheoryio

3 weeks ago

BREAKING: 🇯🇵 Over ¥29,400,000,000,000 ($187.5B) has been added to Japanese stocks as the NIKKEI surges +2.5%.

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Sources: fujielectric.com/about/news/det… fujielectric.com/about/news/det…

Here's a rough overview of $6504.T Fuji Electric which is the next Japanese name I'm looking at here. Fuji already has pretty direct exposure through UPS, transformers, switchgear and power distribution systems for data centers and it looks like AI is starting to pull them further into the cooling side. Power supply and facility systems orders grew 24% YoY in FY25, helped by bundled UPS + substation deliveries to data centers in Japan and overseas. They’re also expanding capacity pretty aggressively, building a new data center switchboard facility in Malaysia. They've got operations scheduled to begin this month that are expected to lift local switchboard capacity 1.5x, while capacity for skid systems and container PTUs are set to increase 4x. Earlier this year Fuji launched a 250kW ejector cooling unit for liquid-cooled data centers that uses server waste heat rather than a conventional compressor. Fuji states they can reduce server cooling power consumption by up to 85% under its stated conditions. Since AI servers are pushing data centers from air cooling toward water/liquid cooling,Fuji is starting to sit on both sides of the bottleneck: substation → UPS/power distribution → server power → liquid cooling They're still mainly known for the electrical infrastructure but I think they are going to be fun to watch, trying to combine electrical + thermal infrastructure into one offering.

Mint @mintia006

4 weeks ago

US data center power demand is projected to surge massively through 2029 as AI infrastructure scales. Definitely worth watching these Japanese picks that lie on the bottleneck. $6503.T Mitsubishi Electric - chip power + cooling $6501.T Hitachi - transformers + GW scale energy

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@JSCC2020Lee For sure, it’s getting interesting

$6503.T Mitsubishi Electric is the first one I want to look at that lies on the Japanese AI bottleneck. Last week Mitsubishi released its NVIDIA Vera Rubin-compatible “Chip-to-Grid” reference designs, covering essentially the entire chain grid. Connection → power supply → chip → cooling. The system brings together on site generation + BESS, power transmission, 800VDC architecture and direct liquid/rack cooling, with the designs intended to scale toward GW-class AI data centers. What caught my eye was actually how aggressively Mitsubishi is actually building this out. IT Cooling revenue was only ¥32bn in FY26, but management is targeting ¥100bn+ by FY31 and ¥300bn+ by FY36. They’re also investing ~$30m into a new Ohio cooling plant starting production in 2027, expanding into liquid cooling. Also recently acquired two Dutch HVAC firms to strengthen data center maintenance in Europe too. AI data center power demand isn’t just a cooling story for Mitsubishi. They’re building a pretty good position across power generation → grid equipment → UPS/power delivery → liquid cooling. Still a relatively small part of Mitsubishi today, but definitely one I’ll be following as these targets ramp.

Mint @mintia006

4 weeks ago

US data center power demand is projected to surge massively through 2029 as AI infrastructure scales. Definitely worth watching these Japanese picks that lie on the bottleneck. $6503.T Mitsubishi Electric - chip power + cooling $6501.T Hitachi - transformers + GW scale energy

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Sources europe.mitsubishielectric.com/en/pr/global/2… mitsubishielectric.com/en/pr/2026/pdf…