Back to the Tokyo First Section, thirteen years after going private (2018)

Where was the cause?

The key to reading this relisting lies in the distance between the stated purpose and the actual flow of funds. The company spoke of investing ahead in digital and of the discipline of outside shareholders, but much of what it raised went to redeeming preferred shares and repaying borrowings — the tidying-up of finance. Just as the MBO thirteen years earlier had proclaimed long-term structural reform while leaving heavy debt behind, this relisting too can be seen as an occasion where the principle proclaimed and the practice of capital did not necessarily coincide. That it was described at the time as a relisting without a cause was, presumably, because the market saw that distance.

It would be hasty, though, to read the relisting only as an exit. That the company returned to a position of continuous exposure to outside eyes did work as a discipline pressing it to move beyond a single-legged reliance on apparel. The portfolio optimization and record profits that followed can be read as a belated answer to the question thrown at it on the day it relisted. How far a decision taken while carrying a gap between principle and practice has since closed on its stated cause — that judgment rests on how far the original goal of earning outside apparel bears fruit.