Exiting coal after 111 years while buying the next pillar (2024)

Closing the founding business while buying its replacement

What distinguishes this decision is that retreat and expansion ran at the same time. Where most resource companies leave their results at the mercy of commodity prices, Mitsui Matsushima Holdings took the cash the coal spike had generated and, rather than returning it and calling the story finished, directed it into acquisitions in consumer goods and industrial products — businesses whose prices move to a different rhythm. Settling the founding business, which looks like a backward step, was carried out as one movement with the forward work of assembling the next earnings base; the design bears the mark of a president who came from investment banking.

Whether a bundle of acquired niche businesses can produce, steadily, profits on the scale of the coal windfall will nonetheless be decided by how they are run. The target of ¥5 billion or more in profit by March 2027 has to be met by the earning power of each acquired business, not by price gains. Closing here the 111 years that ran from the black rock first dug at Matsushima in 1781, this company now faces a new question: whether it can draw growth from its judgment in choosing businesses and its skill in operating them.