SCREEN Holdings: long-term performance & turning pointsSales (revenue) and profit-margin ratio
Sales (¥ bn)Net margin (%)
1868From copperplate engraving to precision processing
Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY1966 · unconsolidated
Revenue$6M
Net income$278K
Net margin4.8%
→
FY1974 · unconsolidated
Revenue$45M
Net income$2M
Net margin3.4%
1868Ishida Saijiro founds the Ishida Kyokuzan Printing Works in Kyoto
1918The workshop develops its own Ishida-shiki film
1926Ishida Keizo begins research into making glass screens in Japan
1934Patents a method of etching halftone screens for photomechanical reproduction
1937Founds the Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Works to industrialise it
1943Reorganised as a joint-stock company with ¥130,000 capital
1953Horikawa plant built
1962Shares listed on the second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange
1963Joint development with Sony of colour-television shadow masks
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. 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. 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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.
1975Entering semiconductor equipment, and completing the change of business
Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY1975 · unconsolidated
Revenue$45M
Net income-$602K
Net margin-1.3%
→
FY1999 · unconsolidated
Revenue$1.2B
Net income-$216M
Net margin-18.4%
1975Develops a wafer etcher and enters semiconductor production equipment
1977Commercialises the EMW-322/411 cleaning equipment
1978Launches spin coaters and spin developers
1980Develops the Sigmagraph 2000 printed-image processing system
1985Rakusai plant built for wafer cleaning equipment
1990Strengthens overseas sales of cleaning equipment
1992Develops the WS-820L wafer cleaning system
1993Tokyo Electron enters the cleaning-equipment market
1994Electronics equipment overtakes printing equipment in revenue
1997Announces the FC-3000 batch cleaning system
1998Taga works opened for wafer cleaning equipment
1999Falls to a net loss in the year to March
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, 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 — 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. 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.
2001World leader in cleaning, and the move to a holding company
Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY2002 · consolidated
Revenue$1.4B
Net income-$151M
Net margin-10.8%
→
FY2023 · consolidated
Revenue$3.3B
Net income$409M
Net margin12.5%
2001Volume production of 300mm-capable cleaning equipment begins in March
2001Voluntary redundancies sought in September
2002The printing-related equipment business is split off
2006Fab. FC-2 and CS-1 added at Hikone; FPD equipment volume production starts
2009Falls to a net loss after the Lehman shock
2014Renamed SCREEN Holdings and moves to a holding-company structure
2019Increases output of semiconductor cleaning equipment at Hikone
2022First in the world in semiconductor cleaning equipment
2023Announces a ¥1trn revenue plan and concentrates investment at Hikone
With the 300mm bet paid off, the company spent this stretch turning a technical lead into an organisational one: the founding printing business was split out, the group was rebuilt around a holding company, and wafer cleaning became the core that everything else was arranged around. By the end of it SCREEN held roughly half the world market in batch cleaning and was posting record profits — $3.3B (¥505bn) of revenue in the year to March 2024 — on a business that begins, in every sense, with a Kyoto print shop.
Splitting off the printing business and concentrating on semiconductor equipment
With the 300mm investment behind it, Dainippon Screen placed semiconductor cleaning equipment at the core of the business and rebuilt the allocation of management resources around semiconductor tools. In 2002 it carried out a reorganisation that split off the printing-related equipment business, separating the long-standing founding trade from the parent company and moving to a structure that concentrated resources on semiconductor equipment. In 2006 it added Fab. FC-2 at the Hikone works, strengthening supply capacity to meet expanding investment by semiconductor makers worldwide. In 2009 the effects of the Lehman shock pushed it back into a net loss, but as semiconductor demand recovered, performance was restored within a short period. Kakiuchi Eiji (垣内永次), who led the move to a holding company, looked back over the company's history and said that what had saved it in its worst moments was the connection between one person and another — the 縁尋機妙 (en-jin-ki-myo, the mysterious workings by which good ties beget further ties) of turning yesterday's enemy into a friend — describing how it had come through downturns and changes of business on a human network of trust.
In October 2014 the company changed its name to SCREEN Holdings Co., Ltd. and moved to a holding-company structure. Its several businesses — semiconductor production equipment, graphic arts equipment, display production equipment and printed-circuit-board related equipment — were reorganised so that each was run by a subsidiary under the holding company. The design was meant to combine autonomous management of each business with speed of decision-making across the group, and it readied the company for the next period of growth. In 2019 it invested in increased output of semiconductor cleaning equipment at the Hikone works, putting in place the supply capacity to meet a worldwide wave of semiconductor capital investment driven by demand from smartphones and data centres. Kakiuchi said in later years that even if technological change made your main business disappear, you could come through it by not forgetting the lessons of the past and taking on the challenge — a principle running through the management of a company whose main business had changed hands from printing to cathode-ray tubes to semiconductors.
First in the world in wafer cleaning equipment
As of 2022 SCREEN Holdings held an oligopolistic position with a 48 per cent world share in batch cleaning equipment and a 33 per cent world share in single-wafer cleaning equipment. The investment made ahead of the field by president Ishida Akira during the downturn of the late 1990s drove competing mid-sized firms out of the market one after another, and set up the flow by which the original ¥18.4bn investment was recovered as the 300mm era arrived in earnest. The competitive structure of the cleaning-equipment market was fixed as an oligopoly in the company's favour by that decision to invest early, and it has continued to be the core of the company's durable earning power. At the time the decision looked, financially, like a dangerous gamble; in the event it opened the way to trading a temporary risk for a long-run oligopoly profit.
In the year to March 2024 the company achieved record results, with revenue of $3.3B (¥505bn) and recurring profit of $622.4M (¥94bn), consolidating its standing in the semiconductor-equipment industry as the winner of that oligopoly. Setting out from copperplate printing in 1868 and moving through pre-war glass etching, post-war shadow masks for colour television and semiconductor production equipment from 1975, some 150 years of technological lineage — the same technology transplanted into a different market in each era — have run along one consistent axis: processing a precise image by chemical means. Hiroe Toshio (廣江敏朗), who became president in 2019, said he aimed to establish a more resilient group structure by drawing on the company's experience in semiconductor and FPD production equipment, indicating a direction in which the group's resources would be bound together as an integrated equipment maker. The path from a small printing workshop in Kyoto to an equipment maker supporting the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the world is treated, in business history, as a case study in the inheritance of a technological axis.
The turning points, read in full: what was at stake, what was chosen and what the revenue did around it. The Japanese edition is the edition of record and carries the sourced dossier behind each decision — background, options weighed, outcome — linked under every decision.
Revenue (¥ bn) · net margin % · around FY1975
Key decision · 1975
Entering semiconductor production equipment by redeploying photo-engraving technology (1975)
Seeing the company as a combination of skills rather than a set of products
The heart of this decision lies not in retreat or retrenchment in the face of crisis, but in pointing the technology already in hand at a different industry. In a year when the ceiling of the printing market and the oil crisis had pushed the main business into loss, Dainippon Screen Manufacturing turned the alignment, coating and surface-treatment skills honed in photo-engraving towards the manufacturing process of the semiconductor industry then coming into being. Entry into semiconductors looked like a move into a wholly different field; in terms of products it was a leap, but in terms of the content of the technology it was contiguous ground. Tokujiro (徳次郎) said the company could not match the specialists but could win on the strength of what it had accumulated — a way of seeing its own strength not through the names of its products but through the combination of its skills.
That said, nearly twenty years passed before the change bore fruit, and the booms and busts peculiar to semiconductors came and went in the meantime. It counted for a great deal that profits earned on the photo-engraving equipment of the founding business could be kept flowing into the new one — that is what allowed the company to swap the pillar of its business without leaning on outside capital. Growing the next pillar in a different industry while the existing business is still generating profit: the 1975 entry offers one answer to the question of how a company with a mature main business should prepare a new one. Laid over it is this company's inherited experience — that even when the words 写真製版 (photomechanical reproduction) disappear, the technology survives.
Concentrating on wafer cleaning and turning to semiconductor equipment (1992)
Picking the process you can win, and gathering resources there
What this decision shows is the weight of choosing where, among the several hundred steps of semiconductor manufacturing, to gather your resources. Rather than lithography or deposition — the steps that make an equipment maker conspicuous — Dainippon Screen Manufacturing chose cleaning as its main battlefield: unglamorous, but decisive for yield. The surface treatment and liquid handling honed in photo-engraving carried straight across into semiconductor cleaning, and that continuity with the founding trade underpinned the concentration on this single point. The character of the choice can be read in the refusal to spread across process after process, and the decision instead to identify the ground it could win and mass its resources there.
Even so, a way of fighting that stakes so much on one process is, by the same token, one in which performance is strongly swung by the cycle and the competition in that process. That the company, having reached first place in the world in cleaning, subsequently lost share shows the strength and the precariousness of concentration at the same time. Nonetheless, the transformation by which a printing company became a company earning its living from semiconductor cleaning conveys how the judgement of where one's own technology can live, and the gathering of resources there, remakes the outline of a company. Which step of semiconductor manufacturing to bet on — that is a question every maker still faces today.
The shift to single-wafer cleaning and early volume production of 300mm equipment (2000)
Protect today's efficiency, or bet on tomorrow's technology
The heart of this decision lies in the fact that, rather than protecting the volume-production efficiency of the then-mainstream batch method, the company bet on the technological shift to finer geometries and the 300mm wafer, and massed its resources on the single-wafer method that cleans one wafer at a time. Batch cleaning has the strength of processing many wafers at once, but the finer the circuitry becomes, the harder it is to hold the cleaning conditions uniform wafer by wafer. Dainippon Screen deliberately bet on the coming technology at a time when the semiconductor market was depressed and every firm was inclined to rein in investment. When the strength it held today — efficiency — collided with what miniaturisation would demand tomorrow, this was a judgement that chose the latter.
The choice was repaid later. Single-wafer cleaning became the mainstream at the leading-edge cleaning steps, and SCREEN took the top world share in both single-wafer and batch cleaning equipment. The common platform established with the SU-3000 raised its throughput generation by generation, through the SU-3100 and SU-3200, and single-wafer tools now support the company's core business. That said, this judgement can be called correct partly because miniaturisation continued afterwards and the advantage of the single-wafer method held. Protect volume-production efficiency today, or bet on the next technology — this technological choice, made around 2000, remains an example of a company taking up early, and by its own decision, a question the equipment industry faces again and again.
Concentrating investment at Hikone on world leadership in cleaning, and the ¥1trn revenue plan (2023)
In a cyclical industry, how far do you bet on the peak
The core of this decision is neither a financial crisis nor a turn into a new business, but the question of how far to pile capacity increases on top of a peak in demand, in an industry — semiconductors — whose booms and busts run violently. SCREEN has the memory of a success: the investment ahead of the field in 300mm volume production made by president Ishida Akira during the downturn of the late 1990s, which brought about the fall of its competitors and an oligopoly. That Hiroe marked out ¥1trn for 2033 as a figure, gathered volume production at Hikone and pushed the capacity increases further out, can be seen as that experience stretched across a longer time axis. The base of world-leading share is the collateral that supports betting ahead of the curve.
There is another side to getting ahead. Plants and equipment built before the peak become the vessel that prevents lost sales if demand grows as expected, but they press on profit as fixed costs once the wave recedes. The record result for the year to March 2025 is what the first of those looks like when it works; in a cyclical industry, the turn to the second comes round in time as well. More than the ¥1trn target itself, the question is whether the new management under Goto can hold the rhythm of investment — adding in the rising phase, enduring in the falling one — across the waves; at the time of writing the answer is not in. As a case for watching how the world's leading equipment maker faces its own booms and busts, this decision is rich in implication.
This English edition follows the Japanese one chapter by chapter. The Japanese edition remains the edition of record: it carries the source-by-source citations, the financial tables and the shareholder and executive records. 日本語版（詳細）— SCREEN Holdings full history in Japanese →
企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968), the Dainippon Screen Manufacturing entry.