ITOCHU Corporation (8001) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. I am Keita Ishii, COO of ITOCHU Corporation. Thank you very much for joining us today. We will present fiscal 2021 business results and also explain overview of fiscal '22 to '24 medium-term management plan, Brand-new Deal 2023. Please refer to the documentation of the presentation. Starting with the summary of the financial results for fiscal 2021, please turn to Page 2. By minimizing the COVID-19 impact and eliminating the management issues and preparing the structure for fiscal 2022, we exceeded the consolidated net profit target, JPY 400 billion, set at the beginning of the year and reached JPY 401.4 billion. Despite tough business environment where other companies saw major year-on-year declines in their profits, once again, we showed our strength of our earnings base that is well distributed in terms of the business areas and resistant to the economic changes. Looking at the balance sheet, net DER was 0.78x. We continue to maintain our solid financial position as we executed large-sized investments. Despite the pandemic, ROE was about 13%, and ratio of profitable group companies was kept high, above 80%. Our strength, high-efficiency management, was effective and we have steadily implemented commitment-based management, even under the rapid changes of the business environment in fiscal '21. We became #1 general trading company in terms of the market cap and stock price for the first time in history in fiscal 2021, and also #1 based on the consolidated net profit for the first time in 5 years, winning a triple crown. This is a result of the profit growth of the past 10 years and efforts made by the united team of group companies. This is the proof of our honest and steady businesses that we have built up as merchants who have customers' perspectives. The most important thing is to continue this modest attitude. Now let me briefly explain Brand-new Deal 2023, our medium-term management plan. Please refer to Page 9. Under basic policy, quantitative target is to aim to achieve consolidated net profit of JPY 600 billion and growth strategy to realize business transformation by shifting to a market-oriented perspective and to enhance our contribution to and engagement with the SDGs. Global spread of COVID-19 brought major changes in our society. Some businesses in consumer sector, which is our forte, were significantly impacted. Trend of SDGs is moving faster than our expectations and is starting to influence state of the business. We believe ITOCHU Group needs to flexibly respond to the changes in the environment and achieve new growth by promoting business transformation based on the market-oriented perspective and SDGs. Trading company as water. The essence of the merchants is to be able to change its shape to circle or square like water according to the customer needs. What is essential as a trading firm is to quickly capture changes in the society and to build businesses. I think there are many things that we can challenge and realize because of the major changes happening around us. Now please turn to Page 15. Our consolidated net profit plan for fiscal 2022 is set at a record high of JPY 550 billion in order to make sure the return to the growth trajectory beyond the pre-COVID-19 profit level. We would like to overcome the pandemic and start our journey toward growth once again. Now please turn to Page 16. Fiscal 2021 yearly dividend is JPY 88 per share, as announced. As for fiscal '22, through steady increases, we have set a minimum dividend per share of JPY 94. We would increase the dividend if we make an upward revision during the fiscal 2022. We also aim to reach a dividend of JPY 100 per share during the medium-term management plan. As for share buybacks, we will continue our policy to actively and continuously execute share buybacks as appropriate in consideration of the cash allocation situation. That's all from me. Next, our CFO, Hachimura, will give you the details of fiscal 2021 business results and next medium-term management plan.

This is Tsuyoshi Hachimura, CFO. Thank you very much for joining us. Now let me start my presentation. First, I'd like to give you a summary of business results for fiscal '21 and the highlight of the medium-term management plan and also fiscal '22 plan. Now looking back to fiscal '21. We needed to take some major accounting measures in relation to the impact of the COVID-19 as well as the reduction of GHGs. But as we did so, we achieved our commitment target, and JPY 600 billion net profit first time among the trading companies and changing the business models, but keeping the financial policy. Those are included in the Brand-new Deal 2023. And for fiscal '22, by maximizing our non-resource businesses, we'd like to achieve a 37% profit increase and achieved JPY 550 billion. Now as for the business results of fiscal '21. Net profit attributable to ITOCHU was JPY 401.4 billion. But during the medium-term management plan, we would like to achieve JPY 600 billion. And for fiscal '22, our target is JPY 550 billion. And we also see the upward revision in sight. As for the dividend in fiscal '21, as we committed, JPY 88 per share, the dividend increase in 6 years in a row. And during the medium-term management plan, we would like to aim for JPY 100 per share. But this is not the upper limit, and we will continue with the progressive dividend policy. So based on this year's target, JPY 94 per share is the lower limit. That is up by JPY 6 per share. And if we make the upward revision, we would increase the dividend further. One of our strength is ROE. Last year, the share price was higher than our expectations and yen was weaker. And as a result of those, the ROE was below 13% at 12.7%. But in the medium-term management plan, we believe that the range of 13% to 16% of ROE is possible and would like to aim for the upper limit of this range. Now let me go into the details of the financial results of fiscal '21. So net profit was JPY 401.4 billion. As for the core profit, it was JPY 452.5 billion. That was minus JPY 51 billion extraordinary gains and losses. In Q4, there was a JPY 94 billion net based extraordinary loss. For the full year, it was JPY 51 billion. We have conservatively reevaluated our assets in the long term. And for fiscal '22, we expect a V-shaped recovery. As for the dividend, we complied with the commitment, and we also maintained the fiscal or financial discipline. And as the President mentioned -- or COO mentioned, in terms of the net profit in stock price and market cap, we became #1 in our segment. And also, we delisted the FamilyMart. That was a major achievement. Now looking at the difference between the results and the forecast. As for the '21 plan, the start of the core profit was JPY 500 billion. And the commodity evaluation was done conservatively, so that was down by JPY 55 billion. And we expected about 10% of the impact from COVID-19, so that was JPY 50 billion. And extraordinary gains were expected about JPY 50 billion and a buffer JPY 50 billion. So the plan was JPY 400 billion. So what were the results? Now starting with the JPY 500 billion. The commodity price actually was pushed up by JPY 10 billion, so that gap was JPY 65 billion. As for the COVID impact, it was JPY 56 billion. So it was about the same as our plan. As for the extraordinary gains and losses, with the major accounting measures, the extraordinary loss was minus JPY 50 billion. So the gap of JPY 100 billion was here, and we used all the buffers. So among the segments, there are some differences of the core profit levels, but natural resource prices up. And by using the buffer, we made declaration for the fiscal '22 and onwards. Going to Page 3, showing the net profit by segment. There was a major extraordinary loss booked in Q4. So excluding CP and CITIC, in all segments, profits declined. In terms of our core profit, you'll find the details on the following pages by segment. The positive core profit increase year-on-year was shown in the Metals & Minerals and Energy & Chemicals and CP and CITIC. As you can see on this page, the results in fiscal '21 is shown here, and we expect fiscal '22 to increase this way. Now looking at the Others, which is JPY 111.1 billion. Concerning CITIC was JPY 72.5 billion, up 9% year-on-year. China business was strong, especially in Q4. With the recovery of the economy, the bank business, CITIC Bank, was also strong. As for CPP, JPY 40.2 billion. There was a reorganization of the China business, so extraordinary gain of JPY 24.5 billion is included. Pork price in Vietnam was high and the pork business was strong. As for Metals & Minerals, iron ore price increased significantly. That was a major impact. The withdraw from the thermal coal in relation to Colombia and Australia, those are also included. Because of this, if you look at the bottom left, the percentage of non-resource came down to 73%. We usually say 80:20, but there was an extraordinary loss, and that led to the higher resource percentage, but it's basically 3/4 of the overall business. That is the non-resource. Next major contribution came from Energy & Chemicals. Especially in Chemicals, the trade of the commodity chemical and electricity were positive. With lower oil prices, there was an impairment loss in relation to the long-term contract. So numbers are negative, but those businesses were strong. And next is the ICT & Financial business, which was almost flat. Mobile phones, CTC and ICT related were strong. In Finance, Hoken No Madoguchi was positive, but there was an impairment loss of Orient Corporation. And because of this, it was almost flat compared to the previous year. Now going to Page 6, extraordinary gains and losses, the details are shown on this page. Net loss was JPY 51 billion. In terms of the gross basis, the loss was JPY 156.5 billion. In Q4, net number were JPY 94 billion. Gross number was JPY 125 billion. As I said, in preparation for the business environment with the COVID-19 impact and also the reduction of the GHG and to prepare for the changes of the profit structure, we have conservatively reevaluated our assets at the end of the term. With the goodwill and intangible assets that we evaluated, we believe that we now have a more resilient assets. On the stand-alone basis, extraordinary gains and losses was JPY 416.8 billion. As a result, fiscal '21, for the first time after fiscal 2004, we booked a net loss of JPY 71.3 billion. This is based on the Japanese standard. So CITIC, JPY 242.7 billion and also the loss in relation to the Drummond, JPY 94.8 billion are included. As for the CITIC impairment, based on the stand-alone valuation, we have to look at the book value vis-à-vis the stock price at the end of the term. So at the end of March, the stock price was $7.36. So it's above the 50% of the purchase price, but they did not hit the 30%. So because of this, we incurred the impairment loss. But the CITIC itself, the profit has been increasing in 6 terms in a row, and CITIC Corporation numbers are strong. And also CITIC Limited, in fiscal '22 and onwards, they have the new 5-year plan to double the profit. And based on those, CITIC share price has started to increase. In January 2020, started to have a long-term decline, but $5.5 was the bottom at the end of the year, and then it has recovered to a little less than $9 per share. So as we make the calculation, we believe that there is a sufficient value exceeding the book value. Now in relation to the COVID-19 impact, JPY 56 billion was the impact. The inventory of the apparel and lower car trade and also the aircraft business was weaker. And as you know, the CVS and restaurants business were impacted. Especially The 8th Company, the impact was about JPY 20 billion. In machinery, JPY 16 billion was the impact. In textile, it was JPY 8.5 billion. Turning to the cash flow page. Asterisks represent the record high numbers. Cash flows from operating activities were JPY 895.9 billion, which is the record high. With the delisting of the FamilyMart, on a net basis, there was an outflow of JPY 516.9 billion. And if you look at the bottom of this slide, you see the core free cash flow and net investment cash flow is minus JPY 755 billion, which is a record high number. After the shareholder return, we would like to turn the core free cash flow positive, and we had a negative number previous -- in the previous year. But we have reviewed fiscal '19 and '20, where we did not make the major investment, and we believe that these are the numbers that we can commit to. Please turn to Page 30. In relation to the shareholder return, although the free cash flow was negative, we made major investments, and we increased the dividend payment by JPY 3 per share to JPY 88 per share. So the dividend has been increasing in the past 6 years in a row. With investments and higher dividend and high stock price, the share buyback was 5.2 million shares and JPY 13.5 billion. Our target is to spend JPY 200 billion to buy back 100 million shares, and the progress is 71%. Now going to Page 29. The investments on the right-hand side, you see the total major net investments of JPY 850 based on the growth and net investment amount of JPY 755 billion. And out of this, about 86% or almost 90% are in the consumer sector. Major one is the additional investments of the FamilyMart, that is JPY 516.9 billion. And also the CapEx in different segments, the total is JPY 165 billion. Next is the additional investments in the listed subsidiaries. Based on the market trend, we provide the support of the management. So for example, we made additional investments for Tokyo Century and Fuji Oil. And next was additional investment in PPIH, Don Quijote by FamilyMart. As for exit, we have conducted asset replacement. And about half of the JPY 95 billion was in the consumer sector. Now going back to the balance sheet. We did have a major impairment loss, but we maintained the financial health. As for the -- some of the challenges, we'd like to increase the shareholders' equity further. And we have taken measures for the goodwill and intangible assets. But in our balance sheet, we need to continuously watch the goodwill and intangible assets. Total shareholders' equity is about JPY 3.3 trillion, and this is a record high number. This is up by more than JPY 300 billion, and this includes JPY 170 billion impact from the weaker yen. And higher net profit and higher stock price and also the shareholder return are included. And the loss in relation to the Drummond was absorbed. And as a result, the shareholder equity increased. The ratio of the shareholder equity to total assets is below 30%. And net DER is 0.78 and ROE is below 13%. And now let me explain the next medium-term management plan, Brand-new Deal 2023. Now after achieving the record high net profit number, we would like to aim to achieve the consolidated net profit of JPY 600 billion. And also go -- move forward the net 0 GHG emission in 2050. So we have the 2 major targets, that is to realize the business transformation by shifting to the market-oriented perspective and also focus on the SDGs. As for the GHGs, if we depend on the businesses where there is a lot of emission, we would need to find the alternative profit source, and that would very challenging to do. So since our strength is in the consumer sector, we would like to take the preemptive measures to reduce the GHGs. So in the consumer sector, we try to take advantage of our strength so that we can reduce the GHGs in the supply chain that is in Scope 3. So by doing so, our stakeholders will evaluate our efforts, and we can differentiate ourselves from our peers. And Page 10 and 11 shows the growth strategy. Those are for your reference. Moving on to Page 12, that is about the GHG emission reduction. So this is a road map in achieving the net 0 GHG emission by 2050 to comply with the Japanese government target to reduce it by 40% in 2030 and to reduce it by 75% by 2040. Now the highlight here is that the GHG emissions of the ITOCHU Corporation, in addition to Scope 1, 2 and 3, we asked a third-party to calculate our fossil fuel interest of affiliates and general investments, GHG emissions. And we would completely withdraw from the thermal coal business in fiscal '24. So we'd like to achieve the GHG reduction fastest. And also, we would like to be the lowest emission company. And here on this page, it shows the offset CO2 to 0 by 2040. This means that the reduction effect compared with the emission volume, in terms of the net, the contribution should be higher. So this would include the renewable energy using in the power generation and to replace the products with decarbonized products and the use of the hydrogen, ammonia, clean energy in the storage battery. So through those measures, it would be very challenging to try to achieve those targets, but that's our plan. Moving on to Page 13. The GHG emission in fiscal '19 was 37 million tons. And with the withdrawal from the Drummond, we spent about JPY 100 billion. But with this, we could reduce this emission by 16 million tons. And in fiscal '22, half of this GHG emission and -- is coming from our interest in the area of the coal, including the coking coal. So during the medium-term management plan, this 37 million tons can be halved. Now during the 3 years of the Brand-new Deal 2023, there are uncertainties, including to what extent the COVID-19 impact would continue, and what will be the ESG cost and also the risk of bursting of the resource bubble. But we'd like to make sure that we achieve the target of JPY 600 billion of the net profit and JPY 100 per share dividend payment during the 3 years. Now going on to the quantitative targets. By increasing the profit of the non-resources, we'd like to achieve 37% profit increase to achieve the JPY 550 billion profit. And if we are to make the upward revision during the year, we will be increasing the dividend payment from the minimum level of JPY 94 per share. Now on Page 17, we have some assumptions. The exchange rate of JPY 105 to the dollar and crude oil Brent is $60 per barrel. And as for the iron ore price, we have a conservative view, and there is a strong demand for iron ore in China and crude steel is very brisk. But since that the government is controlling this strongly, and in terms of the supply and demand, we expect some increase in the supply from the Vale in Brazil, so gradually, we expect some loosening of the balance between the demand and supply. So this is a very conservative view. So this impact is plus/minus JPY 1.2 billion per dollar. Now unless the iron ore price comes down drastically, probably there will be some additional contribution from the resource business. But the percentage of the non-resource will remain at around 3 quarters. Now another way of looking at this is that the beginning of core profit this year, -- well, last year, there was a more than JPY 50 billion extraordinary losses. So the core profit started with JPY 450 billion, and we expect about JPY 60 billion increase: in Metal & Minerals, JPY 19 billion, in Food, JPY 11 billion; ICT and Finance, JPY 8 billion; Textile, JPY 7 billion; Machinery, JPY 7 billion; and The 8th Company, JPY 6 billion. Those are the breakdown of the JPY 60 billion profit increase. And based on the higher commodity price, probably about half of the JPY 60 billion comes from that, including the iron ore, coal, oil, gas, pulp and others. So those are included in this number. In addition to the JPY 60 billion profit increase, there's JPY 50 billion extraordinary gain expected. Page 20 to 28 shows the segment details. And there are major extraordinary gains expected in the General Products & Realty as well as The 8th Company. As for the COVID-19 impact, we expect a similar level of impact in fiscal '22. Last year, it was JPY 56 billion, and we expect about JPY 20 billion improvement. So about JPY 40 billion impact is included. So including the buffer of JPY 30 billion, JPY 550 billion is our number. And other quantitative targets concerning the balance sheet during the medium-term management plan. And our image or the concept is to turn the core free cash flows positive after deducting the shareholder returns. So by increasing the operating cash flow steadily, we believe that we can turn the free cash flow to positive. But a similar level of the gross or net investments as the fiscal '20 are expected. And we would accelerate the replacement of the assets in fiscal '22. So even after the dividend increase, this JPY 3.3 trillion shareholders' equity, we expect it will continue to increase. Net DER will be lower. And as for ROE, we believe that higher limit of this ROE can be achieved. As for the shareholder return, as I mentioned, JPY 94 per share, that is up by JPY 6 per share, is planned. And if we make the upward revision during the year, we would increase this. And we have made an upward revision 3 times in the past 10 years. And each time, we increased the dividend payment. First, we would like to realize the increase of the dividend payment 7 years in a row. And also about the dividend, during the medium-term management plan, we would like to realize the JPY 100 per share. This is not the upper limit, and we'll make sure that we continue to have a progressive dividend payment. We would like to focus on the higher dividend as well as the sustainable growth of the EPS. And with that, I'd like to end my presentation. Thank you for your attention. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]