DISCO Corp: Grooving through high-value silicon

September 2024

Disclosure: I don't own shares in DISCO Corp. At the time of writing, my portfolio consists of Applied Materials, Cadence Design Systems, Constellation Software, Fair Isaac, Fortinet, KLA Corp, Mastercard, Microsoft, MSCI, Novo Nordisk, NVIDIA and Visa.

Business summary

DISCO Corporation (Ticker: 6146) was founded in 1937 as the Dai-Ichi Seitosho Company in Kure City, Hiroshima. The name DISCO, adopted in 1977, is derived from "DI" (Dai-Ichi), "S" (Seitosho), and "CO" (Company).

DISCO see their mission as taking the historic principles behind the rudimentary tools used by early humans and evolving the technology to provide real-world practical solutions. They are focused on:

"advancing Kiru (dicing), Kezuru (grinding) and Migaku (polishing) technologies."

And intend to never deviate from these three core areas. Consequently, over the decades, DISCO has grown into a global leader in precision cutting, grinding, and polishing technology. Their main products are dicing saws, laser saws, grinders, polishers and planers, which all sound exquisitively humble compared to the advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines sold by ASML.