Nomura stock hit after research affiliate writedown, Europe loss

[TOKYO] Nomura Holdings shares fell after its fourth-quarter profit missed analysts’ estimates, due to writedowns and a loss in Europe.

The results released after the market closed on Friday (Apr 24) overshadowed a second straight year of record earnings for Japan’s biggest brokerage. Impairments on its stakes in its research affiliate and a forestry company contrasted with otherwise solid results from its wealth management, trading and investment-banking operations.

The shares slid as much as 6.5 per cent in Tokyo on Monday morning, and are now down more than 4 per cent this year, contrasting with the benchmark Topix’s 9.7 per cent advance. Net income rose 2.7 per cent from a year earlier to 73.9 billion yen (S$592 million) in the three months ended Mar 31, missing analysts’ estimates for 98.9 billion yen.

The results may renew questions about Nomura’s ability to deliver consistent earnings, even after full-year profit hit an all-time high of 362.1 billion yen. Nomura has been benefiting from volatile global markets and a boom in investing and dealmaking at home. The coming quarters may provide a test for CEO Kentaro Okuda as the Iran war puts a strain on the global economy.

“Concerns are likely to arise over earnings stability,” said Koichi Niwa, an analyst at UBS Group in Tokyo. While the results confirmed solid earnings for wealth and wholesale businesses, “investors could be concerned about the emergence of one offs, such as weaker profit contributions from affiliates and impairment losses on equity stakes in investees”.

Niwa said that fixed-income revenue in the wholesale division also fell short of UBS’s expectations, while “costs seem to have run ahead”.

Last quarter’s results were marred by a six billion yen loss in equity in earnings of affiliates, along with a 2.9 billion yen loss related to “economic hedging” transactions.

In particular, the firm’s roughly 20 per cent shareholding in Nomura Research Institute (NRI) was impacted as the consulting company recorded about 97 billion yen of impairment losses in Australia and North America. NRI shares fell as much as 11 per cent on Monday.

Meanwhile, Nomura’s European operations posted a 13.8 billion yen pretax loss, as costs swelled. It was the company’s second straight loss from the region, after its operations there were hit by a setback in the digital-asset market in the previous quarter.

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Chief financial officer Hiroyuki Moriuchi said that the firm became more conservative in its US macro trading business in the fourth quarter due to the Middle East situation. He said that the economy and financial businesses would be hit if the conflict gets protracted.

Already, some deals have been delayed, though there are plenty of mergers and acquisitions and equity capital market transactions in the pipeline, Moriuchi said. BLOOMBERG