< The 2015 All-Japan Research Team
Hidemaru Yamaguchi
Citi
First-place appearances: 12
Total appearances: 15
Analyst debut: 2001
Holding on to the No. 2 spot for a second year is Hidemaru Yamaguchi, a member of Institutional Investor’s All-Japan Research Team Hall of Fame who has appeared in first place 12 times. Yamaguchi wins plaudits from one investor for “knowing important fundamentals, such as cost structure, impact of future changes in the sales mix and what could potentially be the real driver of earnings.” The Citi analyst, 49, holds a bearish outlook on Japan’s health care and pharmaceuticals names for the year ahead. The group outperformed the domestic broad market by 12.2 percentage points over the 12 months through late March, soaring 46.3 percent, but he doesn’t look for that performance to continue. “A sustained drop in sales of long-listed drugs on growth in generics, as well as the loss of patent protection for some blockbuster drugs in the U.S.,” he explains, will constrain the group. Consequently, he projects that the sector’s year-over-year recurring profit growth will be 1 percent, far below the consensus forecast of 16 percent, reports Yamaguchi. However, new drugs in the pipeline represent a bright spot, and he is recommending several names on that basis. For example, in the coming year he expects Osaka-headquartered Ono Pharmaceutical Co. and its U.S. partner, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., to announce topline data from a Phase 3 clinical trial of antibody Opdivo for the treatment of lung cancer.