Teijin Limited (3401) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I am Jun Suzuki, the CEO. Thank you for participating in our ESG briefing today. I would like to give a big picture of Teijin's initiatives on ESG, environment, society and governance, what our basic thoughts are, what we've been doing, what we are doing now and how they relate to our business. This is the structure of Teijin's philosophy: at the top, the corporate philosophy that defines the reason for our existence, our mission and management's highest ideals, the long-term vision that shows what the Teijin Group aims to be, and the code of conduct that spells out what to do to realize the corporate philosophy. The corporate philosophy, which serves as the company's constitution, stipulates enhancing the quality of life, growing harmony with society and empowering our people, and envisions maximizing the well-being of all stakeholders, including society and employees. Our long-term vision is to become a company that supports the society of the future. This means that we will be a company that widely provides goods and services needed by society of today and of the future. This slide shows the relationship between our philosophy structure and our business operations. The idea is to become a company that supports the future by providing 3 value solutions to material societal issues that would take 10 to 20 years or more to resolve, namely environmental value solutions, safety, security, disaster mitigation solutions, and demographic change and increased health consciousness solutions. In considering the business opportunities, we thought that business opportunities lie at the intersection of social megatrends, that is, important issues for the next 10 to 20 years and the strength of Teijin as a unique business entity that has 3 businesses of materials, health care and IT. And thus, we came up with the environmental value solutions, safety, security, disaster mitigation solutions and demographic change and increased health consciousness solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 has drastically changed society. However, the direction and business we should aim for have not changed at all. Rather, as we see it, this change in the direction towards what we are aiming for is accelerating. For example, in terms of environmental value, awareness of green recovery is growing extremely strong, especially in Europe. And in terms of demographic change and increased health consciousness, there are growing needs for telemedicine and community-based health care. In fact, as an example in our environmental value solutions, we are pursuing weight reduction in all forms of mobility and promoting recycling to a circular economy. For safety, security, disaster mitigation solutions, we are providing life vests and protective equipment made of high-performance materials to protect human lives as well as increasing the utility value of wood by combining with carbon fiber for robust, large and flexible building designs. With regard to changing demography and increased health consciousness solutions, we are shifting to supporting community-based medical care centered on home health care as well as promoting health through food. So you can see that the response to material societal issues represented by the SDGs and our business activities are in perfect agreement. Of course, not all businesses are well established or profitable. It may seem a little different from the current earnings situation, but the material-related side of our business is becoming quite solid in earnings, while the health care side, we feel, is still in the process of forging new businesses. But we will work to align our philosophy system with our business while firmly establishing the foundation. We consider pursuing this both to be most important. And what supports this alignment of business and the philosophy system is governance, with transparency, fairness, accelerated decision-making and independence as the basics of governance. We have been operating an executive officer system, an Advisory Board, a Board of Statutory Auditors, whose majority are independent outside statutory auditors, since 1999. Meaning that we were way ahead of our peers in putting in place the system currently required by society. For more than 20 years since, the Board of Directors, the Advisory Board and the advisory committees, the board of corporate auditors and others have evolved gradually to improve the effectiveness of governance. What's important is that we are evolving the Board of Directors, keeping in mind its purpose is the executive decision the best at a time, given the variety of stakeholders. Our executive actions being properly challenged [ is ] the BoD adequately involved in the selection and dismissal of top management. We have been making changes from these perspectives. Later, we will have Mr. Ohtsubo, the Independent Outside Director and current Chair of the Board of Directors, talk about this and answer your questions. I hope today's briefing will help you better understand Teijin's thoughts and actions. That's all, thank you.

I am Toshiya Koyama, CSRO. First, in the area of environment, we are advocating the environmental value solutions to contribute to addressing societal issues. We have set goals centered on climate change mitigation and adaptation and the realization of a circular economy by fiscal 2030; specifically, on CO2 emissions, have the amount of avoided emissions exceed the total amount of emissions and to reduce total emissions in Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 30% and in Scope 3 by 15% to ultimately achieve net zero in 2050. In addition, we have set such goals as improving the freshwater intake volume and landfill waste volume per sales unit, among others. Now achieving net zero in 2050 will be difficult without innovative technology development. And so with that in mind, we established the European Sustainable Technology Innovation Center to work on technology development related to hydrogen society, biomaterials and circular economy. Next is solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Environmental value solutions are generally related to climate change mitigation. Safety, security and disaster mitigation solutions mainly contribute to adaptation. Here you can see some examples. Thermoplastic carbon fiber composite materials and carbon fiber intermediate materials for aircraft contribute to CO2 emission reduction through weight reduction, and the highly-transparent heat ray reflection film [ Refto ] contributes to the reduction of CO2 emissions through heat management. In terms of the solutions related to adaptation, we are offering to society such materials as reinforcement materials for civil engineering to reinforce embankment and ground, and the rainwater storage tanks for use in heavy rains. As mentioned earlier, achieving net zero in 2050 is very challenging. With that in mind, we established ESTIC, the European Sustainable Technology Innovation Center, in January of last year against the backdrop that the EU is leading environmental regulations. This research and development base in the Netherlands is to promote research on solutions through open innovation with European universities, research institutes and companies. Target areas of research are the development of hydrogen society, biomaterials and circular economy, as mentioned earlier. Next, I would like to explain the progress toward the goal for 2030. Our emission reduction targets were certified as well below 2 degrees Celsius by SBT, Science Based Targets, last December. Progress in emission reductions, both in-house and along the supply chain, exceeded the target despite the impact of COVID-19, whereas the amount of avoided emissions decreased significantly in FY 2020 due to the decline in demand for automobiles and aircraft under COVID-19. However, with the recovery in demand, we will continue to strongly promote these efforts to achieve the 2030 targets. Next is the process for achieving net zero in 2050. Regarding Scope 1, the in-house emissions, coal-fired power generation shall be replaced with gas-fired power generation first. And further, we are developing technologies to replace these materials with hydrogen or ammonia to reduce emissions. Scope 2, CO2 emitted in purchased power supplies and others, will depend on the power supply composition of each country, but we are thinking of achieving net zero through the procurement of renewable energy or with the use of VPPA. Koyama will continue to explain our initiatives on respecting human rights and preventing corruption. We revised the code of conduct on the occasion of the 100th anniversary in 2018. The acronym is Teijin. In the middle is integrity, which strongly calls for respect of human rights. Accordingly, we have announced our commitment with the Teijin Group Human Rights Policy, statement on British Modern Slavery Act and CEO message to the employees. Since implementation is just as important as commitment, as one example, we are organizing supply chain seminars at the Teijin Frontier Group, as apparel production is considered to be highly exposed to human rights risks. We are regularly holding training seminars for our suppliers, focusing on human rights issues to continue to raise awareness. The outline is shown on this slide. We're also promoting human rights due diligence and CSR procurement. In 2018, we conducted a risk assessment of each business using the database of an NGO and identified that we had the highest risk in the Fibers & Products Converting Business. So in CSR procurement, we have enhanced human rights items in the guidelines, and we are monitoring the state in combination with CSR procurement questionnaire surveys. Results of CSR procurements in fiscal 2020 show that 95% met our standards. For the remaining 5%, we will not terminate business immediately. Instead, we will work with those suppliers to help them address the problems and improve to meet our standards. Also, as a rather unique project, we have a Zero Fee Project related to foreign technical intern trainees. It's been found that there have been cases where the agencies in the trainees' home countries were charging them expensive fees. We have taken 2 effective measures. First, we had meetings with supervising organizations, that is Japanese receiving entities, and selected ethical supervising organizations that disclose information on fees and other costs at the time of sending. Also, we now have the arrangement that if the sending organization is found to have charged the fees, Teijin Frontier would bear that cost so that foreign trainees do not have to pay any fees. On these kinds of implementation, we are conducting human right dialogues with foreign human rights experts who provide us with evaluation of the current situation and advice for the future. This is my last page, on initiatives to prevent corruption in recognition of increasing sanctions to violations and rising social criticism regarding bribery of overseas civil servants, especially the FCPA in the U.S. Last September, the Board of Directors adopted a resolution on the Teijin Group's anticorruption policy. Furthermore, by translating it to specific regulations, we are running a PDCA cycle, and in combination with the whistleblowing system, we are implementing company-wide anticorruption measures. That concludes my part of presentation. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much, and good afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Karola Japke I would like to give you a very brief overview of the key initiatives that we in HR have started in 2019 and further and to show you what we have done in terms of making Teijin more sustainable and innovative. So what you see here on this slide is actually one of our core beliefs. We believe that diversity and inclusion will foster innovation. Innovation is actually the ultimate goal that we want to achieve, and we think that the 3 areas that you see here on this slide are the key enablers to become more innovative. On the left side, you see diversity and inclusion. We are convinced that diverse people with different backgrounds and experiences will ultimately lead to more and different and new ideas and solutions. At the bottom, you see cultural transformation, or actually our corporate culture, because we believe that innovation requires a culture in the company that is agile, innovative and inclusive. And then on the right side, you see our new normal workstyle initiative, which is also an enabler to give people more freedom to act. Next. As I said before, we think that the corporate culture is one of the key elements to make us more innovative. And in 2019, we made an investigation where we found out that our current company culture is not yet at the level where we wanted to be. And therefore, we started an initiative with the name Power of Culture, where we look into the critical task that needs to be done to become more agile, inclusive and innovative. We try to change our people's mindset to be more agile, inclusive and innovative. And we would like also to change our leadership style, that is matching then to our more innovative culture. In 2020, we started with the top management team to do these first workshops, and we carry out now the Power of Culture project into the lower management levels. Next one. The progress of our culture transformation we would like to measure in our global engagement surveys. Last year we did for the very first time our global engagement survey, to actually set the baseline to know what is the situation and from where we have to improve. 70% of all participants participated in this survey and the overall engagement score was 60, which is not the very best that we could have achieved, but I think a good baseline to improve from. And one of the key findings in this engagement survey was that our communication needs to be improved. In addition to that, we have found out also that people require different kind of career development opportunities. In addition to that, we also created a new award with the name Designing the Future Award, which is focusing on the 3 key areas: diversity and inclusion, innovation and sustainability. We had the first round in 2021 and 58 proposals were reaching us in the headquarter, and from that we awarded 5 initiatives, and we will carry out the next round this year. Next one. Yes. This is a closer look at diversity and inclusion itself. We have set and reconfirmed 2 global KPIs for diversity and inclusion, which are -- yes, the diversity and inclusion in nationality. So we would like to have 12 non-Japanese executives by the year 2030. And on the other hand, we would like to advance female leaders, and we set a KPI that we would like to have 10-plus females at an executive level in 2030. Where we are, I will show you in a second. However, in order to achieve these KPIs, it is absolutely necessary that we have also on a regional level diversity and inclusion KPIs, because we cannot just do it in headquarter. This needs to be supported by aligned initiatives carried out on local and regional level. And therefore, for the first time, we set also KPIs for each region of Teijin, which you will see on a couple slides later. Another initiative is our effort to increase the number of people with disabilities, especially here in Japan. We have established a special subsidiary with the name of Teijin Soleil, and I'm very proud to say that by summer last year, we overachieved the mandatory level of people with disabilities in the company. Next one. This is a very short snapshot of what we do in the new workstyle initiative. Actually, this initiative started already before the COVID pandemic, but COVID was a great booster of whatever we had already planned. So it is about not only to make the work schedule more flexible, it's also about to have less paper in the company. It's also about to give people more freedom in how they work, when they work and where they work. Next one. Yes. Now I come back to the diversity and inclusion milestones. I said before that in addition to the global KPIs we have set also regional KPIs. And what you see here is the list of the KPIs that we have set. You see on top the KPIs that are related to advancement of female leaders, and on the bottom you see the KPIs that we have set in terms of inclusion. In Teijin, we identify 5 regions plus the global level, and you can see what we have done for each and every region in the past years. There is still a long way to go, but I think this was an important milestone that we have now achieved. And last but not least, I would like to give you a short overview who are the people that have already achieved the level of executive for non-Japanese and also for females, and this is my last slide. So on top you see the names of our non-Japanese corporate officers, and at the bottom you see the names of our female corporate officers. And this concludes my presentation. However, I'm very happy to entertain your questions afterwards. Thank you very much.

This is Fumio Ohtsubo. Thank you for the introduction. As you can see at the bottom of this slide, I have been an independent outside director of Teijin since 2016. And today, as shown at the top, I serve as the Chair of the Board of Directors, a member of the Advisory Board and the Chair of the Nomination Advisory Committee. Here, you can see a skill matrix. As shown in the chart at the lower right, management skills are classified into 8 categories, with circles indicating relevant skills of the inside and independent outside directors and statutory auditors that currently attend the Board of Directors' meetings. You can see that there is a very good balance of skills among the Board members. These are the key points of the effectiveness of the Board of Directors. But instead of going through them, I would like to share with you 3 characteristics of the atmosphere of the Board of Directors as I see them. First of all, the business executive side never fails to share necessary information about business execution with the Board of Directors. And I think that we are spending enough time discussing them. And also both sides engage in discussion with candor. Secondly, the statutory auditors are also actively speaking up. So when the discussions among directors become a little biased, the situation is often corrected by the opinions of the statutory auditors. Third, I think that the effectiveness of the Board of Directors is steadily improving when and where needed, as it is confirmed through questionnaire surveys and interviews. This is an example of such governance reform. In a nutshell, as you can see in the chart below, the structure will be changed. As shown on the left, the current design is that the Nominating Committee and the Compensation Committee for CEO and Chairperson are placed under the Advisory Board. And they are separate Nomination Committee and the Compensation Committee under the Board of Directors for directors excluding the CEO and the Chairperson. So it appears as being redundant. Now this will be integrated into the Nominating Advisory Committee and the Compensation Advisory Committee under the BoD to cover all directors, including the CEO and the Chairperson, as you can see on the right. This chart is the result of the reform of the governance system, or the way it will be implemented in the future. As you can see on the left, the Advisory Board consists of 4 independent outside directors and outside experts and the CEO and the Chairperson while he or she is in office. They comprise the Advisory Board, which is chaired by the Chairperson of the Board of Directors. The Nominating Advisory Committee and the Compensation Advisory Committee are each chaired by a person selected from outside directors, CEO and the Chairperson of the Board while he or she is in office. The Board of Directors, on the far right, is chaired by an outside director and consists of 4 independent outside directors and 6 inside directors for a total of 10 members. The number of statutory auditors is 3 outside statutory auditors and the 2 inside statutory auditors. These 15 people participate in BoD proceedings. 7 of the 15 people are from outside the company and 8 are from inside the company. This is a diagram showing the relationship between the business executive side shown in the hatched area below and the Board of Directors, Board of Statutory Auditors, Advisory Board members and others in charge of supervision and making proposals and recommendations. This is the last slide, that summarizes personal expectations and challenges that I see with the Teijin Group's governance. The first one relates to the review and restructuring of the M&A strategy. As you all know, Teijin's strategies have largely depended on mergers and acquisitions. I have been involved in some of them as an outside director, and I think the acquisition strategy is very well developed. However, not all M&As go as planned or produce the intended results, including the [ type ] line. There could be many challenges. And now with the acquisition of J-TEC, Teijin is embarking on the cell therapy CDMO business. I think now it's the right time for Teijin to make a comprehensive review of the past mergers and acquisitions, including some outside cases. See what the success factors were as well as what is causing challenges. And personally, I think it is necessary to review the past acquisitions from the perspective of internalizing the acquired companies as well. Second is transformation and enhancement of basic strength. In terms of transformation, Teijin has reorganized into 3 business groups: Materials, Healthcare and IT. And in Materials and Healthcare, businesses have been grouped into strategic focus, where focused investments will be made for the future and profitable growth, expecting solid profit generation. So I think that the transformation in a broad sense and the portfolio management are already shaping up. At the same time, I think that transformation and portfolio management have to be always kept in mind over the medium to long term as the management environment changes. Therefore, I consider enhancement of basic strength as another area of expectation and challenge. By basic strength, I mean true management strength and basic management strength that can, for example, provide on-site consulting function when an acquisition is not achieving the desired results, for instance, a kind of consulting team that can lead to a desired direction regardless of whether such team consists entirely of internal resources. The other aspect of enhancing basic strength is human resources. As Teijin faces a host of management issues, including digital transformation, lean transformation and AI, it needs to secure necessary human resources and to reskill the existing workforce. The third and final point is the evolution of governance through co-creation by inside and independent outside directors and statutory auditors. Today, the Board of Directors is very open and discussions are fair and just. This atmosphere needs to be respected and maintained. By doing so and by basing discussions on evaluation indicators, I am confident that we can expect Teijin's governance to evolve further. That's all from me. Thank you for your attention. Jun Suzuki, the CEO, will introduce Akimoto Uchikawa.

I'd like to introduce Akimoto Uchikawa, who will assume the post of Representative Director, President and CEO from this April as my successor. Following the announcement in December, we still have some time before the new fiscal year to begin. So I'd like to take this opportunity to ask him to say a few words.

This is Akimoto Uchikawa. I have been appointed President, CEO beginning in April. I ask for your support and guidance. I have been with Teijin for over 30 years and have been involved in the materials business all these years. I started my career in the field of product development related to high-performance fibers. And after that, I was involved in the integration project of a Dutch company we acquired, which presently is Teijin Aramid company as well as the restructuring of polyester fiber business. In 2020, I became the General Manager of the Composites business unit, designated as a strategic focus business. And since last spring, I have been the President of Materials business of Teijin Group. And from April, I will be in charge of steering the entire Teijin Group. As I think of my role as President, I am reminded of the huge responsibility that comes with it to all the employees and their families and many other stakeholders. At the same time, I am excited to be involved in forging a new Teijin group. Teijin started as a venture company about 100 years ago. Since then, various challenges and changes and a history of difficulties have laid the current business foundation. Based on these tangible and intangible assets, we will continue to offer unique solutions and pursue our long-term vision to be a company that supports the society of the future. Currently, the business environment is full of uncertainties and remain challenging but I am committed to working together with our employees as one strong team and strive to bring about the future that we envision. I ask for your guidance and support. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]