7595 Argo Graphics

Japan Guru
Jul 11
1 min read

Algo Graphics sells French "Dassault" CAD software to automobile manufacturers and IBM manufacturing process control systems to semiconductor manufacturers.

5 Comments

Japan Guru

Oct 06

Oct 1, Argo Graphics announced shareholder perk, popular "Quo Card" convertible into 1000 yen of cash

Japan Guru

Aug 11

As of Aug 11, 2025, the situation with this company is:

strategic partner/stable shareholder SCSK is gone after selling into the buyback
Fidelity (FMR LLC) keeps buying the stock such that it is now the top shareholder w/13% stake (bought as recently as July 11, 2025)
stock sold off appx 5% on back of 1Q result but the yoy numbers looked bad largely because the 1Q of previous yr was really good due to one-off large order from public sector
at 4750 yen/share, net cash (33 bil yen) exceeds 1/3 of the market cap (95 bil yen)
Despite a 18% EBIT CAGR growth trajectory over the past 8 years, the co maintains a modest valuation of 6x EV/EBIT and 13x…

Edited

comers_mug_9o

Jul 26

Here is a VIC write up on this stock https://valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/Argo_Graphics/9697984760

The article provides a good overview of its business and does a good job in financial analysis.

What I like, distributor of engineering and scientific software, value added services and High-performance computing cluster rental to run simulation. Very sticky, highly recurring (stock-based) and almost no churn.

Argo is the largest distributor of IBM's MES platform Siview in Japan. This MES platform is mainly for Semiconductor Fabs Toshiba ( Kioxia).

one tidbit.. not related to Argo Graphics..

According to this post https://www.linkedin.com/posts/masahide-hirouchi-64ba7234_ibm-siview-standard%E3%81%AE%E7%99%BA%E8%A1%A8-activity-7219589371551698944-19AM , the IBM's MES platform SiView was developed by IBM Japan Team.

Argo Graphics own 50% share in Jedat Inc (3841) Developer and seller of EDA software. SX-Meister, an…

Japan Guru

Jul 10

In spring, Ascender Capital submitted shareholder proposal asking for 400 yen / share dividend and up to 26 bil yen buyback

Not clear whether the management's decision in May to buy back almost entire stake held by 21% shareholder SCSK was influenced by this pressure. But the mgmt certainly used this buyback as reason to reject any other capital return proposal

Japan Guru

Jul 10

at 5080/share, 113.6 bil yen mkt cap vs 33 bil yen* net cash

14.37x per / 1.89x pbr / 3.15% dividend

*As of March 31, 2025, the net cash was 51 bil yen. But the co bought back almost entire stake from SCSK - Sumitomo Corp affiliated mega SIer - spending 18.5 bil yen cash in July.

Edited