< The 2016 All-Japan Research Team
Syusaku Nishikawa
Daiwa Securities Group
First-place appearances: 0
Total appearances: 2
Team debut: 2015
Third-place honors go to Syusaku Nishikawa, who debuted on this roster last year as a runner-up. He has been with Daiwa Securities Group since April 2008, having signed on a month after graduating from the University of Tokyo with a bachelor of law degree, and now reports on 19 domestic energy and utilities providers. The 30-year-old researcher holds a neutral position on electric power and gas names, advising that year-over-year profits are likely to decrease owing to the effects of regulatory requirements necessitating a time lag for recognizing fuel costs. Moreover, investors will be wary of liberalization of the electric power and gas markets, he believes, “although the profit-loss impacts in the short term will not be so large,” says Nishikawa. His favorite company in this industry is Sapporo-based utility Hokkaido Electric Power Co. Its “share price is cheap,” he believes, “considering the recovery of profit and dividends in the future with the restart of the Tomari Nuclear Power Plant [reactors].” Regarding oil companies, the analyst is forecasting that refineries will outperform at least in the first half of this year, given mergers-and-acquisitions activity and a turnaround in profits for the fiscal year that began this month. In this subsector he recommends buying shares of Tokyo’s JX Holdings, the largest refiner in Japan. Its price-to-book valuation is cheap, Nishikawa explains, and management’s plan to cut upstream investment in the near to midterm is laudable.
