[Click eStock] "Makers, Undervalued Non-Memory Semiconductor Stock"

[Asia Economy Reporter Ji Yeon-jin] Ebest Investment & Securities announced on the 14th that Makers was undervalued compared to its profitability and growth, with a price-to-earnings ratio (PER) of 5.1 times and a price-to-book ratio (PBR) of 1.7 times based on last year's performance.

Makers is a non-memory semiconductor solution company that sells and provides technical support for 'FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array, a type of semiconductor that can be reprogrammed with circuits tailored to specific uses, unlike general-purpose semiconductors whose circuits cannot be changed).' Most of its products are imported from Xilinx and distributed to about 500 domestic IT companies.

Makers is showing growth as the demand for FPGA increases in the IT equipment design process, driven by the expansion of front-end industries such as aerospace, automotive, and telecommunications, where the computation process of non-memory semiconductors is becoming more advanced and upgrade demand is rising, along with the increasing number of AI, autonomous driving, IDC, deep learning, and IoT device product lines.

Last year, sales increased by 61.9% year-on-year to 140.7 billion KRW, operating profit surged 175.0% to 26 billion KRW, and net profit grew 212.5% to 24.9 billion KRW, demonstrating high growth.

Jeong Hong-sik, a researcher at Ebest Investment & Securities, said, "The company has a high asset value with net cash of 45.1 billion KRW, and combined value of 37.1 billion KRW from short- and long-term financial assets, treasury stock, and investment real estate, totaling 82.2 billion KRW," adding, "The average operating profit margin over the past five years is 13.3% (maintained above 10% annually), which indicates that as a semiconductor solution company, it has high technical competitiveness rather than just simple distribution."