Mitsubishi Corp plans to raise its stake in Lawson Inc in a ¥144 billion (US$1.4 billion) tender offer and to turn Japan’s third-largest convenience store operator into a unit as part of a shift away from its mainstay commodities businesses.
The diversified trading company, Japan’s largest by market value, is to offer ¥8,650 per share to increase its holding in Lawson from 33.4 percent to 50 percent, the companies said in statements yesterday.
The offer is 17 percent higher than Lawson’s closing share price on Wednesday, before the prospect of a deal was reported.
Photo: Reuters
The acquisition gives Mitsubishi a bigger slice of the retailer’s profit, which is expected to jump about 17 percent to ¥36.8 billion in the year ending February next year, after two years of decline, according to analyst estimates.
More support from Mitsubishi is a plus for Lawson’s expansion, as well as its supply chain and distribution, Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co analyst Makoto Sakurai said.
Led by downturns in its energy and metals businesses, Mitsubishi reported a net loss of ¥149.4 billion last fiscal year.
The company aims to diversify away from commodities over the next three years to assure that it does not post another net loss, chief financial officer Kazuyuki Masu said in an interview last month.
In its statement, Lawson said that it would support the tender offer.
Mitsubishi intends to start buying the shares in January, according to the statement.
Japan’s biggest convenience store operators have been growing by buying up rivals in and outside the country, with Lawson saying in June it was looking to buy other chains in the US as it accelerates overseas expansion.
Lawson, which operates about 12,600 stores in Japan and 930 outside the country, is targeting a 26 percent increase to 1,000 overseas shops by February next year.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to