A capital-light compounder hiding on the Korean micro-cap market — 31% margins, a return on capital most companies dream of, a near-10% dividend, and a balance sheet unlike any you’ve seen.
Hi, thanks for reading my post! You’ve spotted something real. A lot of Korean companies, still don’t publish in English, and that barrier is part of why the Korea discount exists.
I just download every statement and disclosure, translate it in full, and read it start to finish. Nothing skipped.
You're right that they already had plenty of cash. The 2024 IPO was timed to the AI textbook program the government was pushing for 2025, which was the big growth story at the time. They raised about ₩76bn at ₩32,000 a share for "R&D and new business."
The idea made sense: if those AI textbooks had become mandatory nationwide, it would've been a big, recurring subscription market — and they'd have had a real reason to spend that money scaling up. But the early development was cheap enough to cover from normal cash flow, so most of the raise just sat in the bank for the time being.
Then in 2025 the government made the AI textbooks optional instead of required. The big spend never became necessary, the growth story faded, and the stock is now worth about half the IPO price — so the cash ended up in their "investment portfolio" instead.
Hi, the company's disclosures seem to be in Korean, do you use AI translation to understand the disclosures/financials? Thanks.
Hi, thanks for reading my post! You’ve spotted something real. A lot of Korean companies, still don’t publish in English, and that barrier is part of why the Korea discount exists.
I just download every statement and disclosure, translate it in full, and read it start to finish. Nothing skipped.
Thanks, I tried Google translate but some translations appear off to me. Any software you suggest?
For Korean, I'd try Papago first, and DeepL is also solid for the bulk. I lean on Claude for the trickier notes since it actually gets the accounting.
Give it a go — and if you come across anything I missed or didn't think of, please let me know. I'd be happy to add it to the analysis.
Jakub, thanks for highlighting i-Scream Media CO., LTD. (461300 KS).
Looks interesting.
Why do they need to IPO?
The company had so much cash even before IPO.
Thanks
Thanks so much for reading and digging into it!
You're right that they already had plenty of cash. The 2024 IPO was timed to the AI textbook program the government was pushing for 2025, which was the big growth story at the time. They raised about ₩76bn at ₩32,000 a share for "R&D and new business."
The idea made sense: if those AI textbooks had become mandatory nationwide, it would've been a big, recurring subscription market — and they'd have had a real reason to spend that money scaling up. But the early development was cheap enough to cover from normal cash flow, so most of the raise just sat in the bank for the time being.
Then in 2025 the government made the AI textbooks optional instead of required. The big spend never became necessary, the growth story faded, and the stock is now worth about half the IPO price — so the cash ended up in their "investment portfolio" instead.
Thanks again, great question!
Thanks for sharing!