Company Overview

1. Company Overview

Fuji Shoji Co., Ltd. was founded in 1958 with the aim of manufacturing and leasing jankyuu gaming machines, and was incorporated in 1966 as the business developed. In 1973, it entered the arrangement ball gaming machine market, and the big hits of the arrangement ball gaming machines "Arezin" and "Excite," developed in 1992, became a catalyst for improving brand power. Subsequently, in order to expand its business scope, it entered the pachinko gaming machine market in 1989 and the pachislot gaming machine market in 2003.

A gaming machine that creates winning hands by placing balls into a prize hole imagined as Mahjong tiles, and pays out medals according to the score.

In 2007, the company listed its shares on the JASDAQ (later the Tokyo Stock Exchange JASDAQ Standard) market, and in 2013, it entered into a capital and business partnership agreement with Sun Electronics Co., Ltd., with which it had maintained a trading relationship since its inception. The company procures control boards and other materials from Sun Electronics, making it one of its main procurement partners. In 2005, it began manufacturing and selling pachinko and pachislot machines through its subsidiary, JFJ Co., Ltd., established in that year, and began consolidated financial statements from the fiscal year ending March 2019. Additionally, in August 2019, it established Orange SA as a subsidiary to manufacture and sell pachinko and pachislot machines. In April 2022, due to the reorganization of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (hereafter referred to as TSE), it transitioned to the TSE Standard market.

2. Characteristics of the Business

The company's characteristics include inventing new gaming mechanisms and quickly utilizing them for new model development in the industry, as well as actively developing models that utilize character copyrights from anime and other media. In 2002, the company was the first in the industry to introduce the chance button feature in pachinko machines, which is now common. In developing gaming machines utilizing character copyrights, major hits included "CR Thunderbird 2," launched in 2003, and "CR Abare Yabou Shogun," launched in 2004.

Since 2000, the company has gained considerable brand strength with horror-themed models. The "CR Ring," introduced in 2007, initially had uncertain popularity in horror, leading to sales of only 0.015 million units; however, as female loyal fans began to increase in the pachinko halls where it was introduced, it maintained high operational stability and improved its reputation. The follow-up model "CR Ring Curse of the Seven Days," launched in 2011, achieved a long period of high operational records, becoming a hit model with total sales of 0.07 million units, thus establishing a series of multiple horror-themed models that are consistently released. Recently, the trend for new model introductions from the halls has leaned towards prioritizing follow-up models of series that have proven sales performance to mitigate investment risks. Consequently, initial model sales have difficulty growing, but if operational rates are high, stable sales can be expected for subsequent models. Recently, in an environment where models are considered hits if they sell more than 0.01 million units, the "P Certain Magical Index," introduced in 2020, became a hit by surpassing 0.02 million units, and the follow-up series has also produced strong sales performance.

On the other hand, the pachislot gaming machines saw no hit products after the successful launch of "Pachislot Ring: The Curse of Seven Days" with 0.021 million units sold and "Pachislot Arejin" with 0.023 million units sold in 2014. However, in 2022, the release of "SLOT A Certain Scientific Railgun" marked a comeback with 0.012 million units sold. Furthermore, in 2023, the company's first smart pachislot "L Goblin Slayer" also became a hit with over 0.017 million units sold, regaining momentum once again.

(Written by FISCO guest analyst, Jo Sato)