Capitalising on change: Japan’s growth champions

Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking - Baillie Gifford

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