Shares of KB LAMINATES (01888) have risen more than 5%. At the time of writing, the stock is up 3.96%, trading at HK$49.32 with a turnover of HK$2.564 billion.

Market attention has swiftly turned to the MLCC (Multi-Layer Ceramic Capacitor) sector since Nvidia unveiled its Rubin architecture in March this year. MLCCs are the most widely used passive components on PCBs, and the two maintain a symbiotic relationship in product functionality.

Analysis indicates that the Rubin architecture is driving the MLCC value per server rack to jump from $3,000 in the H100 era to $22,000, with the potential to reach $40,000 by 2027, presenting a clear narrative of simultaneous volume and price increases. On the supply side, the expansion of high-end MLCC production is squeezing capacity for general-purpose products, and signals of price increases have begun to materialize, a dynamic highly consistent with the way HBM is crowding out DRAM.

It is noted that in the current bill-of-materials cost structure for AI servers, MLCCs have risen to become the third-largest cost component, trailing only GPUs and memory chips. Regarding the competitive landscape, for the "low-voltage, high-capacitance" MLCCs positioned adjacent to GPUs/ASICs in AI servers, technological iteration is advancing along a dual track: achieving extreme miniaturization and ultra-high capacitance within severely constrained PCB space. This evolution is significantly raising the barriers to entry for the core components.