Pan-Asia Catalysts/Events, Quiddity Advisors

Travis Lundy

HK Type 4 license through Ballingal Investment Advisors Ltd. ("BIA" or "BIAL")

BACKGROUND
I have 20+yrs experience in Asia doing alternative strategies (i.e. non-delta1 non long-only) in fixed income, equity derivatives, and activist/catalyst/event-driven and long-short equity strategies with most of that time spent managing money. 

4 years in fixed income macro, 8 years running internal hedge fund and 4yrs investment banking at Citi in Japan, 3 years running an Asia multi-strat portfolio at a hedge fund, 4+yrs as an independent special situations analyst.

Pan-Asia Catalysts/Events

JAPAN DELTA II - Foreigners And Trust Banks a WildCard

Quiddity Advisors

Event-Driven

<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/idec-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:19312:1" rel="noopener">Idec Corp (6652 JP)</a> is a company which makes all manner of parts which sit between humans and machine, in the production line process for automated and semi-automated goods (almost always on the operator side, not the end-user side).Go into a building to see where the management office is controlling the lights for the garage, hallways, the elevators and escalators, electronic doors, etc, and you may see an array of programmable controllers by IDEC. Go to a restaurant with any kind of automation and you may find order input controllers, and monitoring systems (how does the restaurant know when that sushi has made too many rounds on the conveyor? RFID chip and monitoring system). Go into the subway in Tokyo and you will see barriers keeping people from falling onto the tracks, with automated doors. The sensors in those doors might be IDEC, as might be the giant red emergency stop buttons you see. They make switches and relays and sensors to run automated inspection lines in factories, and they run control units for industrial robots. They also make controllers, automated barcode readers, and operator interface controls for all kinds of conveyor systems - especially those used in factories in the shipment area, or in sorting and shipping centers for warehouse/distribution. And they make parts/switches/etc for all the software others might bring to the table. They are not quite ubiquitous but they have a decent and growing business. And if you wanted to set up a new automated production line for something and manage shipping, you'd buy their products. This does not seem like the wrong business to be in right now.<div class="content-highlight">
As of 19 March, the stock is -49.5% year-to-date. What was a $700mm market cap 4-5 months ago is now just over $300mm.
On 19 March, after the close, the company <a href="http://jp.idec.com/cms/pdf/usr/ir/news/2020/jikokabu202003.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> a buyback of up to 3 million shares for up to ¥4 billion. That is a buyback of 9.57% of the shares out for 11.5% of market cap. The period of the buyback is until 30 September 2020.
That's a decent chunk of change.  More discussion below.
</div>

Idec Corp (6652 JP) is a company which makes all manner of parts which sit between humans and machine, in the production line process for automated and semi-automated goods (almost always on the operator side, not the end-user side).Go into a building to see where the management office is controlling the lights for the garage, hallways, the elevators and escalators, electronic doors, etc, and you may see an array of programmable controllers by IDEC. Go to a restaurant with any kind of automation and you may find order input controllers, and monitoring systems (how does the restaurant know when that sushi has made too many rounds on the conveyor? RFID chip and monitoring system). Go into the subway in Tokyo and you will see barriers keeping people from falling onto the tracks, with automated doors. The sensors in those doors might be IDEC, as might be the giant red emergency stop buttons you see. They make switches and relays and sensors to run automated inspection lines in factories, and they run control units for industrial robots. They also make controllers, automated barcode readers, and operator interface controls for all kinds of conveyor systems - especially those used in factories in the shipment area, or in sorting and shipping centers for warehouse/distribution. And they make parts/switches/etc for all the software others might bring to the table. They are not quite ubiquitous but they have a decent and growing business. And if you wanted to set up a new automated production line for something and manage shipping, you'd buy their products. This does not seem like the wrong business to be in right now.
As of 19 March, the stock is -49.5% year-to-date. What was a $700mm market cap 4-5 months ago is now just over $300mm.
On 19 March, after the close, the company announced a buyback of up to 3 million shares for up to ¥4 billion. That is a buyback of 9.57% of the shares out for 11.5% of market cap. The period of the buyback is until 30 September 2020.
That's a decent chunk of change.  More discussion below.


IDEC (6652) Bets on a Bonkers Big Buyback

IDEC Corp

IDEC (6652) Bets on a Bonkers Big Buyback