Semi Five, Inc. (KOSDAQ:490470) filed a supply contract on September 8 with the price left out. The blank is legal. It is not an oversight.
The company will supply AI inference accelerator chips for data centres to HyperAccel Inc. The term runs from September 8, 2026 to June 15, 2028. Four boxes that normally carry numbers are printed as a dash: the confirmed amount, the conditional amount, the total, and the share of revenue. The one figure the filing does print is Semi Five's own FY2025 revenue of ₩120.95 billion. It sits there as a denominator with nothing above it.
Korean exchange rules let a listed company withhold the contract price when the customer asks. Two things have to be stated in exchange. One is the reason. The other is a date on which the deferral expires.
Semi Five gives both. The reason is the counterparty's request to protect trade secrets. The deferral runs to June 15, 2028. That is the same day the contract ends.
A US reader has no clean equivalent. The closest thing is a redacted exhibit filed with a request for confidential treatment. Korea's version is blunter. The exchange form has a box, the box stays empty, and a date is set for when it gets filled.
Semi Five has filed two other contract disclosures this year, and both printed a price.
| Filed | Work | Amount | Share of revenue | Counterparty | |---|---|---|---|---| | Mar 13, amended Aug 24 | AI NPU design, development and supply | ₩18.23bn | 16.31% | not named | | May 20 | AI chip design and development | ₩14.73bn | 12.18% | not named | | Sep 8 | Data centre inference accelerator supply | not stated | not stated | HyperAccel |
The inversion is the interesting part. In March and May the price was public and the customer was hidden. In September the customer is named and the price is hidden. The stated reason was the same each time.
The form's existence is itself a clue. A KOSDAQ company files this disclosure only when a single contract is large enough measured against the most recent year's revenue. Semi Five's two priced deals cleared that test at 16.31% and 12.18%. The September contract cleared it too, or there would be no filing. That puts a floor under the deal without saying where the floor is.
The term is 21 months, close to the 26 and 19 months on the two priced deals. The payment schedule tells you more. Semi Five collects 10% on signing, 60% when the first product delivery is complete, and 30% at the end. The May contract paid 30% up front. Less cash arrives early here than on the last deal that carried a number.
One more line on the form is worth reading. This is the first of the three that is product supply rather than design work. March covered design, development and supply. May covered design and development alone. The form also records that Semi Five has not performed a contract of this type with this counterparty in the past three years.
Semi Five held ₩31.7 billion of cash at June 30. It held ₩79.4 billion six months earlier. Operating cash flow was negative ₩29.7 billion in the half. Investing took another ₩8.2 billion and financing took ₩10.1 billion.
Revenue almost doubled over the same period, from ₩48.1 billion to ₩94.7 billion. The operating loss narrowed from ₩28.1 billion to ₩10.9 billion. Both are real improvements and neither produced cash. Inventories went from ₩57 million to ₩1.7 billion, which is what happens when a design house starts shipping product.
That is the context the missing number sits in. A ₩12 billion contract and a ₩60 billion contract imply very different things for a company burning ₩29.7 billion a half against ₩31.7 billion of cash. The filing does not let you tell them apart.
Semi Five listed on KOSDAQ in December 2025, and its issuance results report is dated December 22. Before that it was private, and the accounts still show it. Equity was negative ₩254.3 billion at the end of FY2023. It was ₩139.9 billion a year later and ₩220.5 billion at the end of FY2025.
FY2024 carried a net loss of ₩290.9 billion against an operating loss of ₩22.9 billion. The net loss was more than ten times the operating loss, so nearly all of it came from below the operating line. That is a pre-listing capital structure showing up in the income statement, and it makes the three-year history hard to read as a trend.
The company has not reported a positive operating result in any of the three years on file. FY2025's operating loss of ₩53.4 billion was the largest of them, on the largest revenue.
The company's market capitalisation was ₩0.5 trillion at Tuesday's close. That is roughly 4.5 times FY2025 revenue for a business with no operating profit. The shares closed at ₩15,930 against a 52-week high of ₩48,800 and a low of ₩12,810.
Take the other side seriously. The deferral has an expiry date, so the number is coming rather than gone. The customer is named this time, which neither earlier filing would do. The 60% payment on first delivery means most of the money lands inside the term instead of at the very end. And equity of ₩222.8 billion against total liabilities of ₩126.0 billion is not a balance sheet under stress.
There is also a plain reading of the blank that is not sinister. A fabless customer buying accelerator silicon has an obvious reason to hide what it pays per part. Semi Five named the customer instead, which is arguably the more useful of the two disclosures.
The third-quarter report is the next place to look. The 10% signing payment was due at contract execution, so it falls inside the September quarter. Ten per cent of an unknown number is still a number, and it will move the cash line.
Semi Five spent ₩47.7 billion of cash in six months while growing revenue 97%. Whether this contract changes that arithmetic depends entirely on a figure the filing does not contain.
kstock reads DART every morning and writes up what moved — the contract, the buyback, the number that does not add up. The daily post and a Saturday roundup, by email.