As I’ve shared on Substack and X, I’ve been sending emails to every company in my Japanese portfolio that hasn’t complied with the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) request to improve corporate governance.
Was surprised by the depth of the response by Sanko Techno. Looking forward to their medium term plan which will include their response to the TSE and plans to comply.
I love this use of chatgpt. I've only used it in generating code. I'm not a Japanese speaker at all so if this does a better job than Google translates that very encouraging. I'm going to look through my JP holdings this week and see if I need to do this.
I went ahead and included the email I sent at the bottom. It's likely far from perfect Japanese, but I suspect it sounds okay. I of course filled in the company names with the JP characters to make it more personalized before sending it out.
Frankly, I would trust Google (or Microsoft) Translate over ChatGPT. They are designed specifically for translating and do it very well. They're also great for live translation when traveling. AI might try and be "creative." Fortunately in this use case it seemed to work out fine.
Nippon Yamamura Glass (TYO 5210) released a medium term plan and "measures to realize management that is conscious of capital costs and stock price". Was up 5% after earnings on Friday, then 25% today. The actual plan just sets a minimum 50 JPY dividend and aims for a 30% payout ratio. They also acknowledge they trade well below 1x PB/R and say they will try addressing it. Nothing concrete, but it's still +25% today. Can't complain.
What did you think about Sanko Techno's medium term plan in the end? I found it slightly underwhelming. They reiterate a strong desire to meet the PBR 1 target as soon as possible, but don't promise much apart from continuing slow and steady dividend growth. There's some talk about using their cash for M&A (and hard to judge what the opportunity set is or how accretive this might be). Nothing about buybacks as far as I can see. I am struggling a bit with what to do with some of these names that are dirt cheap but only seem to be engaging in box ticking. I guess we have to hope the pressure on them to get religion on capital allocation keeps ratcheting up.
Indeed. Many are just box ticking for now. Some names It was indeed underwhelming, but I'm just holding most of these. Slowly as norms change, they will get better I think. Some names improve faster than others. Sanko Techno is a decent sized position for me in the basket still.
Was surprised by the depth of the response by Sanko Techno. Looking forward to their medium term plan which will include their response to the TSE and plans to comply.
I love this use of chatgpt. I've only used it in generating code. I'm not a Japanese speaker at all so if this does a better job than Google translates that very encouraging. I'm going to look through my JP holdings this week and see if I need to do this.
Thanks!
I went ahead and included the email I sent at the bottom. It's likely far from perfect Japanese, but I suspect it sounds okay. I of course filled in the company names with the JP characters to make it more personalized before sending it out.
Frankly, I would trust Google (or Microsoft) Translate over ChatGPT. They are designed specifically for translating and do it very well. They're also great for live translation when traveling. AI might try and be "creative." Fortunately in this use case it seemed to work out fine.
Nippon Yamamura Glass's original response to TSE was kind of weak, they came out today with a better response. Limit up today.
IR literally replied to an investor (me) asking if they were going to take the TSE requests seriously. Worth owning these names.
Nippon Yamamura Glass (TYO 5210) released a medium term plan and "measures to realize management that is conscious of capital costs and stock price". Was up 5% after earnings on Friday, then 25% today. The actual plan just sets a minimum 50 JPY dividend and aims for a 30% payout ratio. They also acknowledge they trade well below 1x PB/R and say they will try addressing it. Nothing concrete, but it's still +25% today. Can't complain.
Did Keihin 9312 respond?
They emailed me back telling me they intend to respond around May with release of full year results.
What did you think about Sanko Techno's medium term plan in the end? I found it slightly underwhelming. They reiterate a strong desire to meet the PBR 1 target as soon as possible, but don't promise much apart from continuing slow and steady dividend growth. There's some talk about using their cash for M&A (and hard to judge what the opportunity set is or how accretive this might be). Nothing about buybacks as far as I can see. I am struggling a bit with what to do with some of these names that are dirt cheap but only seem to be engaging in box ticking. I guess we have to hope the pressure on them to get religion on capital allocation keeps ratcheting up.
Indeed. Many are just box ticking for now. Some names It was indeed underwhelming, but I'm just holding most of these. Slowly as norms change, they will get better I think. Some names improve faster than others. Sanko Techno is a decent sized position for me in the basket still.