TDK Corporation · Tokyo Japan ·(Pink Sheets: TTDKF)(Tokyo: 6762)

While TDK may be best known for blank audiotapes and CDs, the company actually records most of its sales from the sale of manufactured electronic materials and components. The company, which pioneered the use of the magnetic substance ferrite in the 1930s, is a major supplier of such products as ferrite magnets, transformer and inductor cores, and multilayer chip capacitors. Other components include voltage-controlled oscillators, noise reduction filters, and magnetic recording heads used inside computer disk drives. TDK gets more than 70% of its sales outside of Japan. Late in 2008 the company acquired EPCOS, a leading rival in passive components, for about €1.2 billion (around $1.9 billion) in cash. To read the full description, subscribe now.