Passive Component Pricing Outlook for the Year Ahead

Resistor and capacitor pricing has largely normalized after several volatile years, though a handful of substrate-constrained categories are still worth watching closely. Standard thick-film resistors and general-purpose MLCCs have settled back into pre-shortage pricing bands across every case size we track, and we don't expect meaningful movement there over the next several quarters.

Tantalum and certain high-capacitance MLCC categories remain the exception, tied to ongoing constraints on raw material supply and refining capacity rather than semiconductor-style demand cycles. Pricing in those categories has been range-bound rather than trending cleanly in either direction, which makes them harder to plan around than the broader passive market.

Our procurement team breaks down the categories where we expect continued softening versus the ones where buyers should still consider locking in longer-term pricing agreements — generally, standard case-size passives favor a spot-buy approach right now, while tantalum and high-cap MLCCs are better candidates for a term agreement if your forecast is stable enough to support one.