“Japan Display, the world’s biggest maker of screens for tablets and smartphones, gained approval from the Tokyo stock exchange for a listing of around $3.8 billion as the company taps one of Asia’s best performing equity markets in the past year,” Sophie Knight reports for Reuters. “The offering by the supplier to Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is part of an expanding pipeline of Japanese listings. Companies are increasingly venturing into equity markets after the reflationary policies of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe boosted Tokyo stock prices by more than 60 percent since November 2012.”
“Japan Display said it may issue an additional 18 million shares as over-allotment, bringing the total to 409 billion yen,” Knight reports. “The company was formed from the ailing display units of Hitachi Ltd, Sony Corp and Toshiba Corp in 2012. Its majority shareholder, the government-backed Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, has since engineered a turnaround.”
“Japan Display said on Friday that it expects operating profit to grow more than 17 times to 36.4 billion yen in the year ending March against sales of 623.4 billion yen,” Knight reports. “Net profit will expand more than nine times to 36.6 billion yen, while EBITDA, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, will reach 370.17 yen per share, it said.”
Read more in the full article here.
I hope they succeed. Any rival to Samsung has got to be good, so if they go ahead and get their listing, I will root for them to take on the challenge of ousting Samsung first from display’s then onto other components.
Sorry. Read that a little slower. “… the supplier to Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd …” They supply both Apple and Samsung.
Apple should take some of that cash they can’t bring back to the U.S. and buy as much of Japan Display’s stock as the Tokyo stock exchange allows them to.