Thesis. oRo makes ZAC, a cloud ERP for Japanese firms that bill by the project (consultancies, ad agencies, IT shops). At ¥1,874 (26 Oct) the market cap is about ¥29.1B, and ¥9.4B of that is net cash. The rest values the business at about 10x the ¥1.98B of cash flow it makes a year. Discount that at 9% and the price implies cash flow shrinking about 0.9% a year, forever. The cloud core grew 21.5% in H1 2026.
Why it looks worse on a screen
- Until January 2023 it sold perpetual licenses, and it still books that old prepaid cash slowly: ¥764M in 2024, ¥435M in 2025, about ¥130M this year, zero from 2027. Strip it out and cloud revenue grew 25.5% in 2025 and 21.5% in H1 2026.
- A small ad-agency unit depends on two clients, Aeon and Nissan. Its profit fell 73% in 2025, from ¥558M to ¥148M. That's why group net profit fell 8.5% last year, the first drop since 2016.
Cloud was 68% of 2025 revenue and 94% of operating profit. Monthly churn is 0.29%. Contracted licenses rose 18 quarters in a row, from 243,000 to 364,000.
Since the end of 2021, EPS went from ¥87.96 to ¥137.61 (TTM), up 56%. The share price went from ¥2,909 to ¥1,874, down 36%. P/E went from 33x to about 13.6x.
H1 2026
Revenue ¥4,553M (+17.0%), operating profit ¥1,411M (+17.3%), margin 31.0%. Operating cash flow was 1.4x net profit. Contract liabilities (cash collected up front) rose ¥40M, the first increase after two years of shrinking.
Balance sheet and capital return
No debt, no goodwill, and no acquisition in 27 years. Net cash ¥9,441M (cash plus deposits minus leases). Buybacks were ¥226M in 2024, ¥1,276M in 2025 and a ¥1B program this year. In April it cancelled ¥911M of repurchased shares, which is rare in Japan. Dividend ¥20, ¥30, ¥35, ¥50, with a stated no-cut policy, so 2.7% at today's price.
My complaint is the cash. About ¥10.2B sits in deposits at 0.27%. The two founders hold 57.1% and have sold slowly over five years (7.7% and 19% of their stakes), so nobody outside can push for a bigger buyback.
Valuation
Cash flow base ¥1,976M, the average of 2024, 2025 and TTM after lease payments.
- Pessimistic DCF: ¥2,081
- Zero-growth value: ¥2,078
- Median P/E x guided EPS: ¥2,742
- Base DCF (8.5% growth, well under the company's ~19% plan): ¥3,191
- Optimistic DCF: ¥4,957 (terminal value is 61% of it, so I treat it as a ceiling)
Bear case
- Sales: 33 new contracts in H1 against a plan of 104. Net revenue retention fell from 116.1% to 107.0% after twelve companies from two groups cancelled.
- Marketing relapse: if Aeon and Nissan cut again, group profit loses ¥200-300M.
- Adobe bought Semrush, which oRo distributes in Japan. That line plus other third-party products is about ¥380M of revenue.
- AI at the small end: retention on the cheap product for firms under 50 people was 94.6% in 2025.
- Liquidity: 30,000-110,000 shares a day.
What would change my mind
Q3 comes around 13 Nov. I'm watching cumulative new contracts (under 60 after nine months is bad), net revenue retention (under 110%), Marketing revenue (¥847M in Q1, ¥659M in Q2, under ¥700M in Q3 would worry me) and contract liabilities shrinking again.
Does anyone here follow Japanese small caps? Is 33 new contracts in six months a blip or a trend?
Full report, with the falsifiers checked daily:oRo deep analysis here
Disclosure: I own some. I run Waiting Is the Work, the non-commercial site where this analysis is published. This is research, not investment advice.