In this briefing:
- Nitori: Expanding Through Diversification into New Categories
- How Long Does It Take To Change One’s Behavior? Why Does This Matter in the Post COVID-19 World?
- Activist Target Katakura (3001 JP) Announces BIG Buyback
- Governments and Policies Adapting to Critical Known Unknown
- Costs of and Response to COVID-19
1. Nitori: Expanding Through Diversification into New Categories
Nitori may have achieved 33 years of consecutive growth but the interiors retailer is worried about saturation in the home market and its attempts to make a big push overseas have stalled. To keep the engine running, Nitori has begun diversifying into consumer electronics, cosmetics and apparel.
2. How Long Does It Take To Change One’s Behavior? Why Does This Matter in the Post COVID-19 World?
The main subject of this report is as follows: “How Long Does It Take To Change One’s Behavior? Why Does This Matter in the Post COVID-19 World?” Certainly, COVID-19 will change the way people behave. The longer that COVID-19 lasts and the longer that millions of people are under lockdown, their behaviors will change further, potentially making them into a habit and this would have a tremendous impact on the global economy.
We are specifically interested in this topic because as millions of people around the world undergo “lockdown” for a period of one to three months, this could have an enormous behavior change once this lockdown period ends.
The change in behavior patterns (especially related to consumer spending) in the post COVID-19 world would also have a big impact on whether the global economy/stock market can turn around quickly (such as after the Great Financial Recession in 2008/2009) or whether the turnaround lasts longer (such as after the Internet tech/crash lasting for nearly 3 years from 2000 to 2002).
3. Activist Target Katakura (3001 JP) Announces BIG Buyback
Friday 27 March, after the close, activist-targeted name Katakura Industries (3001 JP)announced, with its yuho and annual meeting, a buyback of up to 2.5mm shares (7.1% of shares out) for up to JPY 2 billion.
The buyback will be conducted between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021.
There is a minor detail unspecified in the announcement (which is often specified) and the combination of the shareholder structure and trading patterns tells you what you need to know.
Details below.
4. Governments and Policies Adapting to Critical Known Unknown
We argued in Lack of US market & macro volatility both reassuring and troubling that “the market’s willingness to look through domestic political and geopolitical events suggests that only a significant exogenous or endogenous shock currently beyond markets’ radar screens (an “unknown unknown”) is likely to really move the needle”.
That unknown unknown, a “black swan” event, has turned out to be a global viral pandemic on a scale not seen since the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-1919.
The coronavirus outbreak is now three months old but governments, central banks, corporates and households still face a critical known unknown, in our view, namely the total number people who had the coronavirus, acquired immunity and are no longer contagious and who currently carry the coronavirus and are thus potentially infectious.
This includes people who have not been clinically tested – more than 99.9% of the world’s population. We estimate that only 3.3 million people (4 out of every 10,000) have been tested for coronavirus, although testing data are patchy and often released with a lag. The main reason so few people have been tested is the still limited capacity to rapidly and reliably test a very large number of people.
In econometric terms that is a very small sample from which to extrapolate country-wide trends. One implication is that the actual mortality rate may be far smaller than reported.
The high number of tests-per-capita conducted in countries such as South Korea has been posited as an explanation for their relatively low number of coronavirus-related deaths. However, other factors have likely been at play, including the timing of clinical tests, demographics, national health systems’ capacity to treat infected patients and the timing and efficacy of self-isolation and self-distancing policies, including country “lockdowns”.
For now what policy-makers know they don’t know will likely continue to influence country-specific containment plans, as well as domestic measures to support economic growth while ensuring the functioning of financial markets.
5. Costs of and Response to COVID-19
As the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic shifts from Europe to the US and the number of deaths and infection cases reach new highs, the costs of the crisis are beginning to be revealed. In Singapore economic activity contracted in 1Q20 at a faster pace than at the worst point during the GFC while Chinese industrial profits were down 38% in the first two months of the year. Despite this we are cautiously optimistic that Asian economic activity led by China will pick-up in the second half of the year. We are much more worried about advanced economies where policy mis-management threatens to tip the world economy into recession.
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