Expert on Japan Retail and Consumer Markets, JapanConsuming

Michael Causton

Expert on Japan Retail and Consumer Markets

Real Insight on Japanese Consumer Markets

JapanConsuming

JapanConsuming is a specialist research firm producing intelligence on Japanese retail and consumer markets. Founded in 2000, JapanConsuming has become the leading provider of insights on Japanese retailers and consumer trends to retailers, brands, government agencies and investors. As well as a highly regarded monthly report on the market, JapanConsuming produces in-depth reports on retail sectors, seminars on key trends and telephone consulting to investors on trends and retailers.

JapanConsuming was founded by Michael Causton and Roy Larke. 

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

<ul>
<li>Consumer distribution has been transformed since 2020 through accelerated concentration of market share. While some has come about through organic growth, the real drivers have been M&amp;A and MBOs. </li>
<li>The result is a realignment of the retail leader board as companies like PPI, Welcia and Trial buy their way to the top, while others, notably Seven &amp; I, shrink.</li>
<li>Here we identify the retail leaders in driving consolidation going forward, and the intensifying pressure on both smaller retailers and the wholesalers that supply them.</li>
</ul>


Consumer distribution has been transformed since 2020 through accelerated concentration of market share. While some has come about through organic growth, the real drivers have been M&amp;A and MBOs. 
The result is a realignment of the retail leader board as companies like PPI, Welcia and Trial buy their way to the top, while others, notably Seven &amp; I, shrink.
Here we identify the retail leaders in driving consolidation going forward, and the intensifying pressure on both smaller retailers and the wholesalers that supply them.


[Japan M&A] Who Owns Who: The Growing Concentration of Power in Japanese Consumer Markets

Independent research on the U.S. markets, Baptista Research

Baptista Research

Independent research on the U.S. markets

Baptista Research is an independent financial research house focused on the U.S. markets. We provide equity research as well as credit research reports on the top-listed U.S. companies with most of our focus on technology, consumer goods and services, automobiles, industrials, oil and gas, pharma, and healthcare. Our research has served more than 3000 institutional investors including mutual funds, hedge funds, banks, family offices, and various buy-side firms. We operate a research subscription service where institutions, as well as retail investors, can have priority access to all our research. We also have a wide distribution of our research reports across some of the top global financial platforms. Apart from equity research and credit research, we also provide advisory services with respect to mergers & acquisitions (M&A), private equity/ venture capital fundraising, valuation reports, and investment management services for corporates.
Baptista Research is owned and managed by Ishan Majumdar, an ex-Venture Capitalist/ Investment Banker, a Chartered Accountant, and a Masters’ degree holder in Management from HEC Paris. Ishan has nearly a decade of experience in Mergers and Acquisitions, Leveraged Buyouts (LBOs), Venture Capital Investing, Corporate Strategy, and Valuation in front-office roles at the likes of BNP Paribas CIB, Credit Agricole CIB, Groupe Danone, and TIW Private Equity. He has worked on and closed multiple acquisition deals, leveraged buyouts, and start-up investment transactions.

Equity Bottom-Up

<ul><li>Amazon.com reported a strong fourth quarter for 2024, with a revenue of $187.8 billion, reflecting a year-over year growth of 10%.</li><li>Notably, this growth was primarily driven by the company's strategic focus on expanding its product selection, competitive pricing, and enhanced delivery services, which significantly boosted customer engagement and unit sales, especially in the North American and International segments.</li><li>The company's operating income also saw a substantial improvement, reaching $21.2 billion, marking a 61% increase from the previous year, further supported by effective cost management and productivity improvements throughout its distribution network.</li></ul>

Amazon.com reported a strong fourth quarter for 2024, with a revenue of $187.8 billion, reflecting a year-over year growth of 10%.Notably, this growth was primarily driven by the company's strategic focus on expanding its product selection, competitive pricing, and enhanced delivery services, which significantly boosted customer engagement and unit sales, especially in the North American and International segments.The company's operating income also saw a substantial improvement, reaching $21.2 billion, marking a 61% increase from the previous year, further supported by effective cost management and productivity improvements throughout its distribution network.

Amazon.com Inc - Amazon's AI Billions, Store Struggles, & The Risks No One Is Talking About!

Mostly Borrowed Ideas Deep Dives, MBI Deep Dives

MBI Deep Dives

Mostly Borrowed Ideas Deep Dives

MBI is the abbreviation for “Mostly Borrowed Ideas”. Why “Mostly Borrowed Ideas?” As a generalist, I do not have a background in any particular sector. I enjoy navigating across industries, businesses, and countries to learn, understand, and connect the dots. In any case, most ideas and innovations are incremental in nature. Very few of us are smart enough to come up with truly original or groundbreaking ideas. I am Abdullah Al-Rezwan. I was born and brought up in Bangladesh. I went to University of Dhaka for my undergrad and majored in Finance. After working three and half years in Equity Research (Sell-side) covering Financial Sector in Bangladesh, I left Bangladesh to pursue my MBA in the US. I graduated within top 10% of the class from Cornell University's two-year MBA program and worked on the buy-side following my graduation. During my time at Cornell, I won two stock pitch competitions and also became finalists in four other competitions. I thoroughly enjoyed my stint as a generalist in the US large cap team at Madison Investments and covered a wide range of companies from UnitedHealth to Amazon and Boeing before US immigration reality paused my career in investment management. As my work authorization expired, I moved to Canada in January, 2021. Then in early 2022, I was able to return to the US.

<ul><li>Amazon faced ~900 Mn FX headwind in 4Q’24 which was ~700 mn higher than assumed.</li><li>For the third consecutive quarters, AWS grew 19% YoY. Ads grew by +18% YoY, and revenues in other segments increased by mostly High Single Digit (HSD) rate.</li><li>I’ll discuss more about AWS later, but let’s talk more about Amazon ex-AWS first.</li></ul>

Amazon faced ~900 Mn FX headwind in 4Q’24 which was ~700 mn higher than assumed.For the third consecutive quarters, AWS grew 19% YoY. Ads grew by +18% YoY, and revenues in other segments increased by mostly High Single Digit (HSD) rate.I’ll discuss more about AWS later, but let’s talk more about Amazon ex-AWS first.

Head of Research, IPOs & Placements, Aequitas Research

Sumeet Singh

Head of Research, IPOs & Placements

IPOs and Placements coverage across Asia Pacific

Aequitas Research

We cover all listing across the Asia Pacific along with follow-up placements. As of Dec 2020, our team had covered 539 IPOs with a hit rate of 73.5% and 685 placements with a hit rate of 66.8%.

We combine fundamental bottom-up views with our proprietary quantitative framework to provide a holistic coverage across new listings and placements. Our coverage includes pre-IPO notes before the deal is launched, follow-up analysis once the deal is live and post-listing trading analysis as well.

Equity Capital Markets

<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/avepoint-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:37131:1" rel="noopener">AvePoint (AVPT US)</a> , a global provider of data security, governance, and resilience, aims to raise around US$300m in its Singapore secondary listing.</li>
<li>As of FY24, AP had over 25,000 customers who rely on its Confidence Platform to prepare, secure, and optimize their critical data across environments.</li>
<li>In this note, we look at its past performance and other deal dynamics that might impact the listing.</li>
</ul>



AvePoint (AVPT US) , a global provider of data security, governance, and resilience, aims to raise around US$300m in its Singapore secondary listing.
As of FY24, AP had over 25,000 customers who rely on its Confidence Platform to prepare, secure, and optimize their critical data across environments.
In this note, we look at its past performance and other deal dynamics that might impact the listing.


AvePoint SGX Secondary Listing - Strong Growth and Large Client Base but Unclear Metrics

Equity Long-Short, Semiconductors, Fabricated Knowledge

Douglas O'Laughlin

Equity Long-Short, Semiconductors

Fabricated Knowledge

Learn more about the world's most important manufactured product. Meaningful insight, timely analysis, and an occasional investment idea.

<ul>
<li>"It is so much cheaper to do simulations than real experiments, so much more flexible in testing...we can even do things which cannot be done in any lab… So it’s inevitable this trend will continue for some time." - Richard Hamming, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Art-Doing-Science-Engineering-Learning/dp/1732265178" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Art of Doing Science and Engineering</a>.</li>
<li>Richard Hamming said this to the President of Bell Labs in the 1950s. And I think this insight rings more accurate than ever. Simulations of reality are much more flexible and cheaper than observing and interacting with reality.</li>
<li>I will assert that LLMs and “AI” are effectively the logical conclusion of this trend. A large language model is trained on the largest amount of data possible, often the entire crawlable Internet<a href="https://kili-technology.com/large-language-models-llms/9-open-sourced-datasets-for-training-large-language-models" target="_blank" rel="noopener">, all the books ever written, and so much more</a>.</li>
</ul>


"It is so much cheaper to do simulations than real experiments, so much more flexible in testing...we can even do things which cannot be done in any lab… So it’s inevitable this trend will continue for some time." - Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering.
Richard Hamming said this to the President of Bell Labs in the 1950s. And I think this insight rings more accurate than ever. Simulations of reality are much more flexible and cheaper than observing and interacting with reality.
I will assert that LLMs and “AI” are effectively the logical conclusion of this trend. A large language model is trained on the largest amount of data possible, often the entire crawlable Internet, all the books ever written, and so much more.


United States

Amazon.com, Inc. is an online retailer that offers a wide range of products. The Company's products include books, music, videotapes, computers, electronics, home and garden, and numerous other products.  Amazon offers personalized shopping services, Web-based credit card payment, and direct shipping to customers.

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Amazon.com Inc (AMZN US)

[Japan M&A] Who Owns Who: The Growing Concentration of Power in Japanese Consumer Markets

Consumer distribution has shifted post-2020, with market concentration driven by M&A and MBOs. We identify the leaders of this consolidation,...

Michael Causton

Amazon.com Inc - Amazon's AI Billions, Store Struggles, & The Risks No One Is Talking About!

Amazon.com reported a strong fourth quarter for 2024, with a revenue of $187.8 billion, reflecting a year-over year growth of 10%. Notably, this...

Baptista Research

Amazon 4Q'24 Update

Amazon faced ~900 Mn FX headwind in 4Q’24 which was ~700 mn higher than assumed.For the third consecutive quarters, AWS grew 19% YoY.

MBI Deep Dives

AvePoint SGX Secondary Listing - Strong Growth and Large Client Base but Unclear Metrics

AvePoint (AVPT US) , a global provider of data security, governance, and resilience, aims to raise around US$300m in its Singapore secondary listing.

Sumeet Singh

Jensen's World: Compressing Reality

Nvidia is pursuing a strategy of broadening its software distribution on one of the largest installed bases in the world.

Fabricated Knowledge

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52-week Range

Market Cap (USDm)

P/E

Dividend (Yield)

[Japan M&A] Who Owns Who: The Growing Concentration of Power in Japanese Consumer Markets

​Consumer distribution has shifted post-2020, with market concentration driven by M&A and MBOs. We identify the leaders of this consolidation,...

Michael Causton

Amazon.com Inc - Amazon's AI Billions, Store Struggles, & The Risks No One Is Talking About!

Amazon.com reported a strong fourth quarter for 2024, with a revenue of $187.8 billion, reflecting a year-over year growth of 10%. Notably, this...

Baptista Research

Amazon 4Q'24 Update

Amazon faced ~900 Mn FX headwind in 4Q’24 which was ~700 mn higher than assumed.For the third consecutive quarters, AWS grew 19% YoY.

MBI Deep Dives

AvePoint SGX Secondary Listing - Strong Growth and Large Client Base but Unclear Metrics

AvePoint (AVPT US) , a global provider of data security, governance, and resilience, aims to raise around US$300m in its Singapore secondary listing.

Sumeet Singh

Jensen's World: Compressing Reality

Nvidia is pursuing a strategy of broadening its software distribution on one of the largest installed bases in the world.

Fabricated Knowledge

Consumer distribution has shifted post-2020, with market concentration driven by M&A and MBOs. We identify the leaders of this consolidation,...