Business Description
Resonac's strongest franchise is in back-end materials, the products used to assemble and package chips once the circuits are made: die-bonding films, epoxy molding compounds, copper-clad laminates for package substrates and photosensitive films, several of which rank among the world leaders. That position came largely with Hitachi Chemical, which Showa Denko acquired in 2020; the combined group took the name Resonac in January 2023. Advanced packaging for AI processors and high-bandwidth memory, which stacks and connects more dies in each package, has become the main source of growth. On the front end it supplies CMP slurries for polishing wafers and high-purity specialty gases used in etching.
Alongside that sits a large legacy of cyclical commodity businesses from Showa Denko — petrochemicals centred on an ethylene complex in Oita, graphite electrodes for electric-arc steelmaking and other basic chemicals — which have weighed on returns, and which the company has been working to separate or shrink so that capital and management attention can concentrate on semiconductor materials. Earnings therefore turn on chip production and AI-related packaging demand at one end, and on petrochemical spreads and a graphite-electrode market pressured by Chinese competition at the other, with the yen affecting both. The legal entity is Showa Denko's, dating from 1939; the fiscal year ends in December.
Corporate Data
| Ticker | 4004 |
|---|---|
| Exchange | Tokyo Stock Exchange |
| Size Category | TOPIX Mid400 |
| Market Segment | Prime Market |
| Sector | Chemicals |
| Head Office | Tokyo Shiodome Building, 1-9-1 Higashi-Shimbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-7325, Japan |
| Founded | June 1, 1939 |
| Fiscal Year End | December 31 |
| Website | Official website |