A one-trillion-yen vision and concentrated Hikone investment, built on cleaning-equipment leadership (2023)

In a cyclical industry, how far to bet at the peak

The core of this decision is neither a financial crisis nor a pivot into a new business, but how far to pile capacity expansion onto peak demand in semiconductors, an industry of violent boom and bust. SCREEN carries a success it remembers well: the forward investment in 300-millimeter mass production that President Ishida Akira made during the downturn of the late 1990s, which drew rivals out of the race and brought on oligopoly. Hiroe’s move — fixing a one-trillion-yen figure for 2033, concentrating mass production at Hikone and stretching the ramp-up out ahead — can be read as extending that experience across a long time axis. The foundation of the world’s top share became the collateral underwriting a bet placed in advance.

Getting ahead has its underside. Plants and equipment built before the peak become vessels that catch demand and prevent lost sales if it grows as expected, but once the wave recedes they press on earnings as fixed costs. The record profit for the year ended March 2025 was the former at work; in a cyclical industry, the turn to the latter also comes around eventually. More than the one-trillion-yen target itself, the question is whether Goto’s new leadership can hold, across the waves, the breathing rhythm of investment — expanding on the rise, enduring on the ebb. At the time of writing the answer is not yet in. As a case for watching how the world’s leading equipment maker faces the swings of its own cycle, this decision is rich in suggestion.