iScream Media (KOSDAQ: 461300) — 4x earnings, 31% margins, ~10% dividend, but 91% of market cap sits in cash/securities. DD

Been digging through Korean micro-caps on DART and found one that made me re-check my numbers. Sharing the core thesis here.

**The business.** iScream Media runs *iScream S*, the daily software \~93% of Korea's primary-school teachers use to run their classrooms — lesson slides, worksheets, a 20-year library of 6.5m teaching materials. It's free. That's the point: it's the front door. Off the back of owning the teacher's daily routine, iScream started publishing certified primary textbooks in 2022 and immediately won the highest adoption of the 13 licensed publishers (\~40–58% on maths/science/social studies).

**Why it's a good business.** The state funds textbooks but teachers choose the publisher — and iScream already owns the teacher. Schools re-order every year (recurring, not one-off). Switching means relearning a whole year of materials, so it's sticky. And a rival would have to rebuild 20 years of content *and* prise teachers off a platform they open daily. That's a real moat.

**The numbers.** Revenue ₩104bn → ₩196bn in 3 years (\~24% CAGR), operating profit ₩31bn → ₩62bn, and — the tell of quality — operating margin *rose* from 29% to 31.5% as it grew. Return on the capital actually used in the operating business is well over 50% (reported \~30% because the screener counts the huge cash pile as capital). FCF \~₩48bn in FY2025, \~25% of sales.

**The weird part.** Market cap \~₩200bn, but the company sits on \~₩182bn of cash + securities — about **91% of its own market value.** Strip that out and the market is pricing the ₩62bn/yr operating business at an EV of roughly ₩8bn — a few million dollars. On paper that's not a valuation, it's a rounding error.

**The catch (why it's cheap).** Two real reasons. (1) The founding Park family controls \~61% via SigongTech, so no outsider can force that cash out. (2) Revenue rides on government policy — in Aug 2025 the state demoted iScream's AI textbook from "textbook" to "educational material," forcing \~₩13bn of write-offs. But it's being chipped away: under Korea's Value-Up programme iScream now commits to a 40% payout, the dividend more than doubled to a \~10% yield, and total shareholder yield (divs + buybacks) already tops 10% of market cap.

One thing the screeners get flat wrong: they show \~₩111bn of "cash & short-term investments." The real figure is ₩182bn — the difference (\~₩70bn+) sits in *long-term* investments that screens don't count as cash. You only see it if you read the actual filing, and it changes the whole thesis (some of it is in venture funds tied to the founding family).

Not investment advice — I may hold a position. Figures from DART filings FY2022–Q1 2026.

I wrote the full teardown — with the charts, the segment breakdown, the seasonality trap, and the demographic-decline pushback — here: [https://numbersnotnarrative.substack.com/p/i-scream-media-93-of-koreas-teachers](https://numbersnotnarrative.substack.com/p/i-scream-media-93-of-koreas-teachers)

Curious if anyone here has a view on whether that cash ever really reaches minorities.