< The 2015 All-Japan Research Team
Harunobu Goroh
Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities Co.
First-place appearances: 0
Total appearances: 11
Team debut: 2005
Slipping to the No. 3 spot is Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities Co.’s Harunobu Goroh, who held second place for the past five years. Even so, the analyst continues to win plaudits for his market knowledge. “He has always been good at reading tea leaves, recognizing in advance how the markets will respond to corporate decision making like capital spending or new products and innovations,” says one client. Goroh, 45, recommends that investors overweight Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. He applauds the management team’s ongoing integration efforts since the October 2012 merger. Now the world’s second-largest steel maker (after Luxembourg’s ArcelorMittal), Tokyo-based Nippon-Sumitomo is pursuing a dual strategy: reorganizing and consolidating domestic operations while expanding its downstream processes overseas, especially in Asia, Latin America and North America. The company is maximizing the competitiveness of its so-called mother mills in Japan through the combination of capital spending — an additional ¥1.35 trillion ($11.24 billion) over the three years through fiscal 2017 — and cost reductions, to the tune of ¥150 billion annually. Outside Japan, Nippon-Sumitomo aims to boost annual profits by ¥50 billion on increased yearly investment of ¥300 billion and expand shipments by 20 percent. The steel giant’s outstanding feature, Goroh attests, is its “flexible business models by region.” For the patient investor, he adds, “we expect a harvest period.”