In today’s briefing:
- SBI Obtains Approval – Has Plan To Buy 0.965% of Shinsei – It Isn’t Strategic, It’s Technical
- Socionext IPO Trading – Upsized IPO with Strong Demand. Peers Inched Downwards, but Upside Remains
- Toshiba (6502) – JIP Gets Preferred Bidder Status and We Get The First Price Leak
- J Front Retailing (3086) | Still in the Bargain Basement
- Adastria Signs Forever 21, New Growth Through Licensing?
- The Resolution of Human Rights Issues Should Not Be a Means to a Purpose
SBI Obtains Approval – Has Plan To Buy 0.965% of Shinsei – It Isn’t Strategic, It’s Technical
- SBI Holdings (8473 JP)‘s unit SBI Regional Bank Holdings KK (SBI 地銀ホールディングス株式会社) today announced it had received FSA authorisation to turn the company into a Bank Holding Company.
- There are some technicalities involved. SBI announced it would buy 2.5mm shares of Shinsei on-market to get to 50.05% by end-March 2023. This will disappoint some, but…
- I expect investors should continue to look at the big picture. Technicalities are technicalities. Strategy is strategy. The big picture is unchanged and there isn’t that much room to manoeuvre.
Socionext IPO Trading – Upsized IPO with Strong Demand. Peers Inched Downwards, but Upside Remains
- Socionext (6526 JP) raised around US$463m in its Japan IPO. The IPO consisted of 100% secondary shares.
- Socionext is a fabless semiconductor provider which commenced operations after integrating the system on a chip (SoC) businesses of Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited and Panasonic Holding Corporation.
- In this note we will talk about the trading dynamics.
Toshiba (6502) – JIP Gets Preferred Bidder Status and We Get The First Price Leak
- Overnight, a few news outlets are running with the story that Toshiba Corp (6502 JP) has granted “preferred bidder” status to the Japan Industrial Partners (JIP)-led consortium bid.
- JIP had originally signed up with public-private fund JIC, forming one of the four bids (the other three being CVC, Bain, and Brookfield) but JIP and JIC split last month.
- “Preferred Bidder status” is just that. It’s not exclusive, but one can read between the lines. But the articles have interesting details, including the first trial ballon price leak.
J Front Retailing (3086) | Still in the Bargain Basement
- J. Front is a key beneficiary of improving consumption post-pandemic and a return of inbound tourism.
- Q2 sales rose 4.8% on the year. 2H sales guidance +2% YoY looks too conservative given full resumption of inbound tourism.
- We believe the stock still represents good value at 0.9x book value.
Adastria Signs Forever 21, New Growth Through Licensing?
- Adastria’s growth has been sporadic in recent years as it adjusts to maturity and saturation in core apparel markets.It has diversification projects but these will take time to develop.
- It thinks it can find faster growth by franchising and licensing with already well-known brands, starting with Forever 21.
- It also has a new business providing apparel collections to General Merchandise Retailers, starting with Izumi.
The Resolution of Human Rights Issues Should Not Be a Means to a Purpose
- If discussion doesn’t proceed from the starting point that respect for rights should be for the coexistence of humankind, not for the maintenance of corporate activities, it will get confused.
- Although human rights were included in the 2021 revision of the Corporate Governance Code in the Principles of Sustainability, it is not thought to have been effective.
- The repeated human rights violation scandals at companies and the fact that these companies have human rights policies in place infers that this is a deeply rooted problem in society.
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