It may well make sense to invest in such small stocks. One of the reasons is that this company has such a small market capitalisation. There are some studies that suggest high returns from the smallest 10% of companies, see for example this link. However, there is no good explanation for this effect.
Awesome writeup! What website do you use to look at a quick snapshot of the financial statements of these japanese companies? For example I use quickfs.net for american and european companies but they don't offer japanese companies.
I use Koyfin. Big fan of them. They also get market cap / shares outstanding correct for Japanese companies whereas IBKR always has the wrong market cap (they don't deduct treasury shares from shares outstanding whereas Koyfin does)
Why are there no hostile activist investors in Japan? If they exist, who? What is stopping someone from forcing such Japanese companies to do the right thing? If you had enough capital, how would you go about such a campaign? Thank you.
There are a few successful ones. Oasis Capital and Strategic Capital have had a lot of success in activism in Japan, but these are relatively recent phenomenans. The culture in Japan is just so different. Shareholders have historically been treated as the least important in the stakeholder list (customers, employees, society, then a distant last is shareholders). This is changing as messaging from the top (govt) and exchanges is telling management teams that this can't go on like this. Every year there's MORE activism than before in Japan. Deals are getting done and even unsolicited competing takeover bids (mostly unheard of in the past) are happening.
It may well make sense to invest in such small stocks. One of the reasons is that this company has such a small market capitalisation. There are some studies that suggest high returns from the smallest 10% of companies, see for example this link. However, there is no good explanation for this effect.
https://microcapclub.com/excessive-history-microcaps/
Awesome writeup! What website do you use to look at a quick snapshot of the financial statements of these japanese companies? For example I use quickfs.net for american and european companies but they don't offer japanese companies.
I use Koyfin. Big fan of them. They also get market cap / shares outstanding correct for Japanese companies whereas IBKR always has the wrong market cap (they don't deduct treasury shares from shares outstanding whereas Koyfin does)
roic.ai is as clean and straightforward as you can get if you want financial statements.
Why are there no hostile activist investors in Japan? If they exist, who? What is stopping someone from forcing such Japanese companies to do the right thing? If you had enough capital, how would you go about such a campaign? Thank you.
There are a few successful ones. Oasis Capital and Strategic Capital have had a lot of success in activism in Japan, but these are relatively recent phenomenans. The culture in Japan is just so different. Shareholders have historically been treated as the least important in the stakeholder list (customers, employees, society, then a distant last is shareholders). This is changing as messaging from the top (govt) and exchanges is telling management teams that this can't go on like this. Every year there's MORE activism than before in Japan. Deals are getting done and even unsolicited competing takeover bids (mostly unheard of in the past) are happening.
There's a book on this very topic if you guys are interested; "Hedge Fund Activism in Japan" by Buchanan et al.
I just ordered it. Thank you.