Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking - Baillie Gifford – Details, episodes & analysis

Upheaval can create opportunity. Baillie Gifford’s Japan Team seeks out companies that will derive the greatest long-term benefit from transformational forces impacting business and broader society. In this podcast, investment manager Matthew Brett identifies four ‘structural growth’ drivers and the portfolio companies taking advantage of them.

Background:

Matthew Brett is the investment manager of The Baillie Gifford Japan Trust and our Japanese Fund, as well as co-manager of the Japanese Income Growth Fund. In this episode of Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking he discusses four forces creating long-term growth opportunities:

-        Japan’s late embrace of digitalisation

-        the rising spending power of its Asian neighbours

-        the accelerated adoption of industrial automation

-        the unmet health needs of an ageing population

Brett also names some of the Japanese companies driving these changes or otherwise gaining advantage, including ecommerce conglomerate Rakuten, skincare beauty firm Shiseido, machine vision specialist Keyence and Alzheimer’s drug developer Eisai.

Resources:

Japan: the next opportunity

Kohei Saito: Slow Down – How Degrowth Communism Can Save The Earth

Companies mentioned include:

Calbee

DMG Mori

Eisai

Keyence

KOSÉ

PeptiDream

Rakuten

Shiseido

SoftBank

Timecodes:

00:00    Introduction

1:45      From psychology to investment

2:25      Changing Japan

3:15      Japan’s distinguishing market characteristics

4:15      Visiting companies and other equities research

6:00      Performance versus the TOPIX

8:00      Defining digitalisation

8:30      Leaving paper behind

10:15    Rakuten’s online enterprise

10:50    The advantage of QR barcode payments

11:30    Rakuten’s loyalty points scheme

12:25    Accelerating automation and industrial robots

13:30    DMG Mori’s precision machines

14:40   Keyence and robotic vision

16:40    China’s chance of catch-up

17:40    Rising wealth of Japan’s Asian neighbours

19:00    Shiseido’s skincare advantage

20:10    Unmet healthcare needs of an ageing population

21:30    Testing further uses for Eisai’s Alzheimer’s drug

23:30    PeptiDream’s synthetic peptides

24:00    Using AI to put peptides to use

25:10    Calbee’s continued innovation

26:00    Book choice

28:50    Conclusion

Sometimes, you have to take a step back to leap forward. Over the past couple of years, Meta, Amazon, Block and Shopify are among the growth companies to have made efficiency cuts following the pandemic. Gary Robinson, an investor in Baillie Gifford’s US Equity Team, says that’s made them more agile and resilient – qualities that will let them take advantage of artificial intelligence and other opportunities to drive long-term growth.

Background:

Gary Robinson is joint manager of the Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust, a manager of the American Fund and a partner in our firm. In this episode of Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking, he explores how four leading internet-focused firms have streamlined their operations and reallocated resources to become more adaptable during a period of rapid change.

Robinson draws a parallel with companies that made cutbacks after the global financial crisis to suggest that the markets may have underestimated how much growth can be unlocked by leaders taking a hard look at their firm’s spending, organisational structure and business priorities.

Robinson suggests that recent efficiency drives will help Shopify, Meta and Amazon pursue AI-related opportunities that could meaningfully increase their earnings. And at Block, efforts to bring two products closer together could help the firm challenge Visa, Mastercard and American Express.

Resources:

Behind The Tech: Tobi Lütke: CEO and Founder, Shopify

Dwarkesh Podcast: Mark Zuckerberg – Llama 3, Open Sourcing $10b Models & Caesar Augustus

Bent Flyvberg: How Big Things Get Done

Cyril Northcote Parkinson: Parkinson’s Law, and Other Studies in Administration

More from Gary Robinson:

Lessons from evolutionary biology

Why companies should embrace chaos

Companies mentioned include:

Amazon

Block

Meta

Netflix

Shopify

Timecodes:

00:00    Introduction

01:40    A background in biochemistry

02:55    The appeal of American companies

03:30    Parallels with the global financial crisis

04:40   Post-Covid efficiency efforts

06:25    Addressing overhiring and patched-together processes

07:40    Future-proofed businesses

08:00    The potential of AI

08:10    Shopify and the distraction of side quests

10:45    Shopify’s Sidekick assistant

12:50    Engineering Shopify’s internal operations

14:20    The authority of founder-leaders

16:00    Meta’s ‘year of efficiency’

18:00    How AI can drive further growth at Facebook and Instagram

20:10    Business chatbots on WhatsApp and Messenger

21:15    Investing in Block

22:30    Capping employee numbers without compromising growth

24:40    Square and Cash App’s potential to rival Visa and Mastercard

26:35    Meeting Jack Dorsey

27:40    Discipline and focus at Amazon

29:00    Amazon’s fast-growing advertising business

30:20    Generative AI’s trillion-dollar opportunity for AWS

31:25    Offloading routine tasks to artificial intelligence

32:25    Book recommendation

33:40    Outro

To mark the pioneering Trust’s anniversary, James Dow delves into SAINTS’ origins and explains how he helped reinvigorate it for a new age.

Background:

The Scottish American Investment Company (SAINTS) made its debut in 1873, introducing the first trust to prevent shareholders from facing ruin if a business they backed failed. This groundbreaking approach instilled confidence, paving the way for the public to invest in a vital US railway among other enticing overseas opportunities.

Nearly 20 years ago, Baillie Gifford took over the Trust’s management. Joint manager James Dow helped revitalise SAINTS by focusing on exceptional income-driven global companies. As he tells podcast host Malcolm Borthwick, their activities range from making AI-enhanced factory cameras to creating some of the world’s most sought-after cosmetics.

Resources:

The Scottish American Investment Trust Company

Order a copy of the SAINTS: 150 Years book

SAINTS Manager Insights video, April 2023

The SAINTS approach webinar video, March 2023

Shoemaker by Reebok founder Joe Foster

My Years at Volkswagen by Carl Hahn

Baillie Gifford’s Trust magazine

Follow us via:

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Companies mentioned include:

Analog Devices

Atlas Copco

Cognex

L'Oréal

Keystone Positive Change’s Kate Fox on thinking about the world in 2050 to spot opportunities today.

Background:

Kate’s conversation with Malcolm Borthwick covers her work with the Deep Transitions Futures project, coordinated by the University of Sussex and Utrecht University and supported by Baillie Gifford.

The project aims to identify patterns and insights from past ‘deep transitions’, such as the Industrial Revolution, to inform and guide our approach to identifying solutions to present and future challenges. These include climate change, social inequality, and biodiversity loss. The initiative seeks to develop strategies for fostering radical innovation. It engages investors, policymakers and researchers, among other stakeholders, to promote a transformative investment philosophy and drive systemic change.

Resources:

The second deep transition: Johan Schot’s theory of radical change

Deep Transitions Futures project

Previous Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking episodes

Follow us via:

Twitter

LinkedIn

Companies mentioned include:

Beyond Meat

Deere

Northvolt

Tesla

Umicore

Meet the lesser-known niche players thriving in the shadow of the country’s big brands

Think of Japanese companies and chances are giants such as Sony, Hitachi and Mitsubishi come to mind. You probably don't think of Shima Seiki - a maker of automated knitting machines, Descente, which owns licences to use brands such as Le Coq Sportif and Umbro, or Shoei, a maker of handmade motorcycle helmets. But these kinds of companies are the beating heart of its economy. Japan’s three and a half million small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) employ about seven in 10 private sector workers. These firms are sometimes overlooked by investors in Japan, but not by Praveen Kumar, manager of Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon, who explains why they provide ample opportunities for growth investors.

Praveen Kumar is manager of the Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon and Baillie Gifford Japan Trust. You can read more about his and his colleagues’ thoughts about the positive outlook for Japan’s most inventive and disruptive companies at our Japan Forum: Steering through rough seas.  For the thoughts of his colleague Donald Farquharson, Head of Japanese Equities, on the country’s post-Covid return to normality, go to Investing in Japan: Distance lends perspective. And to find out more about how Praveen and his team get to hear about exciting SMEs, watch Investing in Japan: Insights with our Japan researchers. 

As many question the future of growth investing, the American Fund’s Dave Bujnowski explores the new engines powering progress.

Kirsty Gibson and Julia Angeles on how technology is changing the way we do business.

Rose Nguyen on the companies seeking to overcome the scourge of heart disease.

Today’s outsized growth rarely follows a steady or predictable path, according to Kirsty Gibson of Baillie Gifford’s US Equities Team.

It’s a small country with a large number of businesses that can keep innovating and growing for decades. Stephen Paice explores what’s so great about Sweden.