Notes on Rakuten

Source: Bloomberg; Rakuten

Rakuten’s stock has retraced a fair bit following their mid-March announcement of a tie-up with Japan Post, and investments into the company by Tencent and Walmart.

Even as the street worries about their 5G business traction, ATEC thinks we should now be looking forward to concrete plans for Rakuten’s logistics (and hence core e-commerce) business.

We anticipate a substantial improvement in competitiveness from here. We believe much of any potential business upside is not currently reflected in most analysts’ estimates.

Longer term, we believe Rakuten’s open-RAN approach towards 5G will prove viable.On the technical aspect, so long as 1350 holds, ATEC believes a new uptrend is forming.

For now, we anticipate an initial target above JPY1,700.