Nine Japanese Chemical Companies – Areas of Expertise

 

In my last blog, I provided performance data for nine Japanese chemical companies.  (Click here to read that blog.)  These companies represent many of the largest publicly-traded chemical companies headquartered in Japan. 

In this blog, I am providing the reporting segments, those areas of expertise, that these companies perform in.  These reporting segments are based on what the companies state in their 2019 annual reports to be their general areas of expertise, and upon which their businesses are depended.   The first table below provides, alphabetically, the reporting segments, along with the company associated with each reporting segment technology.  The second table provides an alphabetical listing of the companies along with their stated reporting segments. 

 

table 1 company	segment technologies
toray	carbon fiber composite materials
toray	chemicals - performance
shin-etsu	chemicals - special
tosoh	chlor-alkali group
shin-etsu	electronics and functional materials
sumitomo	energy & functional materials
tosoh	engineering
toray	environmental & engineering
toray	fibers & textiles
mitsui	food & packing
nitto denko	functional base products
sumitomo	health & crop sciences
asahi kasei	health care
mitsubishi	health care
mitsui	health care
sekisui	high performance - plastics
asahi kasei	housing
sekisui	housing
sumitomo	IT-related chemicals
nitto denko	life science
sekisui	life science
toray	life science
asahi kasei	material
mitsui	material - basic
sekisui	materials
mitsubishi	materials - chemicals
mitsubishi	materials - gases
mitsui	mobility
nitto denko	optoelectrics
mitsubishi	performance products
tosoh	petrochemicals
sumitomo	petrochemicals & plastics
sumitomo	pharmaceuticals
shin-etsu	pvc/chlor - alkali
shin-etsu	semiconductor silicon
shin-etsu	silicones
tosoh	specialty

  

table 2 company	segment technologies
asahi kasei	health care
asahi kasei	housing
asahi kasei	material
mitsubishi	health care
mitsubishi	materials - chemicals
mitsubishi	materials - gases
mitsubishi	performance products
mitsui	food & packing
mitsui	health care
mitsui	material - basic
mitsui	mobility
nitto denko	functional base products
nitto denko	life science
nitto denko	optoelectrics
sekisui	high performance - plastics
sekisui	housing
sekisui	life science
sekisui	materials
shin-etsu	chemicals - special
shin-etsu	electronics and functional materials
shin-etsu	pvc/chlor - alkali
shin-etsu	semiconductor silicon
shin-etsu	silicones
sumitomo	energy & functional materials
sumitomo	health & crop sciences
sumitomo	IT-related chemicals
sumitomo	petrochemicals & plastics
sumitomo	pharmaceuticals
toray	carbon fiber composite materials
toray	chemicals - performance
toray	environmental & engineering
toray	fibers & textiles
toray	life science
tosoh	chlor-alkali group
tosoh	engineering
tosoh	petrochemicals
tosoh	specialty

 In a previous blog I provided the reporting segments for 15 European Union (EU) chemical companies (click here to read that blog).  Here are some comparisons between how the EU and Japanese companies identify their reporting segments: 

• 1.      Both areas identify, on average for all companies, four reporting segments (EU: 66 segments/15 companies = 4.4 reporting segments per company; Japan: 37 segments/9 companies = 4.1 segments per company).
• 2.      Whereas the 15 EU companies have 23 separate segment topics (e.g., additives, adhesives, etc.), the 9 Japanese companies have 26 (e.g., carbon fiber composite materials, chemicals, etc.).  This implies that the Japanese companies have a much broader range of technologies they use to describe their businesses compared to the EU companies (26 separate segments for 9 Japanese companies versus 23 separate segments for 15 EU companies).
• 3.      The EU list of technology segments are much more chemical-technology specific (e.g., additives, adhesives, intermediates, pigments, etc.). than the Japanese companies.  For example, the Japanese companies identify segments such as housing, performance products, mobility, life science, energy and functional materials, environmental and engineering, optoelectrics, and IT-related chemicals.  These Japanese segments are broad, not specific in what might be included.  
• 4.      In a previous blog I compared the performances of the 15 EU companies to the 9 Japanese companies and concluded that the EU companies’ financial performance, on average, seem better than the Japanese companies (click here to read that blog).  The much broader Japanese business interests (as implied by the conclusions in 2. and 3. above) might imply a difference in management perspectives that could account for the financial performance differences. 

Follow-up blogs to this and the previous ones will provide such data and analysis on chemical companies in the United States.