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Mitsui Chemicals will buy photoresist maker JSR from JIC for ¥1.84 trillion including debt, of which ¥1.3921 trillion is equity value; DBJ puts in ¥200 billion. Closing is targeted for fiscal 2027's second half.
Chips & Power DeskEdited by Ege Erten
3 min readAI-assisted
Mitsui Chemicals' reported offer for JSR is ¥1.84 trillion including debt, funded by a reported ¥1.64 trillion bridge loan.
Illustration (AI-generated)
Mitsui Chemicals said on Nov. 9 it will buy photoresist maker JSR from state-backed Japan Investment Corp. (JIC) for ¥1.84 trillion, or $11.61 billion, according to Reuters, with the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) investing ¥200 billion.
The $11.6 billion and $8.8 billion figures in circulation measure different things. Chemical Engineering, summarizing the companies' announcement, reports that the ¥1.84 trillion includes ¥1.3921 trillion of equity value ($8.8 billion) and ¥447.9 billion ($2.8 billion) of interest-bearing debt and other items, with the final consideration adjusted at closing. Jiji Press gives the same split as about ¥1.39 trillion for the shares plus about ¥440 billion of JSR debt that Mitsui Chemicals will take over. DBJ's ¥200 billion is part of the buy-in, not an addition to it, and DBJ's stake will be converted into non-voting preferred shares. Bloomberg, via The Japan Times, rounds the headline price to $12 billion.
Mitsui Chemicals plans to fund the deal with a ¥1.64 trillion ($10.4 billion) bridge loan from its principal banks plus DBJ's ¥200 billion, according to Chemical Engineering. It expects net debt to EBITDA to exceed 4x temporarily after closing and aims to refinance the bridge within a year of closing with bank loans, bonds, equity and mezzanine financing. A shelf registration filed Nov. 9 covers up to ¥150 billion of new common shares.
JSR makes the photoresists, the light-sensitive coatings used to transfer circuit patterns onto wafers. Bloomberg, via The Japan Times, says JSR supplies materials used with ASML's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, and lists TSMC, Intel and Samsung Electronics among its customers. Jiji Press describes JSR as holding one of the world's largest photoresist market shares; none of the reports gives a percentage.
For the fiscal year ended March 2026, JSR reported revenue of ¥440.7 billion, operating profit of ¥40.5 billion and profit attributable to owners of ¥59.3 billion, per Chemical Engineering. By Voltgrid's arithmetic from those figures, the ¥1.84 trillion price is about 4.2 times revenue and about 45 times operating profit. That revenue still includes JSR's life sciences unit, which Mitsui Chemicals plans to sell along with other non-core businesses.
JIC paid about ¥900 billion for JSR in 2024, according to Reuters, saying then that it would use the company to consolidate Japan's semiconductor-materials sector. Reuters reports JIC is instead selling to a domestic chemical major as chip-related valuations rise on AI demand.
Mitsui Chemicals' shares fell 8.5% on Monday, per Reuters, and as much as 15% in Tokyo, according to Bloomberg. Reuters put the company's market capitalization at ¥664.6 billion at Friday's close, so the price is roughly 2.8 times that value by Voltgrid's calculation. Reuters said market participants are questioning the business rationale and the debt the price implies.
CEO Satoshi Ichimura told a press conference the deal is "not simply about strengthening our semiconductor materials business," but a way to accelerate a portfolio transformation. The company targets about ¥40 billion of added annual profit by fiscal 2035, combining its pellicle products with JSR's advanced photoresists in front-end processing, per Chemical Engineering. Voltgrid's earlier coverage of Japan's chip supply chain, such as Tokyo Electron's profit forecast, covered the equipment side; this deal is the materials side of the same supply chain.
The transaction needs competition-law and foreign-investment approvals in Japan and abroad. Mitsui Chemicals aims to close in the second half of the fiscal year ending March 2028, per Chemical Engineering. None of the reports we read quotes the customers named above or any regulator, or describes how the deal changes photoresist supply terms. The bridge-loan refinancing and the sale of JSR's life sciences unit are plans, not completed steps.
