Mamiya OP (TYO 7991) once again proves how terrible they are at forecasting their own profits. Came out today with a big revision upwards. Also see their Q2 earnings where they were AHEAD of full year forecast already, and only now just raised forecasts.

Both Gamecard (TYO 6249) and Mamiya-OP (TYO 7991) sold off on earnings. I added a bit of gamecard today. Both are small positions. Fujishoji is the biggest pachinko adjacent position I own.

Tokyo Automatic Machinery (TYO 6360) Ups EPS forecast from ¥499 to ¥820, TRIPLES dividend from ¥80 to ¥240 (8% yield from 2.6%), releases plan to comply with TSE requests on capital costs (implement 30%+ payout ratio). Says company is not being adequately valued by the market.

If you bought a year ago on original post it was exactly flat. You collected a dividend (that's more than your cost of borrowing yen) and it will rip on monday most likely.

TSE reforms ARE working. Just slowly. Companies that never cared much about shareholders are returning cash. Some companies are doing much better on this front than others, but it's working. As everyone pays out more cash, it's going to be harder to justify not doing it.

New writeup on the 'Stack. Free. Kaneshita Construction (TYO 1897): •Price: ¥2,690 •BV: ¥8,526 per share (0.3x p/b) •MCAP: ¥5.8 billion ($38.3 million USD) •NCAV: ¥9 billion •InvSecurities: ¥7.5 billion •NCAV+Inv Securities: ¥16.5 billion (¥7,654 per share) •Divi: 1.8%

It's cheap and could stay cheap for a lot longer. The bet here is that management eventually just takes it private. Originally found the name through Value Trapped 🇸🇬 x.com/TheLongHappy/s…

Some great context from Travis regarding past activists. The only real exit here is they find religion on shareholder returns or an MBO. Religion unlikely. Kyoto based, so even more conservative than Tokyo companies. x.com/travislundyasi…

There are so many stocks in Japan that no one is talking about (or writing up). $619m usd mcap (¥94 billion) Japan Wool Textile (TYO 3201) for example Looks like a steady eddy with growing dividend. They've never reported a net loss (data as far back as 1985). P/E: 11 P/B: 0.8

I find a lot of random ideas by looking at the major shareholders of a company I own or interested in and seeing what else they own. Haven't done any work on this name, but there are so many stocks like this in Japan. You won't get rich but this will beat the cost of borrowing

The Japanese small-caps are falling like flies. Today: Furukawa Co, $5915.JT, 70bn market cap, trades at 0.6x P/B, large excess assets, typical low returns etc etc. Note the register is pretty open... Jan 5: activist (Murakami) shows up on register at just 5%. Feb10: announced

Some weird transactions in nanocap Japan. Sumitomo Chemical, a $3.5 billion giant, sells a small division to a nanocap net net Nippon Pigment (TYO 4119) for $32m. Nippon Pigment records $44m in net income due to neg goodwill from acquisition. P/E is now 0.68 (¥4,332 EPS)

A bit timely with this! Kaneshita Construction announced a share buyback today after market close for 3% of outstanding shares. First repurchase since 2020. 65,000 shares @ ¥2,870 for a cost of ~¥187 million

Yes, it's small potatoes. My base case is for this company to go nowhere for a while and an eventual MBO.

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.

I bought 200 more shares today. It went limit up 2 days in a row, but still looks cheap, especially since they explained that payout ratio will be ~30% going forward. They also investing in more growth.

Japan small cap is the single most exciting opportunity set I've seen in 20 years following the public markets. That's a +120% premium btw...

Wish I owned more of this. They upped their FY forecast again. Not really my kind of investment but I bought 1k shares for fun back in October. Plenty of cheap growth stocks in Japan too.

Did a little bit of reading on this. Here's the story: Sumitomo recapitalized the biz with ¥5,850 million then sold it to Nippon Pigment for a mere ¥1 billion. Great deal. The division has been losing money though. Nippon Pigment did not forecast an operating loss though.

I've seen a couple wild M&As in nanocap JP land that make way less sense than this.... One company bought a wildly profitable company for less than free and it completely turned their consolidated financials around + a big one time gain. This isn't as good as division lost money