TOKYO: A resurgent Japanese stock market has seen a big boom in shares of the country’s corporate titans, but now rich returns are waiting in small firms virtually unknown overseas, according to analysts.
The likes of Sony and Toyota have seen huge gains since the start of the year as waves of overseas cash flooded into the long-lacklustre Tokyo market, nearly doubling the electronics giant’s stock while the world’s largest automaker jumped about 55 percent.
The Nikkei 225 stock average — a who’s who of corporate Japan — has surged 36 percent since January, staging a sharp recovery as Tokyo’s policy blitz of government spending and monetary easing helped set off a sharp decline in the yen.
That has boosted profitability among Japanese exporters and investors are hoping for more as earnings season gets under way this week.
But the multi-month surge on the Nikkei since late last year has stoked fears about overheating even as the index came off highs that saw it up about 80 percent at one stage.
Now, some are looking beyond members of the blue-chip index to the hundreds of other firms that populate the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), one of the world’s biggest equity markets.
“At first, monetary easing helped boost prices of the biggest capitalisation shares... which made small-and mid-cap stocks relatively undervalued,” said Shun Maruyama, chief Japan equity strategist with BNP Paribas Securities in Tokyo.
“Foreign investors see these smaller firms as a gold mine.”
In fact, some have already made it onto investors’ radar screens.
Discount retailer Don Quijote’s shares have doubled since January, SymBio Pharmaceuticals logged a 67 percent rally while Pickles Corp., Japan’s biggest pickle maker, has soared about 85 percent since the start of the year.
The weak yen makes exporters more competitive overseas and inflates repatriated foreign profits, but they are at the mercy of the ups and downs of currency markets — smaller firms that concentrate on the domestic market are often less affected by those fluctuations. And they are set to benefit most from Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe’s bid to reboot the economy by firing up consumer demand at home, analysts said. AFP
