Upheaval can create opportunity. Baillie Gifford’s Japan Team seeks out companies that will derive the greatest long-term benefit from transformational forces impacting business and broader society. In this podcast, investment manager Matthew Brett identifies four ‘structural growth’ drivers and the portfolio companies taking advantage of them.
Background:
Matthew Brett is the investment manager of The Baillie Gifford Japan Trust and our Japanese Fund, as well as co-manager of the Japanese Income Growth Fund. In this episode of Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking he discusses four forces creating long-term growth opportunities:
- Japan’s late embrace of digitalisation
- the rising spending power of its Asian neighbours
- the accelerated adoption of industrial automation
- the unmet health needs of an ageing population
Brett also names some of the Japanese companies driving these changes or otherwise gaining advantage, including ecommerce conglomerate Rakuten, skincare beauty firm Shiseido, machine vision specialist Keyence and Alzheimer’s drug developer Eisai.
Resources:
Japan: the next opportunity
Kohei Saito: Slow Down – How Degrowth Communism Can Save The Earth
Companies mentioned include:
Calbee
DMG Mori
Eisai
Keyence
KOSÉ
PeptiDream
Rakuten
Shiseido
SoftBank
Timecodes:
00:00 Introduction
1:45 From psychology to investment
2:25 Changing Japan
3:15 Japan’s distinguishing market characteristics
4:15 Visiting companies and other equities research
6:00 Performance versus the TOPIX
8:00 Defining digitalisation
8:30 Leaving paper behind
10:15 Rakuten’s online enterprise
10:50 The advantage of QR barcode payments
11:30 Rakuten’s loyalty points scheme
12:25 Accelerating automation and industrial robots
13:30 DMG Mori’s precision machines
14:40 Keyence and robotic vision
16:40 China’s chance of catch-up
17:40 Rising wealth of Japan’s Asian neighbours
19:00 Shiseido’s skincare advantage
20:10 Unmet healthcare needs of an ageing population
21:30 Testing further uses for Eisai’s Alzheimer’s drug
23:30 PeptiDream’s synthetic peptides
24:00 Using AI to put peptides to use
25:10 Calbee’s continued innovation
26:00 Book choice
28:50 Conclusion
