The Asia Trade Book for April 2025 includes a summary of our recommendations, as well as our high-conviction ideas. The report also features relative-value charts and lists of the bonds across Asia HY and crossover credits. Please reach out to our analysts to discuss any of these ideas, or other trade recommendations from our Asia coverage.
Swings observed in the last 10 days has been second to none. The Great Financial Crisis and Covid didn’t get us in a worst spot. Make no mistake: The markets are panicking today even more than when the world came to a COVID standstill, with the individual contributors to the vast majority of the world’s GDP locked down. How reasonable is that? Very little, in our view. The polarization of the political landscape has created a global brain freeze. Few analyses calmly assess the U.S. administrati...
No doubt investors are busy fighting fires. But additional to our thoughts from last week we thought it might be helpful to offer 3 further action points for investors in EM & Japanese Telcos that we would be taking in response to market turmoil. Very brief thoughts below.
Perhaps the biggest surprise from last night’s White House announcement was the scale of tariffs imposed on Asian exporters (and South Africa). Being an ally of America provided no benefit with Thailand (36%) facing higher tariffs than China (34%). By contrast, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa are less negatively impacted, and may even benefit overall from dollar weakness. We run through likely implications for our coverage in Global EM and Japan. Spoiler alert: we see Rakuten as most negati...
In our latest Asia Monthly, we discuss the performance of major Asian credit indices and review UST curve movements in March 2025. We also provide a recap of major news and macroeconomic releases, including those from the US, China, India, Indonesia and Japan. In addition, we summarise the top/bottom performers, recent USD bond issuances and rating actions in Asian corporate credit, as well as a list of our recent research. The Asia Monthly publication serves to keep investors updated on dev...
In this quarterly strategy report, we look to evaluate where we are with regards the bull market conditions, and where those indicators might be headed, factoring in the downside risks, from Trump tariffs and the US economy, BoJ actions, Japanese earnings and valuations.
In our latest Asia Monthly, we discuss the performance of major Asian credit indices and review UST curve movements in February 2025. We also provide a recap of major news and macroeconomic releases, including those from the US, China, India, Indonesia and Japan. In addition, we summarise the top/bottom performers, recent USD bond issuances and rating actions in Asian corporate credit, as well as a list of our recent research. The Asia Monthly publication serves to keep investors updated on ...
Aggregate service revenue trended better on higher contribution from non-mobile, coupled with mobile improvement. Industry mobile was primarily driven by Softbank’s outperformance. Q3 EBITDA dropped on higher mobile marketing costs at NTT which the company seeks to offset through cost efficiencies. DOCOMO is the clear mobile underperformer, but we believe expectations for Fixed recovery is still low, plus there is IOWN optionality. NTT remains our preferred pick.
Rakuten's Q4 and FY 2024 results were solid, with robust revenue growth and strong earnings improvement. The company reached self-funding status at both the group and Mobile levels. Rakuten achieved all of its FY 2024 targets, especially those for the Mobile segment. The company has addressed all of its 2025 debt maturities, and its access to capital remains solid. We are confident that Rakuten will be able to achieve its FY 2025 targets, which appear to be conservative.
Results were mixed again as revenue was in-line with expectations, underlying IFRS EBIT better than Q3, but the Group recorded a net loss. Sequential increase in MNO revenue showed no significant improvement and importantly the company has increased capex guidance for 2025 from “below ¥100bn” to ¥150bn. Cash flow breakeven on mobile remains longer dated than expected in our view and with MNO traction not improving as fast as hoped, we maintain our Reduce recommendation with a ¥400 price target.
KDDI reported an improved bottom-line trend, supported by its steady topline and Lawson’s contribution. While mobile ARPU was marginally down in Q3, it was still growing sequentially, and the company anticipates mobile communication ARPU revenue to inflect back to growth in the next quarter on the back of continued up-trading and UQ to AU brand migration.
In our latest Asia Monthly, we discuss the performance of major Asian credit indices and review UST curve movements in January 2025. We also provide a recap of major news and macroeconomic releases, including those from the US, China, India, Indonesia and Japan. In addition, we summarise the top/bottom performers, recent USD bond issuances and rating actions in Asian corporate credit, as well as a list of our recent research. The Asia Monthly publication serves to keep investors updated on d...
The Stargate announcement – The $500bn datacenter, was the opportunity for us to bring together a number of analyses we have carried out in recent weeks, to understand how the economics of AI Infrastructure will shape up over time. We bring together, in the piece we publish today, an initial perspective, which might be groundbreaking. This work will help us understand how the AI landscape will shape up in the next 2-3 years, expect more from us on that topic in coming weeks and months.
In our inaugural Asia Monthly for 2025, we share our regional credit outlook for the year, with a focus on China, Macau, India and Indonesia. We also provide a review of 2024, in which we discuss the performance of major Asian credit indices and review UST curve movements for the year. In addition, we provide a recap of major news and macroeconomic releases in December 2024, summarise the Top/Bottom performers, recent USD bond issuances and rating actions in Asian corporate credit, as well a...
After 3 good years, 2024 was not great for the Japanese incumbents; with KDDI and SoftBank rising modestly and NTT falling, but all underperforming the Nikkei. In our view, risk is rising in Mobile, although we continue to see the sector as fundamentally undervalued. Rakuten performed well in 2024, but this was really to do with balance sheet risk easing on the back of cost cutting/refinancing rather than better traction in Mobile.
Rakuten’s stock rallied sharply yesterday on its announcement that shareholders would receive 1 year of free mobile service. In this short note we attempt to calculate the impact both on the Mobile business and the share price.
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