12px; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px 0px 15px 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;" align="right">< The 2014 All-Japan Research Team
Total Appearances: 6
Analyst Debut: 2009 A "well-rounded professional who excels at both company and sector analysis," as one investor describes him, Takumi Sado of Daiwa Securities Group rises from last year's second-place finish to claim the top spot for the first time. Prompted by significant profit gains, Japan's electronic components shares bolted 66.1 percent in 2013, outperforming the broad market by 14.2 percentage points. Sado forecasts that they will "likely remain trapped in a range" in 2014; as of mid-March they had slipped 7.5 percent year to date, compared with the broad market's 11 percent decline. Further, the 45-year-old researcher expects Japan's currency to soften only moderately this year, so the weak-yen-driven profits of the fiscal year that ended last month "appear set to peter out," he says. Over the past three years, the industry's players have "made earnest attempts to change their business portfolios," he adds, and this fiscal year "will likely see the test of new portfolios." Two product lines that could boost sales and earnings are components for vehicles with more automated parts and those for more diverse wireless communications. Accordingly, his preferred names are Nidec Corp., a Kyoto-based manufacturer that has been shifting its emphasis to high-performance motors used in cars, household appliances and industrial machinery; and Murata Manufacturing Co., the No. 1 maker of passive components used in wireless communications, which is also headquartered in Kyoto. After graduating from Tokyo's Waseda University with a bachelor's degree in business administration, Sado joined the Daiwa Institute of Research. He tracked small-cap companies before assuming his current coverage in 2000.
