3132.T

• Business Model and Positioning: Macnica operates two core technology trading business models, semiconductor and cybersecurity, both based on the Value-Added Distribution (VAD) model. One-third of the company's employees are professional engineers who provide design, development and implementation technical support for suppliers' advanced technology products to deliver added value to customers. The company positions cybersecurity as a key growth engine to optimize the business structure, improve overall profitability and drive up corporate valuation.

• Cybersecurity Business Advantages and Operations:

  • The company sources cutting-edge cybersecurity technologies globally: its US-based sourcing team researches more than 1,200 startups and technology companies every year, and can connect with promising startups unknown to the Japanese market at an early stage. It has built a competitive advantage through long-term operation, with deep understanding of customer industry needs, accumulated practical project experience, a strong partner ecosystem, and high-level expertise in global technology trends.
  • Half of cybersecurity employees are engineers, and the company provides end-to-end services from consulting, implementation, operation to incident response. The 2013-founded Security Research Center analyzes threats targeting Japanese companies, accumulates threat intelligence and technical knowledge, and supports the continuous improvement of in-house services. Its self-developed Macnica ASM (Attack Surface Management) service has ranked first in domestic market share for three consecutive years.
  • Global expansion: The company operates in 24 countries and regions. It has a presence in 11 Asia-Pacific countries through Netpoleon Solutions (acquired in 2017), and covers 12 countries in the Middle East and Africa through CyberKnight (acquired in 2022), and continues to expand faster than the overall market growth rate.

• Cybersecurity Medium-term Strategies: 1) Expand the core VAD model, expand sales of existing core products and continue to develop new suppliers; 2) Strengthen global expansion, share suppliers globally and export Japanese technical experience; 3) Expand operation support services to solve the problem of customer cybersecurity talent shortage and build a stable recurring revenue base; 4) Strengthen the in-house developed service and solution model, focusing on Macnica ASM to improve profit margin.

• Human Capital Management:

  • The company adheres to the core philosophy that "everything starts and ends with people", and regards human capital as the most important operating capital. It currently focuses on new talent acquisition, well-being, healthy operation, DE&I, personnel system upgrade and work style reform.
  • It ranked 5th in OpenWork's 2025 "Companies with Meaningful Work" ranking, up from 40th in 2023, with an overall score of 4.18 (top 1% of all companies), especially high scores of over 4.5 in "good organizational communication" and "growth environment for 20-somethings".
  • The corporate culture is based on trust and delegation of authority, called the "response cycle": early delegation of authority to young employees, with supervisors taking responsibility for results and providing continuous support, which stimulates the initiative of employees and forms a positive cycle of growth. It has a 12-year history of regular organizational diagnosis, and has formed a complete PDCA cycle for employee engagement improvement.
  • In 2024, the company refreshed its talent development system "MACNICA University", which provides systematic training programs for different career stages from new hires to management.
  • OpenWork data research suggests that higher positive employee work experience scores (improved employee satisfaction) is a leading indicator of future sales, profit and stock price growth.

• The company plans to carry out total growth investment of 50 billion yen to 80 billion yen in the three years of the medium-term management plan from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2027, with about half of the investment allocated to the cybersecurity business and the new CPS solution business for in-house service development and acquisition. This investment is used to support the company's transformation from adding value to physical products (hardware and software) to creating and providing proprietary services and solutions to further improve profitability.
  • The company expects the Japanese cybersecurity market to grow to 1.2 trillion yen by 2029, with a CAGR of 11.0%, and the Asia-Pacific market to grow at a faster CAGR of 11.2%. There is still sufficient room for growth in domestic business maturity, and emerging regions such as ASEAN, India, the Middle East and Africa will provide additional growth space, so the company expects the cybersecurity business to maintain sustained growth.
  • The company expects the proportion of recurring revenue in the cybersecurity business to continue to increase, and will continuously improve the renewal rate through customer success services to maintain stable revenue growth.

1. Semiconductor Business: It is the core profit pillar of the group, with an overwhelming market share and stable profitability in the Japanese market, and has made great contributions to the group's revenue growth for a long time. It is sensitive to market conditions and has a relatively low valuation multiple compared with IT businesses.
2. Cybersecurity Business: It achieved global sales of over 150 billion yen in 2024 (the last fiscal year), with a compound annual growth rate of 22.8% from 2021 to 2024. Overseas sales accounted for 34% of total cybersecurity revenue. In the first half of fiscal 2025, operating revenue increased by 22% year-on-year, maintaining strong growth in both domestic and overseas markets. The proportion of its operating profit in the company's total has increased significantly in recent years, and it has higher growth rate and profitability than the semiconductor business.
3. CPS Solution Business: It is a newly developed business, and the company plans to invest in the development and acquisition of in-house developed services and solutions together with the cybersecurity business.

• The cybersecurity threat environment is deteriorating: Ransomware attacks have become a structured business for attackers, and the number of observed incidents is expected to hit a new high in 2025. The actual number of incidents is estimated to be several times to more than ten times the publicly observable number, with over 100,000 incidents globally. The scope of assets that enterprises need to protect is expanding exponentially, and AI enables attackers to launch more attacks at lower cost, greatly increasing the difficulty of defense. Most Japanese and Southeast Asian enterprises lack professional cybersecurity talents, resulting in a large skill gap between attackers and defenders, which continuously increases market demand for third-party cybersecurity services.
  • The talent market is highly competitive: The overall market is in a seller's market for IT engineers. Although the company has achieved its basic recruitment targets, it still needs to continuously recruit more engineers to support business expansion, and needs to continuously improve its talent brand to attract compatible talents.
  • National preference for domestic cybersecurity products may bring competitive changes, but the company believes that domestic products cannot cover all demand scenarios, and its self-developed domestic service Macnica ASM will actually benefit from this policy.

Q: How long does it take on average to launch a business for a new cybersecurity startup partner, and what is the source of Macnica's competitiveness in this process? / A: On average, it takes 3 to 5 years to fully scale a new startup partnership. For example, CrowdStrike was signed in 2013 and only fully scaled up after the zero-trust concept became popular in 2018-2019. This timeline is not unique to cybersecurity — it also applied to the semiconductor business in the past. Macnica's competitiveness comes from early identification of promising technologies, and it is willing to persistently cultivate the market and create demand through education even when the market has not yet formed. By the time the market matures, Macnica has already built up overwhelming technical capabilities and market position that late entrants cannot replicate. This is the core source of its long-term competitiveness.

Q: What impact has the recent high-profile cyberattack incident had on Macnica's performance? / A: High-profile cyberattacks make more enterprises treat cybersecurity as a top management priority, which will definitely increase overall market demand. While it does not lead to immediate immediate project closures, it will drive medium- and long-term demand growth, especially from subsidiaries and small and medium-sized enterprises, and the company will increase its investment in this market segment.

Q: What is the current status of IT engineer recruitment, and what is the future plan? / A: Engineers account for one-third of the company's total employees, and current recruitment has basically met the company's demand. However, as the business expands, the company still needs more engineers. It will not only recruit from the external market, but also continuously cultivate internal talents through the improved training system to meet growth demand.

Q: How does the company achieve synergies in its global cybersecurity expansion? / A: The most direct synergy comes from shared vendor partnerships: the company shares vendors across Japanese, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern businesses, and collaborates globally as one team to communicate with vendors, exchange regulatory and market information and discuss strategy. All acquired regional group companies have their own local technical capabilities with a similar structure to Japan (half of employees are engineers), and the company will continue to accumulate cross-regional knowledge to enable cross-border technical support and improve overall operational efficiency, with the goal of becoming a truly global cybersecurity distributor.