Disco Corporation

Phase A — Understand the business

Company Overview

Disco makes the saws, grinders and polishers that turn a finished wafer into individual, packageable die — the "Kiru · Kezuru · Migaku" (cut · grind · polish) back-end of chipmaking. Founded 1937 in Hiroshima as a maker of vitrified industrial grindstones; it pivoted into precision semiconductor tooling and is today the runaway global leader in wafer dicing and grinding.

The product line, in plain terms:

• Dicing saws (diamond-blade) and laser saws — singulate the wafer into chips.
• Grinders + grinding wheels — thin the wafer/interposer down to tens of microns (critical for stacking and for exposing TSVs in advanced packaging).
• Polishers / surface planarizers — remove the grinding-damage layer on the wafer backside.
• Consumables — the diamond blades and grinding wheels that wear out with every wafer processed. This is the razor-and-blade annuity (Lens 3).

Revenue model = razor-and-blade. Roughly ~60% equipment / ~40% consumables + service, with consumables specifically at ~25–35% of revenue and carrying gross margins above the equipment itself. Every tool Disco installs seeds a multi-year, high-margin stream of blade/wheel replacements that scales with the customer's wafer volume, not their capexCapital expenditureMoney spent on long-lived things — buildings, machines, servers — rather than on running costs. budget — so the installed base is an annuity that keeps paying even in equipment down-cycles.

Customers: the leading foundries, IDMs, memory makers and OSATs — TSMC, Intel, Samsung, SK Hynix, plus advanced-packaging houses Amkor, ASE and the power-semiconductor makers. Overseas sales are ~90% of revenue (89.9% in Q2 FYE-Mar-2026) — this is a globally-sold, Japan-manufactured franchise.

Suppliers / inputs: industrial diamond, precision spindles/motion systems, lasers, and the metallurgy for grinding wheels — Disco is heavily vertically integrated on the consumable/blade side (it makes its own blades and wheels, which is the source of both the margin and the switching cost).

Competitors: #2 is Tokyo Seimitsu / Accretech; also ADT (Kulicke & Soffa), ASMPT, and niche laser players Synova (water-guided laser) and Plasma-Therm (plasma dicing). Disco's share dwarfs all of them (Lens 3).

Supply Chain

Where Disco sits: it is a back-end (assembly/packaging) capital-equipment + consumables supplier — one tier upstream of the OSAT/packaging step, selling into both the foundry (front-end wafer thinning) and the packaging house (interposer thinning + package singulation).

Full chain, named at every node:

Diamond / abrasives / laser sources / precision spindles (Disco's own inputs; blades & wheels made in-house)
 ↓
 DISCO (dicing saws · grinders · polishers · blades · wheels)
 ↓
Front-end foundry / IDM: TSMC, Samsung, Intel, SK Hynix, Micron → wafer thinning (backgrinding), stealth/DBG dicing
 ↓
Advanced packaging / OSAT: TSMC (CoWoS), Amkor, ASE → interposer grind-to-reveal-TSV, package singulation
 ↓
Fabless AI designers: NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, Google, Amazon (pull-through demand)
 ↓
Hyperscaler / enterprise buyers

Chokepoint role — this is the thesis. Advanced packaging (CoWoS + HBMHigh-bandwidth memoryMemory stacked in layers beside a processor so data reaches it faster. The usual bottleneck in AI chips.), not logic dies, was the binding constraint on AI-chip production in 2025 — the four largest AI designers consumed >90% of global CoWoS packaging capacity and HBM by value but only ~12% of advanced logic die production. Disco's grinders and dicers are inside that CoWoS flow: the molded interposer is ground and polished down to ~100µm to reveal the TSVs, then diced into individual packages. TSMC's CoWoS capacity ramp — ~35–40K wafers/mo (2024) → 75K (end-2025) → 130K target late-2026 — is a direct volume driver for Disco tools and consumables.

Single-source / concentration on the chain: Disco is itself the single-source chokepoint for high-end dicing/grinding — the risk runs the other way (customers depend on Disco, Lens 3). Disco's own upstream dependencies (diamond, lasers) are commoditized and multi-sourced. The real geographic concentration is demand-side China (~30–36%) — see Lens 4/13.

Competitive Advantages (moats)

Disco is one of the cleanest near-monopoly + annuity structures in all of semiconductors. Four reinforcing moats:

1. Dominant, durable share. Estimates cluster at ~52–70% of global dicing/grinding, with the top-3 (Disco + Tokyo Seimitsu ~15–18% + ADT/K&S ~7–9%) controlling >75% of dicing-equipment revenue. In specific consumables Disco is even more dominant: >70% of precision dicing blades, >50% of wafer-thinning grinding wheels by unit. In power-semi and in the hardest materials (SiC), share approaches "lockdown."

2. Razor-and-blade switching costs. Because Disco makes both the machine and the exactly-matched consumable, it guarantees compatibility and yield — qualifying a rival's blade on a Disco tool (or vice-versa) is a yield risk no fab wants to take mid-node. The installed base compounds the consumable annuity: ~30–35% of revenue is recurring, high-margin, and grows with the customer's wafer starts.

3. Process/IP moat, not just brand. Disco's edge is a stack of proprietary processes: stealth dicing (subsurface laser, near-zero kerf — dominant in laser dicing, >60% of that sub-market ); DBG (dicing-before-grinding) and Taiko selective-backgrind for ultra-thin die; plasma dicing leadership for die-to-wafer hybrid-bonding singulation; and KABRA — a patented laser SiC-slicing process ("Key Amorphous-Black Repetitive Absorption," 40 related patents) that quadruples SiC wafer productivity and slashes kerf loss. Each is the enabling technology for a next-gen node or material — sold at a price only Disco can command.

4. Bargaining power. Mission-critical + irreplaceable-once-qualified + a tiny fraction of a fab's total capex = pricing power. The proof is in the P&L: ~42% operating margin and ROIC consistently >30% even through cyclical downturns — margins that sit at the very top of the semiconductor-equipment industry, above ASML on operating margin. That is a moat expressing itself as pricing.

The one genuine threat to the moat is technological, not competitive: wafer-to-wafer (W2W) hybrid bonding singulates after bonding and could, at the limit, reduce dicing passes vs. die-level approaches — see Lens 13. Near-term this is a tail risk (D2W still needs singulation, and Disco leads plasma dicing), but it is the thing a long-term bull must watch.

Segments

Disco reports as effectively a single business (precision processing equipment + tools + service) rather than multiple reportable P&L segments, so a clean segment-EBITDA table is n/a — not disclosed at segment level. What is disclosed / sourceable:

By product/revenue type:

By geography (Q2 FYE-Mar-2024 disclosure — the cleanest regional split found):

Overseas total ~90% (89.9% in Q2 FYE-Mar-2026). China is the single largest market and the central risk variable (Lens 13).

Trend / cause: the mix is shifting from power-semiconductors → generative-AI (memory + logic). Through 2025 Disco explicitly flagged strong AI/HBM/logic shipments and a decline in power-semiconductor demand — i.e. the EV/industrial power-chip slump is being more than offset by AI advanced-packaging pull. That is the accelerating leg; the decelerating leg is China mature-node and power. The FYE-Mar-2026 guide (Lens 5) shows the AI leg alone is not enough to sustain FY2024's +28% growth rate.

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Phase B — Measure performance

Earnings Result

Full-year FYE Mar-2025 (the last completed year) — a record:

• Revenue ¥393.313B, +27.9% YoY
• Operating profit ¥166.834B → OP margin ~42.4%
• Net income ¥123.891B

Latest reported quarter — Q2 FYE-Mar-2026 (Jul–Sep 2025):

• Operating income ¥44.4B, +28.7% QoQ, +4.3% YoY
• Gross margin 69.5% (−2.2pp YoY, +1.4pp QoQ) — note: this is the blended equipment+consumables GM; the ~42% is the operating margin after SG&A/R&D
• Overseas sales ratio 89.9%; cash ¥222.9B
• Drivers: IC shipments for generative AI up; memory + logic high; power-semiconductors down

Q1 FYE-Mar-2026 (Apr–Jun 2025) for context: net sales ¥89.9B (+8.6% YoY), OP ¥32.7B, record shipments ¥93.0B (+8.5% YoY) — but parent revenue −26.4% QoQ, and management guided slowing Q2 shipments (the lumpiness is real).

Full-year FYE-Mar-2026 guidance (issued 2026-01-21 — notably Disco's first-ever forecast beyond one quarter out):

• Revenue ¥419.0B, +6.5% YoY
• Operating profit ¥172.1B, +3.2% YoY
• Net income ¥126.4B, +2.0% YoY

The signal: growth is decelerating sharply — from +27.9% revenue (FYE Mar-2025) to a guided +6.5% (FYE Mar-2026). Margins hold near-record (~41%), the balance sheet is pristine, but the rate of change has rolled over. The stock is a rate-of-change instrument (Lens 8), which is why it de-rated despite record absolute numbers.

Balance-sheet flags (Mar-2025): cash & deposits ¥229.2B, total assets ¥654.1B, total liabilities ¥161.4B (non-current only ~¥1.0B → effectively debt-free), net assets ¥492.7B. Net-cash, fortress balance sheet. No red flags in inventory/receivables surfaced in the summary data (verify against the actual FR PDF before sizing a large position).

Earnings Calls (sentiment trend)

No transcripts on the research shelf (transcripts=0); sentiment is inferred from IR materials + coverage. The tonal arc across the last ~4 quarters:

• FYE Mar-2025 (through early 2025): euphoric — record revenue, "record shipments," generative-AI demand framed as structural.
• Q1 FYE-Mar-2026 (Jul-2025): record shipments but explicit caution — management guided slowing Q2 shipments and flagged QoQ parent-revenue softness. First crack in the tone.
• Q2 FYE-Mar-2026 (Oct-2025): bifurcated — AI/memory/logic strong, power-semiconductors weak; "advanced-packaging ramp-up anticipated" as the forward driver.
• Jan-2026: the tell — Disco issued its first-ever full-year forecast (previously it only guided one quarter out). Extending the guidance horizon is a confidence signal on the AI-packaging demand floor, even as the rate decelerates.

Recurring phrases: "generative AI," "advanced packaging ramp-up," "record shipments." What they started saying: full-year guidance (a governance/confidence shift). What softened: the power-semiconductor / China mature-node narrative.

Comps

Peer set = the semiconductor-equipment majors (front-end + back-end).

Read: I could only cleanly source Disco's own multiples this pass, so the peer columns are honestly marked n/a rather than filled with plausible fabrications. What is sourced tells the story: Disco trades at ~57x trailing / ~43x forward earnings — a premium to the machinery/SPE sector, explicitly attributed to its "monopoly-like position and structural growth". Against a guided +6.5% revenue / +3.2% OP for FYE-Mar-2026, ~43x forward is a quality-at-a-demanding-price setup: you are paying a monopoly multiple for a year of single-digit growth, underwritten by the annuity + the AI-packaging option value. ROE ~25% and ROIC >30% justify a premium; they don't obviously justify 43x on a decelerating year. (A future refresh should populate the peer multiples to test relative value — that is the missing analytical piece here.)

Stock-Price Catalysts

Disco (6146.T) is a high-beta AI-sentiment proxy on the TSE. Moves >5% cluster around:

• AI-capex sentiment shifts — it rips on hyperscaler capex upgrades and TSMC CoWoS-expansion headlines; sells off on AI-demand doubts. The DeepSeek scare (cheap Chinese model → "less compute needed" fear) hit Japanese chip names including Disco.
• Its own quarterly shipments / book-to-bill — the market trades the rate of change of shipments, not the absolute level. Record-but-decelerating prints (FYE-Mar-2026) drove a de-rate.
• Sell-side rating changes — Nomura downgraded to Neutral; Goldman Sachs removed Disco from its APAC Conviction List (having earlier added it on a shipment-reacceleration call).
• China / export-control headlines — Japan/METI tightening (Lens 10) and China-demand data points.

Price action (conflicting data — surfaced per provenance rules): sources disagree on the current level. One reports ATH ¥81,000 on 2026-02-26 and a "current" ¥63,760 (~−21% from ATH); another reports ¥84,520 on 2026-07-01 with a ~57.7 P/E. These conflict — ¥84,520 exceeds the stated ¥81,000 ATH, so at least one snapshot is stale or mis-dated. I do not silently pick one. The coherent read: the stock is up ~88% over the trailing year but has corrected ~13–21% from its early-2026 peak on the deceleration + downgrades. For position-sizing, pull a live 6146.T quote before acting — treat the price here as indicative, ~¥64k–85k range.

What the pattern reveals: the market pays Disco for AI-packaging shipment acceleration. It is not valued as a steady annuity compounder; it is valued as a levered call on the second derivative of AI-back-end demand. That cuts both ways.

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Management

• CEO / President: Kazuma Sekiya — grandson of founder Mitsuo Sekiya (who founded Disco in 1937). This is a founder-family-led company, third generation.
• Skin in the game: the Sekiya family holds a minority stake; family net worth ~$7.4B, the bulk of it in Disco equity — deeply aligned, long-horizon owners, not hired-gun managers.
• Track record: Kazuma Sekiya's signature is the "Will" internal-currency system (introduced ~2011) — a radical free-market org design where employees bid/barter with an internal currency ("Will") via a company app for tasks (from testing grinders to processing invoices), replacing top-down hierarchy. Sekiya credits Will with the operating-margin transformation from ~16% (pre-system) to ~36–42% today and with market-share gains and overtime falling ~9%. Whatever one thinks of the mechanism, the P&L outcome is undeniable — top-of-industry margins and ROIC>30% through cycles.
• Capital allocation: conservative and shareholder-friendly. Net-cash, effectively debt-free; target dividend payout ~50% (structured as 25% of half-yearly consolidated net income, paid twice); R&D ~¥32B/yr funding the process-IP moat. No value-destroying M&A binges surfaced — Disco grows organically off its own IP.
• Founder vs. professional archetype: clearly founder-family — long-term, idiosyncratic, willing to run an unconventional operating system. Implication: durable strategy, low agency risk, but also key-person / governance concentration and a management philosophy (Will) that critics argue incentivizes short-termism — prioritizing tasks with immediate revenue impact and potentially under-investing in long-horizon innovation. Worth monitoring, not disqualifying.
• Red flags: none material surfaced (no related-party abuse, no promotional behavior, no comp scandals in the public record). The Will system is the one genuinely debated governance/culture question.

Forensic Red Flags

Grounding caveat: no filings on the shelf, so this is a web-only forensic read of a Japanese GAAP/IFRS filer. It cannot substitute for reading the actual 有価証券報告書 (yūkashōken hōkokusho / annual securities report) and FR PDFs — flagged as an open item.

• Revenue recognition: equipment (point-in-time on acceptance) vs. consumables (on shipment/consumption) — standard for the model; no aggressive-recognition signal in the public summaries. Watch the shipments-vs-revenue gap (Disco discloses shipments separately, and parent revenue swung −26% QoQ in Q1 FYE-Mar-2026 while shipments hit records) — the lumpiness is operational, but it means reported revenue can lag shipments, so read book-to-bill not just the P&L.
• Margins: ~69.5% gross / ~42% operating are real and cash-backed (net-cash balance sheet, no debt to flatter returns), not an accounting artifact. ROIC>30% through downturns corroborates.
• Balance sheet: cash ¥229.2B / total liabilities ¥161.4B / non-current liabilities only ~¥1.0B (Mar-2025) — conservative, no hidden leverage.
• SBC / non-GAAP games: not a US-style SBC-heavy name; Japanese comp norms → low dilutionDilutionIssuing new shares, so each existing share owns a smaller slice of the same company. risk. n/a — not quantified this pass.
• Goodwill/intangibles: organic grower → minimal acquisition goodwill risk. n/a — verify in the annual report.
• Divergences to check in the primary doc: inventory build vs. the decelerating FYE-Mar-2026 guide (is Disco building ahead of a slowdown?); receivables concentration in China.

Regulatory findings (required sub-section) — read from regulatory/regulatory-findings.md + web:

• SEC (EDGAR LR + AAER): 0 findings — Disco has no CIK and is not an SEC filer, so no EDGAR enforcement search is possible. (Note: many web hits for "Disco lawsuit" are the unrelated US company CS Disco / NYSE:LAW — a litigation-software firm — not 6146.T. Do not conflate.)
• Non-SEC (FTC/DOJ/JFTC/METI/EU) web search: no material enforcement, fine, penalty, settlement, or JFTC antitrust action against Disco Corporation (6146.T) found. Despite its ~70% share, no public antitrust proceeding surfaced.
• Item 3 / legal proceedings equivalent: no 10-KForm 10-KA company’s audited annual report to the US regulator. The most complete thing it publishes. exists; the Japanese annual securities report was not on the shelf to quote — flagged as an open item.
• Export-control exposure (material, ongoing — not an "enforcement" finding but the key regulatory risk): Japan/METI has run three rounds of semiconductor-equipment export-control tightening in <2 years (Jun-2023; Jan-2025; catch-all changes effective Oct-2025), increasingly targeting advanced-packaging and 3D-stacking testing/measurement and sub-14nm tooling. Disco's dicing/grinding tools are less directly restricted than EUV litho or advanced etch/depo, but given ~30–36% China revenue, further tightening is the single largest regulatory overhang. See Lens 13.
• Verdict: No material regulatory or legal findings against Disco Corporation (6146.T) — verified via SEC EDGAR EFTS (no CIK / not applicable), web search (FTC/DOJ/JFTC/METI/EU), as of 2026-07-06. The Japanese annual securities report was not on the research shelf and should be read to confirm Item-3-equivalent legal disclosures. The live regulatory risk is prospective Japanese export controls on China, not any existing enforcement action.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Forward Projection

Building from actuals + Disco's own guidance. All outputs with arithmetic; inputs labeled. Shares outstanding ~114–115M (mkt cap ~¥8T / ~¥70–84k price → ~95–114M; using company guidance NI/EPS relationship below) — treat EPS precisely off the guided NI ÷ share count when sizing.

Anchor (guided) — FYE Mar-2026: Revenue ¥419.0B · OP ¥172.1B · NI ¥126.4B. At ~114M shares → EPS ≈ ¥1,109.

Three-year EPS path (fiscal years ending Mar-2026 → Mar-2028):

Base case ≈ ¥1,270 EPS FYE-Mar-2027. Against a ~¥64–85k price that is ~50–67x forward — the multiple is the risk, not the earnings. The business will very likely grow EPS; whether it grows into a 50x multiple fast enough is the entire question.

Forecast tracking: per --watchlist rules, not logging a our model Brier forecast in this unattended breadth pass (log one only on a genuinely committed base case via our position log). Suggested forecast to log later: "6146.T FYE-Mar-2027 net income ≥ ¥145B," p≈0.55, resolves 2027-03-31, tags disco,deep-dive.

Bull vs Bear

Bull case. Disco is the irreplaceable toll-booth on AI advanced packaging — the one company whose ~70% dicing/grinding monopoly and razor-and-blade annuity mean it gets paid on every HBM stack and every CoWoS interposer, regardless of which fabless designer or foundry wins. Advanced packaging is the binding constraint on AI compute through 2026, CoWoS capacity is set to nearly 4x from 2024 to late-2026, HBM4 is ramping — and Disco's tools + consumables scale directly with that wafer/package volume. Layer on KABRA's SiC lock for the eventual EV/power recovery, ~42% margins, ROIC>30% through cycles, net-cash, and a founder-family owner with top-of-industry capital discipline. The consumable annuity (~30–35% of revenue, growing with the installed base) means even an equipment air-pocket doesn't break the model. This is a compounder you rarely get to buy cheap — and every AI-capex up-cycle re-rates it.

Bear case (permanent-impairment candidates).

1. Hybrid-bonding disintermediation (structural). The industry's march toward wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding singulates after bonding and, at scale, could reduce dicing passes for the highest-value logic stacking — attacking the volume side of Disco's annuity precisely where the money is. Disco leads plasma dicing and D2W still needs singulation, so this is a slow tail, but it is the one force that can erode the moat from the technology side rather than the competitive side.
2. China cliff (~30–36% of revenue). A step-change in Japanese/METI export controls (three rounds in <2 years, now reaching advanced-packaging tooling) or a China mature-node capex bust removes up to a third of revenue with little offset. China is already decelerating (2025 equipment market +3.1% vs. prior double-digits).
3. Multiple compression on deceleration. At ~43–57x for a guided +6.5% revenue year, the stock prices reacceleration that may not come on schedule. If AI-capex digests in 2026, a de-rate from ~50x toward ~30x is a −40% price move with no change to the business — the "expectations baked in" risk.

Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke). It's early 2028. AI-capex hit an air-pocket in 2026–27 as hyperscalers digested a build-ahead; CoWoS ran ahead of end-demand and utilization fell. Simultaneously, Japan tightened export controls to cover advanced-packaging dicing/grinding, knocking out a chunk of the ~35% China book. Disco's shipments went sideways for four quarters; the consumable annuity cushioned earnings but not the narrative. The 50x multiple that assumed perpetual acceleration collapsed to 25–30x. The business was fine; the stock halved.

Are multiples too high? For a single-digit-growth guided year, yes on a 12-month view — you're paying a monopoly premium for a cyclical trough-ish year. On a 3-year view, if AI-packaging volume compounds as the KB bottleneck data implies, the growth catches the multiple. It's a timing/entry question, not a quality question.

Contrarian view (what the market is refusing to see): the bulls treat Disco as a pure AI-beta call and trade the shipment second-derivative — so they under-weight the consumable annuity, which is the least cyclical, highest-margin, most-monopolistic part of the business and which compounds mechanically with the entire installed base's wafer volume (AI and everything else). The market is mispricing Disco as "cyclical AI equipment" when the ~35% razor-blade stream is closer to a wafer-volume royalty that deserves a higher, steadier multiple. The bear's mirror-image blind spot: nobody is discounting hybrid bonding because it's a slow tail — but slow tails are exactly what a 50x multiple has no margin of safety against.

Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull case:

• The revenue is concentrated where the geopolitics is worst. ~30–36% China into the teeth of an escalating, multi-round Japanese export-control regime now explicitly reaching advanced-packaging tooling. This isn't a tail scenario — it's the current policy trajectory. One more METI round scoped to include high-end dicing/grinding for China and a third of the book is impaired overnight, with no near-term substitute demand.
• The moat has a technological expiry the bulls hand-wave. The entire premium rests on "every chip must be diced and ground." Wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding is a direct assault on that premise for the highest-value stacked logic — fewer, or no, dicing passes. Disco's plasma-dicing leadership is a consolation prize in a W2W world, not the annuity it enjoys today. Bulls call this "long-term"; long-term is exactly what a 50x multiple capitalizes.
• The most dangerous competitor isn't a competitor — it's the packaging roadmap. Tokyo Seimitsu can't take Disco's share; TSMC's and the OSATs' process choices can shrink Disco's served volume. The threat is architectural, and Disco doesn't control it.
• Valuation demands a reacceleration that just got downgraded. Guidance is +6.5% revenue / +3.2% OP — and Nomura cut to Neutral, Goldman pulled it from the Conviction List. You're paying ~43–57x forward for a business the sharpest sell-side just de-rated, on a decelerating year, into a DeepSeek-style "we need less compute" sentiment risk.
• Capital-allocation nit: none damning — but the "Will" internal-currency system is an untested-at-scale governance experiment that critics say biases the org toward short-term revenue tasks over long-horizon R&D. In a business whose only real moat threat is a multi-year technology shift (hybrid bonding), an operating system that under-invests in the long game is a subtle but real risk.
• What must hold for today's price: (1) AI-packaging capex keeps accelerating, not just growing; (2) China stays ~open to Disco tools; (3) hybrid bonding stays a decade out; (4) margins stay ~42%. If revenue disappoints by 20–30%, under-absorption takes margins to the mid-30s and EPS falls ~30–40% — on a de-rating multiple, that's a −50%+ stock.
• Single permanent-impairment scenario, and plausibility: comprehensive Japanese export controls on advanced dicing/grinding to China, coincident with W2W hybrid bonding reaching HVM for logic stacks. Each alone is survivable; together they'd structurally shrink the served market. Plausibility over 3–5 years: low-to-moderate and rising — not the base case, but not dismissible at 50x.

Management Questions (ordered by information value)

1. Hybrid bonding: As W2W/D2W hybrid bonding scales for logic stacks, what is your estimate of the net dicing/grinding TAM impact, and where does plasma dicing + your other processes gain share to offset the volume you lose to bonding? (Highest-value — it's the only structural moat threat.)
2. China / export controls: If Japan extends METI controls to cover your advanced dicing/grinding tools for China, what share of the ~35% China revenue is at risk, and what is the demand offset (India, US, Taiwan, domestic Japan)?
3. Deceleration: FYE-Mar-2026 is guided to +6.5% after +27.9%. Is this an AI-capex digestion pause or a plateau, and what shipment/book-to-bill signals would tell you which by mid-2026?
4. Consumable annuity: What is the precise recurring-revenue % (consumables + service), its gross margin vs. equipment, and how does it track the installed base's total wafer volume across down-cycles?
5. CoWoS/HBM pull-through: For every 10K/mo of incremental CoWoS capacity and each HBM generation (HBM3E→HBM4→HBM4E), what is the incremental Disco equipment + consumable revenue per unit?
6. Margins: Gross margin dipped 2.2pp YoY in Q2 FYE-Mar-2026. What drove it, and what is the through-cycle operating-margin floor you'd defend in a downturn?
7. "Will" system: How do you ensure the internal-currency incentives fund long-horizon R&D (hybrid-bonding, next-gen laser) and not just near-term revenue tasks, given the critique?
8. KABRA / SiC: With EV/power-semi demand soft, what is the KABRA installed-base and pipeline, and when does SiC re-accelerate as a growth driver vs. AI?
9. Capacity/lead times: What are current equipment lead times and your own capex plans — are you building capacity ahead of, or behind, the AI-packaging ramp?
10. Capital allocation: With ~¥229B net cash and ~50% payout, why not a larger buyback at these ROIC levels, or is optionality for a downturn/technology-shift the priority?
11. Competition: Where, specifically, are Tokyo Seimitsu, ADT/K&S, or a Chinese domestic entrant closing the technology gap, and in which sub-segments?
12. China domestic risk: Are Chinese domestic dicing/grinding suppliers being subsidized to displace you in China's mature-node market, and on what timeline?
13. Customer concentration: What is your revenue concentration in the top 3–5 customers (TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix), and how correlated is your book to a single hyperscaler's capex?
14. Succession/governance: As a founder-family-led firm, what is the succession and governance plan beyond the current Sekiya leadership?
15. Next constraint: When advanced packaging de-bottlenecks (CoWoS to 130K/mo), what becomes the next binding constraint in the AI back-end, and are you positioned to own it?

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