SCREEN Holdings - Company History

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Financial history 1966–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1868
Founder Ishida Saijiro (石田才次郎)
Founding location 京都府京都市
Core business at founding Copperplate printing and halftone screens for photomechanical reproduction
Listed 1962
President Goto Masato President since 2025
Current priority Capacity investment · Shareholder returns Expanding capacity at Hikone and holding the payout ratio at 30 per cent or more
Founding
In 1868 Ishida Saijiro founded the Ishida Kyokuzan Printing Works, a copperplate printing shop, as a sole proprietorship in Kyoto. The second-generation head, Ishida Keizo (石田敬三), read the coming spread of photomechanical printing in the 1920s, concluded that hand-cut copperplate engraving had no future, and turned to making in Japan the glass screens that until then could only be imported. He began researching the process single-handedly in 1926 and, eight years later in 1934, obtained a patent on a method of etching halftone screens for photomechanical reproduction. In May 1937 he founded the Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Works to industrialise it, but establishing volume production proved difficult, and some twenty years passed between the decision to enter the field and its realisation. In October 1943 the works was reorganised as a joint-stock company with capital of ¥130,000, and in 1962 the shares were listed on the second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange. In October 2014 the company moved to a holding-company structure and changed its name to SCREEN Holdings.
The Decision
The company has built the equipment for the next industry out of the profits of the business it was already earning from. The oil crisis of autumn 1973 thinned orders for photo-engraving machines, and the year to March 1975 turned to an ordinary loss. In that same year, 1975, it took the three skills of photo-engraving — drawing fine lines, enlarging and reducing through lenses, and etching copperplate chemically — and applied them as they stood to develop a wafer etcher of its own. Capital expenditure rose fourfold, from $4.7M (¥1bn) in FY1977 to $22.5M (¥5bn) in FY1980, and Ishida Akira (石田明), who became president in 1989, set the main battleground not at exposure or deposition but at cleaning. In 1994 sales of equipment for the electronics industry passed printing-related equipment, and the founding business and the main earner changed places. Putting the profits of the photo-engraving machine into developing equipment is what opened the way to swapping the main business without taking in outside capital.
Today
Semiconductor production equipment produces eight-tenths of revenue and nine-tenths of segment profit. Of consolidated revenue of $3.8B (¥606bn) in the year to March 2026, semiconductor production equipment accounted for $3.1B (¥485bn), and against operating profit of $774.5M (¥123bn) that business alone returned segment profit of $775.8M (¥123bn). The rest is graphic arts equipment at $362.3M (¥57bn), display production and film-deposition equipment at $256.1M (¥41bn) and printed-circuit-board-related equipment at $91.7M (¥15bn) — the businesses that run back to the copperplate printing of 1868 remain a source of earnings. S-Cube 4 and S-Cube 5 came on stream at the Hikone works in January 2023 and January 2024, widening capacity by 40 per cent against 2022 to $3.3B (¥500bn) a year. The peak, though, was the year to March 2025, with revenue of $4.2B (¥625bn) and an operating margin of 21.7 per cent; the year to March 2026 came in slightly below it.
Competition
First place in equipment was settled not by an acquisition or a merger but by building a plant in a downturn. In the cleaning-equipment market of the early 1990s the company stood first with a share of about 22 per cent, but mid-sized firms contended with one another, and from 1993 Tokyo Electron, which had entered cleaning equipment, widened its share. In 1997 the company announced the batch-type FC-3000, and the following year, 1998, it put $140.6M (¥18bn) into building the Taga works. It booked a net loss of $187.2M (¥25bn) in the year to March 1999 and still did not stop investing, and in March 2001 it began volume production of 300mm-capable equipment at Fab. FC-1 at the Hikone works. It was the only cleaning-equipment maker able to build a plant dedicated to 300mm volume production, and by 2022 it held 48 per cent of the world market in batch cleaning and 33 per cent in single-wafer cleaning. The plant built in a loss-making year coincided with the mid-sized firms dropping away, and settled the oligopoly of the twenty years that followed.

Timeline

1868–1974From copperplate engraving to precision processing

  1. 1868Ishida Saijiro founds the Ishida Kyokuzan Printing Works in Kyoto
  2. 1918The workshop develops its own Ishida-shiki film
  3. 1926Ishida Keizo begins research into making glass screens in Japan
  4. 1934Patents a method of etching halftone screens for photomechanical reproduction
  5. 1937Founds the Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Works to industrialise it
  6. 1943Reorganised as a joint-stock company with ¥130,000 capital
  7. 1953Horikawa plant built
  8. 1962Shares listed on the second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange
  9. 1963Joint development with Sony of colour-television shadow masks

1975–2000Entering semiconductor equipment, and completing the change of business

  1. 1975Develops a wafer etcher and enters semiconductor production equipment
  2. 1977Commercialises the EMW-322/411 cleaning equipment
  3. 1978Launches spin coaters and spin developers
  4. 1980Develops the Sigmagraph 2000 printed-image processing system
  5. 1985Rakusai plant built for wafer cleaning equipment
  6. 1990Strengthens overseas sales of cleaning equipment
  7. 1992Develops the WS-820L wafer cleaning system
  8. 1993Tokyo Electron enters the cleaning-equipment market
  9. 1994Electronics equipment overtakes printing equipment in revenue
  10. 1997Announces the FC-3000 batch cleaning system
  11. 1998Taga works opened for wafer cleaning equipment
  12. 1999Falls to a net loss in the year to March

2001–2023World leader in cleaning, and the move to a holding company

  1. 2001Volume production of 300mm-capable cleaning equipment begins in March
  2. 2001Voluntary redundancies sought in September
  3. 2002The printing-related equipment business is split off
  4. 2006Fab. FC-2 and CS-1 added at Hikone; FPD equipment volume production starts
  5. 2009Falls to a net loss after the Lehman shock
  6. 2014Renamed SCREEN Holdings and moves to a holding-company structure
  7. 2019Increases output of semiconductor cleaning equipment at Hikone
  8. 2022First in the world in semiconductor cleaning equipment
  9. 2023Announces a ¥1trn revenue plan and concentrates investment at Hikone

Founding Story

1868–1974From copperplate engraving to precision processing

Everything SCREEN later became rests on a single exchange made in the 1920s: the second-generation head of a Kyoto copperplate shop concluded that his family craft was about to be made obsolete by photographic printing, and spent eight years working out instead how to etch a glass screen. The etching skill that came out of that search carried the firm through post-war photo-engraving equipment and into precision components for colour television, on a business that was still small in absolute terms — revenue of $5.8M (¥2bn) in the year to April 1966, and $45.1M (¥13bn) by the year to March 1974.

From copperplate engraving to glass etching

In 1868 Ishida Saijiro (石田才次郎) founded the Ishida Kyokuzan Printing Works as a sole proprietorship in Kyoto, working in copperplate printing; it began as a small workshop answering the demand for type and printed matter that followed immediately on the Meiji Restoration. The workshop kept refining its printing techniques, and in March 1918 developed its own Ishida-shiki film (石田式フィルム), which it supplied to the printing trade at home and abroad[1]. In the 1920s the second-generation head, Ishida Keizo (石田敬三), looked ahead to a future in which photographic printing would become widespread. Convinced that a business model premised on conventional copperplate engraving held no future — a sense of danger he felt acutely — he settled on a plan to attempt the domestic manufacture of the glass screens that photographic printing could not do without. Every glass screen then in use in Japan was imported, and the precision of the etching demanded of their surfaces was beyond the level of domestic technology of the day; after Keizo began researching the process single-handedly in 1926, the trial and error ran on for years[2]. Keizo's judgement became the starting point of the precision-processing technology that would lead, decades later, to the company's entry into semiconductor equipment.

After eight years of research, in 1934 he independently developed a method of etching halftone screens for photomechanical reproduction and obtained a patent on it[3], and received a ¥7,000 industrial research grant from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry — a public endorsement of where the technology might lead. In May 1937 he founded the Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Works to industrialise it[4], but establishing a volume-production process proved difficult, and some twenty years passed between the decision to enter the field and its realisation. In October 1943 that works was reorganised as a joint-stock company with capital of ¥130,000 and began supplying glass screens for military use[5], giving the business a corporate footing. This precision etching technique is the origin of a technological line that would run without a break from post-war photo-engraving equipment to shadow masks and on to semiconductor production equipment — the single thread that ties together a corporate history now more than 150 years long. Owning the underlying ability to cut an exact image chemically, rather than buying it in, gave the company a constitution able to withstand the waves of industrial change that followed.

Joint development with Sony, and the widening of the printing-equipment business

After the war, the Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Works restarted with photo-engraving equipment as its mainstay, and widened its business through Japan's period of rapid growth and the modernisation of the printing industry. In 1953 it built the Horikawa plant to put its production system in order[6], and settled into a structure with its head office in Kyoto. In 1962 it listed its shares on the second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange[7], gaining access to funding from the market. In 1963 it began joint development with Sony of shadow masks for colour television, opening up precision components for consumer electronics as a destination for the etching technology cultivated in photo-engraving. It was the first success in which the transferability of the company's photo-engraving technology was demonstrated as a business, and a turning point in management terms.

The shadow mask is a precision component without which a colour television cathode-ray tube cannot work, and as Sony's colour television sales expanded, Dainippon Screen's business expanded alongside them. In printed-image processing too the company showed considerable technical strength, developing the Sigmagraph 2000 in 1980. The spread of the business from copperplate printing to photo-engraving to colour-television components was not diversification on the surface but continuous evolution running along one technological axis — precision etching — and the later entry into semiconductor equipment lies on the extension of that same line. Its refusal to discard the founding printing technology while carrying it into new markets is one reason for the company's longevity.

1975–2000Entering semiconductor equipment, and completing the change of business

In 1975 the company pointed the three skills it had built up in photo-engraving equipment — alignment, coating and surface treatment — at the semiconductor process, and over the following two decades the founding printing business was displaced as its main earner. The stretch closes on the heaviest bet in the company's history: a $140.6M (¥18bn) plant investment carried through a downturn that had already pushed the accounts deep into loss.

Redeploying the core skills of photo-engraving equipment into semiconductor tools

In 1975 Dainippon Screen independently developed a wafer etcher (a wet etching tool) and began a business aimed at the semiconductor industry[8], starting the change from printing-equipment maker to semiconductor-equipment maker. The three basic skills accumulated in photo-engraving equipment — alignment, coating and surface treatment — were general enough to be transferred to semiconductor production equipment as they stood, and the barrier to entry was relatively low compared with that facing the diversified electrical manufacturers in the same field. In 1977 it commercialised the EMW-322/411, securing a first commercial foothold in cleaning equipment, and in 1978 it launched spin coaters and spin developers in quick succession. That product roll-out let it build a supply record into semiconductor makers' production lines in a short space of time.

From FY1978 onwards capital expenditure expanded more than fourfold, from $4.7M (¥1bn) in FY1977 to $22.5M (¥5bn) in FY1980 — the concentration of management resources on the semiconductor-equipment business made visible in figures. Revenue grew more than sixfold, from $34.1M (¥11bn) in FY1972 to $282.1M (¥67bn) in FY1983, and in 1994 sales of equipment for the electronics industry overtook printing-related equipment. That was the moment the main business changed hands, from the founding printing trade to semiconductor equipment. A self-financed change of business, in which profits earned on photo-engraving equipment were reinvested in research and development for semiconductor tools, drew the industry's attention as a swap of the corporate structure carried out without recourse to outside capital. While the semiconductor-equipment divisions of the diversified electrical groups that had entered at the same time struggled to make the business pay, the company's ability to fund its own research out of its founding business turned out, in the event, to be a source of competitive strength.

Investing ahead of the 300mm wafer, and a decision taken in a downturn

In the cleaning-equipment market of the early 1990s Dainippon Screen stood first with a share of about 22 per cent, but the competitive structure — a crowd of mid-sized firms contending with one another — persisted for a long time. As Tokyo Electron entered the field in 1993 and widened its share, president Ishida Akira (石田明) judged that the ability to handle the next-generation standard, the 300mm wafer, was the management issue that would settle the shape of competition in the industry. In 1997 the company announced the FC-3000 batch cleaning system, and the following year, 1998, it booked capital expenditure of $140.6M (¥18bn) to build the Taga works[9] — a ¥18.4bn bet on staying first. It was a heavy judgement taken just as the arrival of a downturn in the silicon cycle was becoming a real prospect, and voices inside and outside the company questioned it one after another. Ishida held to his decision on the conviction that unless the company committed to the change of standard at that moment it could not lead the industry.

In 1998 the silicon cycle entered its downturn, and in FY1998 the company booked an operating loss of $100.1M (¥13bn) and a net loss of $187.2M (¥25bn). Ishida nonetheless held to his policy of continuing to invest through the downturn, and carried through the decision to build Fab. FC-1 at the Hikone works in March 2001 and start full volume production of 300mm-capable cleaning equipment there[10]. Dainippon Screen was the only cleaning-equipment maker able to build a dedicated 300mm volume-production plant, and as mid-sized firms without the financial strength dropped away one after another the oligopoly took shape. The ¥18.4bn gamble taken in the downturn redrew the competitive structure of the industry in the company's own favour. The Ishida management's decision to invest ahead of the change of standard produced the oligopoly of the following twenty years. Not stopping capital expenditure for that change of standard even in loss-making years proved, in the event, to be the watershed that created an oligopoly in the cleaning-equipment market.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  2. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  3. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  4. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  5. 有価証券報告書 第78期 (Annual Securities Report, 78th term, year to March 2025), corporate history section↩
  6. 有価証券報告書 第78期 (Annual Securities Report, 78th term, year to March 2025), corporate history section↩
  7. 有価証券報告書 第78期 (Annual Securities Report, 78th term, year to March 2025), corporate history section↩
  8. 有価証券報告書 第78期 (Annual Securities Report, 78th term, year to March 2025), corporate history section↩
  9. 有価証券報告書 第78期 (Annual Securities Report, 78th term, year to March 2025), corporate history section↩
  10. 有価証券報告書 第78期 (Annual Securities Report, 78th term, year to March 2025), corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha (1968), the Dainippon Screen Manufacturing entry.

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