In today’s briefing:
- Iwatani – Hydrogen Getting Interesting Again and This Is the Best Play
- Lawson Expands into Takeaways
- Marui: 70% of Tenants to Be Non-Merchandise
- Hitachi Ltd. (6501 JP): Assessing Exposure to Ukraine – Buy into the Sell-Off
- Japan’s Governance: Parent-Subsidiary Listing Investment Strategy Update (4)
- Skylark Holdings (3197): Earnings Forecast Update. Challenges in Handling Inflation
Iwatani – Hydrogen Getting Interesting Again and This Is the Best Play
- Japan continues to move forward with preparing for the shift to a hydrogen economy with new developments in both rail and hydrogen production.
- The efforts to produce hydrogen through artificial photosynthesis are particularly interesting given the potential to reduce hydrogen costs drastically.
- While Toyota is of course involved in the efforts, the key beneficiary for the hydrogen economy remains Iwatani.
Lawson Expands into Takeaways
- Lawson will begin offering made-on-demand meals direct from its convenience stores.
- Suitable stores are being renovated to include in-store kitchens, with 100 planned for this time next year and 1,000 by 2025, with delivery handled by companies like Uber Eats.
- Most other chains offering made-to-order meals are small, so Lawson could well take a large share of this growing market.
Marui: 70% of Tenants to Be Non-Merchandise
- Marui Group (8252 JP) is increasingly ethereal, shifting further away from selling merchandise through tenants.
- While seen as a shop building operator, Marui is still true to its service origins as a consumer finance business.
- Now even its shop buildings are increasingly devoted to non-stuff with the company aiming for 70% of tenancies to be selling things other than merchandise by 2025.
Hitachi Ltd. (6501 JP): Assessing Exposure to Ukraine – Buy into the Sell-Off
- Hitachi is evacuating more than 7,000 GlobalLogic employees from Ukraine to other countries, but IT workers are mobile and these may have more work due to cyber attacks.
- Hitachi Construction Machinery and other Hitachi Group divisions do some business in Ukraine, but we expect the impact of the crisis to be manageable and temporary.
- Hitachi Ltd shares are down 25% since November and the P/E ratio is near the bottom of its historical range.
Japan’s Governance: Parent-Subsidiary Listing Investment Strategy Update (4)
- Using latest data on the impact of major shareholder interests on corporate governance and stock price performance, we also consider this issue from the perspective of parent-subsidiary listings.
- The results of the correlation analysis for 3 groups of companies in % of ownerships showed that the major shareholder factor has a significant impact on corporate governance practices.
- Regarding board practices, companies with shareholders holding more than 50% (listed subsidiaries) are generally less conscious of improving their practices, while the results for key actions are mixed across criteria.
Skylark Holdings (3197): Earnings Forecast Update. Challenges in Handling Inflation
- Maintaining TP of 1,600 yen and a Hold rating. We are updating our earnings forecast for Skylark Holdings (3197, the company)
- On February 14, the company announced full-year IFRS OP of 18.2bn yen (vs. -23.0bn yen loss in FY12/20)
- Our new forecast for FY12/22 is for sales of 311.9bn yen (+17.9% YoY; previous forecast 311.8bn yen) and OP of 8.8bn yen (-51.5% YoY; previous forecast 10.4bn yen)
Before it’s here, it’s on Smartkarma
