In today’s briefing:
- IJTT (7315 JP) – Truly Offensive Takeover Price Gets Bumped, Offensively
- Japan – Increasing Shorts on Some Interesting Stocks
- SBI To Buy Gumi (3903) Shares To Up Stake to Near 30% (And Try To Avoid Impairment)
- Meldia DC (1739 JP) – Open House Group Cleans Up Sanei Architecture Sub in TOB.
- Convenience Wear: Familymart Competes with Uniqlo in Basics
- Demand for Disclosure to Answer the Goal of Promoting Sustainability to Increase Corporate Value
IJTT (7315 JP) – Truly Offensive Takeover Price Gets Bumped, Offensively
- IJTT Co., Ltd. (7315 JP) was perhaps one of the lower-priced parent takeovers (Isuzu remains central to the bidder post-buyout) at 0.46x book. Today, the last day, it got bumped.
- The new price is ¥850/share vs ¥812/share. +4.7% and a whopping 0.48x book now. ¥850 is where the stock traded just before the announcement. It immediately jumped to ¥875/share.
- It appears Isuzu is not getting any more money out of this, but they should be OK. They are buying back in at 0.48x book. With leverage.
Japan – Increasing Shorts on Some Interesting Stocks
- There are a bunch of stocks that have underperformed the Nikkei 225 (NKY INDEX) and their peers and could be deleted from global passive portfolios early next year.
- The deletion from passive portfolios will lead to a liquidity event at the end of February where passive trackers will need to sell multiple days of ADV.
- Shorts have started to increase on some of the stocks and there will be further positioning as we near the liquidity event.
SBI To Buy Gumi (3903) Shares To Up Stake to Near 30% (And Try To Avoid Impairment)
- Today after the close, SBI Holdings (8473 JP) made an announcement it would buy (up to) 3.0mm shares of Gumi Inc (3903 JP) shares between tomorrow and end-March 2024.
- SBI already owns 8.8mm shares, and this would bring them close to 30.0%.
- SBI did not specifically say they would buy on market, but the next 400,000 shares would require a large shareholder filing amendment.
Meldia DC (1739 JP) – Open House Group Cleans Up Sanei Architecture Sub in TOB.
- Open House (3288 JP) took over Sanei Architecture Planning (3228 JP) this past autumn when banks forced the issue over the former CEO/owner’s mafia ties discovered in an investigation.
- Seedheiwa (1739 JP) now better known as Meldia DC, is ~60% held by Sanei Architecture Planning, and 3% by Mr Koike. It has debt. So it needs cleaning up too.
- This is too light for minorities, and even lighter for whole co, but it’s a done deal.
Convenience Wear: Familymart Competes with Uniqlo in Basics
- The almost viral popularity of Familymart’s line of basic clothing items continues to grow and shows the real potential for convenience stores to diversify and adapt.
- Backed by Itochu, Familymart has expanded the product range and added new, limited edition items and brand collaborations, creating a success story that Seven Eleven may find hard to emulate.
- Lawson, however, is controlled by Mitsubishi Corp which happens to have a clothing production arm that was behind the early success of Uniqlo and Adastria.
Demand for Disclosure to Answer the Goal of Promoting Sustainability to Increase Corporate Value
- 60% companies have established policies to promote human capital. Companies will be asked whether their goals are reasonable and whether their actual measures and progress toward those goals are sufficient.
- Since many companies have set a target of 14-15% for % female managerial positions around 2025, it makes us worry whether they can really achieve 30% target in 2030.
- Few companies have disclosed specific impact estimates under certain conditions. It’s expected that some proactive companies will push others to do the same regarding “Scope 3” in the future.