Pan-Asia Catalysts/Events, Quiddity Advisors

Travis Lundy

HK Type 4 license through Ballingal Investment Advisors Ltd. ("BIA" or "BIAL")

BACKGROUND
I have 20+yrs experience in Asia doing alternative strategies (i.e. non-delta1 non long-only) in fixed income, equity derivatives, and activist/catalyst/event-driven and long-short equity strategies with most of that time spent managing money. 

4 years in fixed income macro, 8 years running internal hedge fund and 4yrs investment banking at Citi in Japan, 3 years running an Asia multi-strat portfolio at a hedge fund, 4+yrs as an independent special situations analyst.

Pan-Asia Catalysts/Events

NTT's Big Beautiful Buyback Is Not The Only Reason to Own

The Delayed TOPIX FFW Rebalance: $32bn To Trade

Toshiba Finally Gets Into TOPIX but Beware the Baku  (It's Complicated)

Gravity Works As WeWork Doesn't; Now Plan B

Quiddity Advisors

Event-Driven

NTT (Nippon Telegraph & Telephone) / Event-Driven

NTT (Nippon Telegraph & Telephone) (9432 JP)

In <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/insights/ntt-go-big-or-go-home" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="insights:44964" rel="noopener">NTT - Go Big Or Go Home</a> five weeks ago, I suggested that investors really needed to look at the internal arithmetic of the <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/nippon-telegraph-telephone-corporation" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:623:1" rel="noopener">NTT (Nippon Telegraph &amp; Telephone) (9432 JP)</a> buyout of subsidiary <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/ntt-docomo-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:1089:1" rel="noopener">NTT Docomo Inc (9437 JP)</a>, which was subsequently completed, and will see the squeezeout take place early. The occasion for that insight was the announcement of a large buyback program by NTT. There had been a fear that the buy-in of Docomo was a "sign" that NTT was being pressured to fund lower Docomo pricing at the expense of NTT shareholder returns. NTT, however, made VERY clear that the company would look to continue its shareholder return policy AND pay down the ¥4+ trillion debt to be incurred buying out the Docomo minorities. The first buyback report came at the beginning of December and the data is interesting. Since I wrote that NTT shares are up 13.4% while <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/kddi-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:639:1" rel="noopener">KDDI Corp (9433 JP)</a> is down slightly and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/softbank-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:27445:1" rel="noopener">Softbank Corp (9434 JP)</a> is up about 8% (though 6% of that has happened in the last few days as news of a "slow-burn" minority buy-in pushes <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/softbank-group-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:315:1" rel="noopener">Softbank Group (9984 JP)</a> shares.It is worth re-iterating the dynamics here and thinking about the timing of buyback pressure, the timing of comp buyback pressure, and when investors will see newsflow on fundamentals.

In NTT - Go Big Or Go Home five weeks ago, I suggested that investors really needed to look at the internal arithmetic of the NTT (Nippon Telegraph &amp; Telephone) (9432 JP) buyout of subsidiary NTT Docomo Inc (9437 JP), which was subsequently completed, and will see the squeezeout take place early. The occasion for that insight was the announcement of a large buyback program by NTT. There had been a fear that the buy-in of Docomo was a "sign" that NTT was being pressured to fund lower Docomo pricing at the expense of NTT shareholder returns. NTT, however, made VERY clear that the company would look to continue its shareholder return policy AND pay down the ¥4+ trillion debt to be incurred buying out the Docomo minorities. The first buyback report came at the beginning of December and the data is interesting. Since I wrote that NTT shares are up 13.4% while KDDI Corp (9433 JP) is down slightly and Softbank Corp (9434 JP) is up about 8% (though 6% of that has happened in the last few days as news of a "slow-burn" minority buy-in pushes Softbank Group (9984 JP) shares.It is worth re-iterating the dynamics here and thinking about the timing of buyback pressure, the timing of comp buyback pressure, and when investors will see newsflow on fundamentals.

NTT (Nippon Telegraph & Telephone)

NTT - Still Going Big, Not Going Home