'Quantamental' Japan Specialist, LightStream Research

Campbell Gunn

'Quantamental' Japan Specialist

Long-Short Analysis on Japan, Asia and the World

LightStream Research

LightStream conducts quantitatively rigorous and data-driven analysis with a focus on Japan and Asia.

We consistently cover the Tech, Consumer and Industrial sectors, and provide ECM and Events coverage more broadly.

We supplement traditional qualitative insights from company relationships with a robust quantitative foundation that examines as much historical data as is available.
We further refine the accuracy of our insights and calls through the use of alternative data to flesh out current trends, and through a valuation framework that emphasises non-superficial peer group selection and a proper attempt to understand the metrics and changes that have driven security valuations in the past.

Quantitative Analysis

<div>
• RELATIVE PRICE SCORE •
<figure class="editor-figure mceNonEditable"><img src="https://static-prod.smartkarma.com/images/media/000/160/735/original/2020-09-23_11-03-49.png?1600826665" class="editor-image img-responsive" data-smartkarma-image-id="160735"></figure><div class="content-caption">Source for all charts &amp; tables: Japan Analytics</div>
<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/6h3m1giwbtzcupg/2020-09-23_11-03-49.png?dl=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PEAK OUTLIER</a> - Since the onset of  COVID-19 in March, the degree of polarisation in the Japanese equity market as measured by our Relative Price Score [definition below] has increased significantly. Although only 3.1% and 5.1% of listed companies are Overbought and Oversold, respectively, their market weight represented is 10.8% and 6.2%. Such extreme outlier weightings have not occurred since the technology 'bubble' of 2000, and, since then, only during the 2008/9 financial crisis. Investors have increasingly held and bid up perceived long-term domestic non-manufacturing 'winners' without much regard for valuation while discarding Japan's manufacturers, and transportation, utility and energy companies as well as insurers and banks.  
<figure class="editor-figure mceNonEditable"><img src="https://static-prod.smartkarma.com/images/media/000/160/736/original/2020-09-23_11-11-07.png?1600827080" class="editor-image img-responsive" data-smartkarma-image-id="160736"></figure>
</div>SECTOR TIMELINE - The twenty-eight-year history of Sector Relative Price Scores illustrates the ebbs and flows of investment themes in the market, from the 2000 Technology 'bubble' to the REIT and Real Estate peak of 2013/14, the Healthcare and FB&amp;T market of 2016/17. On the downside, there is greater Oversold 'persistence' in the Energy, Banks, Multi-Industry ( <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/japan-post-holdings-co-ltd" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:359:1" rel="noopener">Japan Post (6178 JP))</a>  and Utilities Sectors. Currently, nine Sectors are Overbought, and four are Oversold - thirty-year and twenty-year highs, respectively.  <figure class="editor-figure mceNonEditable"><img src="https://static-prod.smartkarma.com/images/media/000/160/741/original/2020-09-23_11-39-24.png?1600828791" class="editor-image img-responsive" data-smartkarma-image-id="160741"></figure>In the DETAIL section below, we provide an update on  Sector, Peer Group and individual company Relative Price Score trends and outliers and make some stock-specific comments.<div class="content-highlight">RELATIVE PRICE SCORE OUTLIERS - The Relative Price Score (RPS) is a measure of price performance relative to TOPIX calculated by comparing the current deviation with the mean absolute deviation of monthly and daily relative share prices over the last 28 years and 24 months, respectively. As all companies on a comparable scale, 'Overbought' and 'Oversold' outliers and short-term changes in scoring can offer some trading opportunities. The data for all 3,883 currently-listed Companies is cap-weight-aggregated into Relative Price Scores for our 328 Peer Groups and 30 Sectors. The Overbought and Oversold outlier 'thresholds are set' at +4 &amp; -2 for Companies, +3 &amp; -1.5 for Peer Groups and +2 and -1 for Sectors, respectively. These thresholds equate with the top and bottom percentiles of over 3.2 million observations.</div>


• RELATIVE PRICE SCORE •
Source for all charts &amp; tables: Japan Analytics
PEAK OUTLIER - Since the onset of  COVID-19 in March, the degree of polarisation in the Japanese equity market as measured by our Relative Price Score [definition below] has increased significantly. Although only 3.1% and 5.1% of listed companies are Overbought and Oversold, respectively, their market weight represented is 10.8% and 6.2%. Such extreme outlier weightings have not occurred since the technology 'bubble' of 2000, and, since then, only during the 2008/9 financial crisis. Investors have increasingly held and bid up perceived long-term domestic non-manufacturing 'winners' without much regard for valuation while discarding Japan's manufacturers, and transportation, utility and energy companies as well as insurers and banks.  

SECTOR TIMELINE - The twenty-eight-year history of Sector Relative Price Scores illustrates the ebbs and flows of investment themes in the market, from the 2000 Technology 'bubble' to the REIT and Real Estate peak of 2013/14, the Healthcare and FB&amp;T market of 2016/17. On the downside, there is greater Oversold 'persistence' in the Energy, Banks, Multi-Industry ( Japan Post (6178 JP))  and Utilities Sectors. Currently, nine Sectors are Overbought, and four are Oversold - thirty-year and twenty-year highs, respectively.  In the DETAIL section below, we provide an update on  Sector, Peer Group and individual company Relative Price Score trends and outliers and make some stock-specific comments.RELATIVE PRICE SCORE OUTLIERS - The Relative Price Score (RPS) is a measure of price performance relative to TOPIX calculated by comparing the current deviation with the mean absolute deviation of monthly and daily relative share prices over the last 28 years and 24 months, respectively. As all companies on a comparable scale, 'Overbought' and 'Oversold' outliers and short-term changes in scoring can offer some trading opportunities. The data for all 3,883 currently-listed Companies is cap-weight-aggregated into Relative Price Scores for our 328 Peer Groups and 30 Sectors. The Overbought and Oversold outlier 'thresholds are set' at +4 &amp; -2 for Companies, +3 &amp; -1.5 for Peer Groups and +2 and -1 for Sectors, respectively. These thresholds equate with the top and bottom percentiles of over 3.2 million observations.

🇯🇵 JAPAN • September Relative Price Scores - Profiting from Outlier Mean Reversion

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. 

Equity Bottom-Up

Genky DrugStores Co Ltd / Equity Bottom-Up

Although counted as a drugstore, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/genky-drugstores-co-ltd" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:29203:1" rel="noopener">Genky DrugStores Co Ltd (9267 JP)</a> is one of Japan’s most food-focused discount retailers. The chain has grown rapidly in recent years, with sales up 19% in FY2019 to June alone. It now plans to double that volume over the next three years.Of these new stores, some will be pure supermarkets (of a discount variety) as the company moves beyond drugstores. Last month, Genky opened its first supermarket or "delicious drugstore" as it calls it.As indicated in other insights here, the Japanese discount sector is on a roll and likely to continue to do so for the next decade thanks to vast unsatisfied demand from consumer households under pressure.Genky looks like being one of the beneficiaries.

Although counted as a drugstore, Genky DrugStores Co Ltd (9267 JP) is one of Japan’s most food-focused discount retailers. The chain has grown rapidly in recent years, with sales up 19% in FY2019 to June alone. It now plans to double that volume over the next three years.Of these new stores, some will be pure supermarkets (of a discount variety) as the company moves beyond drugstores. Last month, Genky opened its first supermarket or "delicious drugstore" as it calls it.As indicated in other insights here, the Japanese discount sector is on a roll and likely to continue to do so for the next decade thanks to vast unsatisfied demand from consumer households under pressure.Genky looks like being one of the beneficiaries.

It hasn’t been easy selling clothing in the last six months or even in the months before, unless, that is, you are <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/workman-co-ltd" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:8467:1" rel="noopener">Workman Co Ltd (7564 JP)</a>.
The workwear to sports retailer delivered six straight months of sales growth peaking at 44% year-on-year thanks to low price cost performance, relentless expansion of private brands and investment in new franchisees.
Workman's share price is up more than 3x since we first recommended the retailer in late 2018 but we have been fans of the company for more than a decade for its disciplined focus on low-cost operations, merchandise quality and efforts to understand and produce for its core customer target.
It also helps that Workman is a franchise operation and one that, like Benetton and McDonald's and other successful franchises over time, buys the land its franchisees operate stores on. The franchise deal keeps costs way lower than competitors and also means personnel costs are for the most part variable while its competitors face fixed staff costs – a huge advantage especially now.
These are core qualities for a retailer and in all aspects, Workman continues to improve. Sales have risen as much as 44% a month since March and as explained below, there are very strong reasons to expect both sales and profit margins to grow much, much further. The share price may have dipped in recent days but the fundamentals remain strong: more growth is to come.

It hasn’t been easy selling clothing in the last six months or even in the months before, unless, that is, you are Workman Co Ltd (7564 JP).
The workwear to sports retailer delivered six straight months of sales growth peaking at 44% year-on-year thanks to low price cost performance, relentless expansion of private brands and investment in new franchisees.
Workman's share price is up more than 3x since we first recommended the retailer in late 2018 but we have been fans of the company for more than a decade for its disciplined focus on low-cost operations, merchandise quality and efforts to understand and produce for its core customer target.
It also helps that Workman is a franchise operation and one that, like Benetton and McDonald's and other successful franchises over time, buys the land its franchisees operate stores on. The franchise deal keeps costs way lower than competitors and also means personnel costs are for the most part variable while its competitors face fixed staff costs – a huge advantage especially now.
These are core qualities for a retailer and in all aspects, Workman continues to improve. Sales have risen as much as 44% a month since March and as explained below, there are very strong reasons to expect both sales and profit margins to grow much, much further. The share price may have dipped in recent days but the fundamentals remain strong: more growth is to come.

Japan's Retail Star: Workman Thrives in Crisis

Event-Driven

Itochu's plans for Familymart are about a lot more than control – it has had effective control for years anyway.
There is a much bigger story: the fact that food is the one last hold out of traditional distribution practices with multiple layers of importers, wholesalers and a fragmented retail sector, resulting in gross inefficiencies. 
Japan's biggest trading companies, particularly <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/itochu-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:18448:1" rel="noopener">Itochu Corp (8001 JP)</a> and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/mitsubishi-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:20668:1" rel="noopener">Mitsubishi Corp (8058 JP),</a> have been major beneficiaries of this system, capturing margins at all stages of the channel, from raw material imports to retail. 
Pressure on the food sector to modernise has been building for a decade and this is now happening in the form of retailers building to national scale to finally take on this supply-side dominance and also learning to source direct, cutting out wholesalers. The trading companies know this and are themselves beginning to build what are in effect vertically integrated food distribution businesses, at the same time as pivoting themselves as the main suppliers to Japan's biggest food-based retailers.
Itochu and Mitsubishi are spearheading this change. This rivalry in the food sector between the two venerable trading firms is as important as the rivalry between their proxies in convenience store retailing, Familymart and Lawson.
Absorbing Familymart is the basis for a much bigger consolidation of Itochu's interests which include stakes in numerous food retailers as well as role as the biggest food wholesaler when all its subsidiaries are taking into account.
Sadly, current Familymart shareholders won't benefit from this consolidation nor the likely spike in operating margins as some of the fat in food distribution is finally cut.
In Japan, where food prices have been kept so high for so long by entrenched interests (Japanese love food but the 24% of consumption budgets spent on food (much, much higher than most  equivalent markets) is much more about high prices than being a gourmet nation), the potential to cut costs is staggeringly large.
Even within CVS retailing, Itochu will likely benefit from the continued growth of the big three retailers – despite format saturation.
For the sector as a whole, 2019 saw the highest average daily sales per store so far of ¥590,794, a 12.1% increase on 2010. In the same decade, total store numbers increased by 33.4%, but total sales increased by 50.2%.
CVS have not just expanded in number, but their position and ability to exploit the market have improved dramatically too. Based on METI figures, CVS market share of retailing has expanded from 6% to 8.4% in the same period.
In other words, saturation is important but not that important because CVS are finding new ways to expand both their share of retailing and influence.

Itochu's plans for Familymart are about a lot more than control – it has had effective control for years anyway.
There is a much bigger story: the fact that food is the one last hold out of traditional distribution practices with multiple layers of importers, wholesalers and a fragmented retail sector, resulting in gross inefficiencies. 
Japan's biggest trading companies, particularly Itochu Corp (8001 JP) and Mitsubishi Corp (8058 JP), have been major beneficiaries of this system, capturing margins at all stages of the channel, from raw material imports to retail. 
Pressure on the food sector to modernise has been building for a decade and this is now happening in the form of retailers building to national scale to finally take on this supply-side dominance and also learning to source direct, cutting out wholesalers. The trading companies know this and are themselves beginning to build what are in effect vertically integrated food distribution businesses, at the same time as pivoting themselves as the main suppliers to Japan's biggest food-based retailers.
Itochu and Mitsubishi are spearheading this change. This rivalry in the food sector between the two venerable trading firms is as important as the rivalry between their proxies in convenience store retailing, Familymart and Lawson.
Absorbing Familymart is the basis for a much bigger consolidation of Itochu's interests which include stakes in numerous food retailers as well as role as the biggest food wholesaler when all its subsidiaries are taking into account.
Sadly, current Familymart shareholders won't benefit from this consolidation nor the likely spike in operating margins as some of the fat in food distribution is finally cut.
In Japan, where food prices have been kept so high for so long by entrenched interests (Japanese love food but the 24% of consumption budgets spent on food (much, much higher than most  equivalent markets) is much more about high prices than being a gourmet nation), the potential to cut costs is staggeringly large.
Even within CVS retailing, Itochu will likely benefit from the continued growth of the big three retailers – despite format saturation.
For the sector as a whole, 2019 saw the highest average daily sales per store so far of ¥590,794, a 12.1% increase on 2010. In the same decade, total store numbers increased by 33.4%, but total sales increased by 50.2%.
CVS have not just expanded in number, but their position and ability to exploit the market have improved dramatically too. Based on METI figures, CVS market share of retailing has expanded from 6% to 8.4% in the same period.
In other words, saturation is important but not that important because CVS are finding new ways to expand both their share of retailing and influence.

Keeping It in the Family: Why Familymart Is Worth so Much More to Itochu

Technical Analyst, Vermilion Research

Joe Jasper

Technical Analyst

Technical and Quantitative Research

Vermilion Research

Vermilion’s objective is to deliver timely, actionable, and unique technical research to professional investors through the application of our various technical indicators.

Our research strategists seek to highlight securities which we believe are at major inflection points, based on our various technical and quantitative indicators, and offer asymmetric risk/return profiles. Our unique research methodology, centered on relative strength, enables our strategists to deliver superior investment recommendations.

Our process begins by organizing the universe of actively traded stocks into discrete sectors, then into industry groups. We then apply our technical and quantitative tools to identify developing price trends. Once attractive trends are identified within a selected sector or group, we screen for individual stocks which we believe offer the best risk/reward profile. We provide a historical perspective that often reveals, through our long-term charts, how price patterns often repeat themselves over time.

Technical Analysis

Kobe Bussan is a stock we have recommended owning since May 2019, and we believe it is currently offering another attractive entry point for both short-term traders and long-term investors. The stock remains in multi-year price and RS uptrends (relative to both MSCI ACWI and TOPIX) and exhibits a bullish short-term reversal at long-term uptrend support. Buy.

Kobe Bussan is a stock we have recommended owning since May 2019, and we believe it is currently offering another attractive entry point for both short-term traders and long-term investors. The stock remains in multi-year price and RS uptrends (relative to both MSCI ACWI and TOPIX) and exhibits a bullish short-term reversal at long-term uptrend support. Buy.

Japan

KOBE BUSSAN CO., LTD. is a supermarket franchise store operator which mainly deals in foods stuffs.  The Company also has direct-run stores.

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Kobe Bussan (3038 JP)

🇯🇵 JAPAN • September Relative Price Scores - Profiting from Outlier Mean Reversion

• RELATIVE PRICE SCORE • RELATIVE PRICE SCORE OUTLIERS - The Relative Price Score (RPS) is a measure of price performance relative to TOPIX...

Campbell Gunn

Genky: Another Japanese Discount Winner

Although counted as a drugstore, Genky is one of Japan’s most food-focused, discount retailers. The chain ihas grown rapidly in recent years, with...

Michael Causton

Japan's Retail Star: Workman Thrives in Crisis

It hasn’t been easy selling clothing in the last six months or even in the months before, unless, that is, you are Workman. The workwear to sports...

Michael Causton

Keeping It in the Family: Why Familymart Is Worth so Much More to Itochu

Itochu's plans for Familymart are about a lot more than control – it has had effective control for years anyway. There is a much bigger story: the...

Michael Causton

Kobe Bussan (3038-TKS): Buy

Kobe Bussan is a stock we have recommended owning since May 2019, and we believe it is currently offering another attractive entry point for both...

Vermilion Research

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