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CEO behind 5,300% stock gain says secret is raising salaries

Masaru Tange says the strategy that turned his company into one of Japans best-performing stocks may be surprising: He buys smaller firms and boosts their workers pay.

Tange’s Shift, a software tester, acquires other businesses near the bottom of the industry supply chain and raises their engineers’ salaries. He says he’s able to do this and still charge competitive prices by cutting out layers of companies that serve as middlemen in the outsourcing process. And having more workers leads to higher sales.

Shift’s shares have risen more than 5,300% since it went public in 2014, the second-best performance on Tokyo’s benchmark stock index. The company’s market capitalization has surged to about $2.3 billion, pushing the value of Tange’s 33% stake to about $745 million.

Tange, 46, says his business model is an attempt to remove inefficiencies in Japan’s software industry, where layers of subcontractors take cuts on orders before passing the work to another company below. It’s also, he says, a break from the M&A strategy of buying a business and looking to reduce costs.

“I have a strong urge to rescue these young employees,” Tange, Shift’s founder, president and CEO, said in an interview. “I want to create a fair working environment through M&A.”

Tange grew up in what he describes as an ordinary family in Hiroshima in southwestern Japan, where both his parents were civil servants. He established Shift in 2005 after majoring in mechanical engineering and spending more than five years working for a consulting firm.

Shift started out advising companies on how to improve profits. In 2009, it entered the software testing business.

Tange said he wanted to change engineers’ perception that software testing was a second-rate job, including by paying them more money.

For example, for a service where the market price was $18,000 (2 million yen), Shift would charge $14,000 (1.5 million yen). This would enable it to win customers. At the same time, it would raise the amount paid to the engineer to about $7,300 (800,000 yen) from $4,600 (500,000 yen). It could do so, Tange said, by getting rid of middlemen.

Shift acquired Yusuke Sato’s company in 2016. Since then, the software developer says his salary has jumped by more than 70%.

“Joining Shift was a huge turning point in my career,” Sato said.

Shift has 3,308 engineers as permanent employees as of the end of February, up more than 14-fold from 228 at the end of November 2015. The company acquired at least 14 firms during that period.

Increasing engineers leads directly to revenue growth because it enables the company to do more business, according to Go Saito, an analyst at Credit Suisse who initiated coverage on the stock in February with an outperform rating.

“Sales can be derived by multiplying the number of engineers and the unit price for engineers,” Saito wrote in a report that month. “The company has already created a framework for the skills development of engineers, enabling it to cultivate high-quality human resources.”

Revenue rose to $262.4 million (28.7 billion yen) in the 12 months ended August 2020, more than triple the level three years earlier. Profit increased to $14.6 million (1.6 billion yen), compared to $1.9 million (208 million yen) three years before. Shift forecasts that sales will jump to a record $411.5 million (45 billion) yen this fiscal year.

Software engineers are underpaid in Japan compared to the U.S. and there’s a shortage of them, according to Saito. That’s one reason why Shift’s model of outsourcing software testing works, he said.

“We’re the biggest in Japan in this area,” Tange said. “I do see revenue reaching 100 billion yen,” he said, referring to the company’s goal for the fiscal year ending August 2025.

Shift’s soaring shares haven’t been immune to pullbacks. They’ve fallen about 22% from a record in October as investors sold high-growth technology stocks. Even after the drop, the company trades at about 87 times estimated earnings.

For veteran investor Mitsushige Akino, the stock may see more volatility in coming months and could fall in market downturns. But its “fundamentals are solid and Shift is making progress on the vision it laid out,” the senior executive officer at Ichiyoshi Asset Management said. “It won’t be strange to see more buying of these types of shares if investors focus once more on growth stocks.”

Credit Suisse’s Saito says the key will be whether Shift is able to continue to increase its number of engineers.

Whether that will happen remains to be seen, but Tange, at least, isn’t short of confidence.

“We’re just getting started,” he said.

Published : May 18, 2021

By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Min Jeong Lee, Toshiro Hasegawa

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Scientists say Covid is airborne. Now authorities think so, too

A quiet revolution has permeated global health circles. Authorities have come to accept what many researchers have argued for over a year: The coronavirus can spread through the air.

That new acceptance, by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, comes with concrete implications: Scientists are calling for ventilation systems to be overhauled like public water supplies were in the 1800s after fetid pipes were found to harbor cholera.

Cleaner indoor air won’t just fight the pandemic, it will minimize the risk of catching flu and other respiratory infections that cost the U.S. more than $50 billion a year, researchers said in a study in the journal Science on Friday. Avoiding these germs and their associated sickness and productivity losses would, therefore, offset the cost of upgrading ventilation and filtration in buildings.

“We are used to the fact that we have clean water coming from our taps,” said Lidia Morawska, a distinguished professor in the school of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, who led the study. Likewise, “we should expect clean, pollutant- and pathogen-free air” from indoor spaces, she said over Zoom.

The study’s authors, comprising 39 scientists from 14 countries, are demanding universal recognition that infections can be prevented by improving indoor ventilation systems. They want the WHO to extend its indoor air quality guidelines to cover airborne pathogens, and for building ventilation standards to include higher airflow, filtration and disinfection rates, and monitors that enable the public to gauge the quality of the air they’re breathing.

A “paradigm shift is needed on the scale that occurred when Chadwick’s Sanitary Report in 1842 led the British government to encourage cities to organize clean water supplies and centralized sewage systems,” they wrote.

“No one takes responsibility for the air,” Morawska said. “It’s kind of accepted that the air could be of whatever quality — containing viruses and pathogens.”

SARS-CoV-2 multiplies in the respiratory tract, enabling it to spread in particles of varying sizes emitted from an infected person’s nose and throat during breathing, speaking, singing, coughing and sneezing.

The biggest particles, including visible spatters of spittle, fall fast, settling on the ground or nearby surfaces, whereas the tiniest — aerosols invisible to the naked eye — can be carried farther and stay aloft longer, depending on humidity, temperature and airflow.

It’s these aerosol particles, which can linger for hours and travel indoors, that have have stoked controversy.

Although airborne infections, like tuberculosis, measles and chickenpox are harder to trace than pathogens transmitted in tainted food and water, research over the past 16 months supports the role aerosols play in spreading the pandemic virus.

That’s led to official recommendations for public mask-wearing and other infection-control strategies. But, even those came after aerosol scientists lobbied for more-stringent measures to minimize risk.

Morawska and a colleague published an open letter backed by 239 scientists last July requesting authorities endorse additional precautions, such as increasing ventilation and avoiding recirculating potentially virus-laden air in buildings.

WHO guidance has been amended at least twice since, though the Geneva-based organization maintains that the coronavirus spreads “mainly between people who are in close contact with each other, typically within 1 meter,” or about 3 feet.

Morawska, who heads a WHO collaborating center on air quality and health, says that’s an oversimplification.

“There’s nothing magic about this 1 meter,” Morawska said. The closer to an infected person, the higher the concentration of infectious particles and the shorter the exposure time needed for infection to occur. “As you are moving away, the concentration decreases,” she said.

Infectious aerosols remain concentrated in the air longer in poorly ventilated, confined indoor spaces, according to Morawska.

Although a high density of people in such settings increases the number of people potentially exposed to an airborne infection, enclosed indoor areas that aren’t crowded may also be hazardous — a distinction Morawska says the WHO should make clearer.

“The WHO, step by step, is modifying the language,” she said.

Morawska, a Polish-born physicist who was previously a fellow of the International Atomic Energy Agency, can take credit for the WHO’s changing stance, said Raina MacIntyre, professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

“Professor Morawska’s contribution, on the background of world-leading expertise in aerosol science, made a real impact by forcing WHO’s hand,” MacIntyre said in an email.

The role of airborne transmission “has been denied for so long, partly because expert groups that advise government have not included engineers, aerosol scientists, occupational hygienists and multidisciplinary environmental health experts,” MacIntyre wrote in The Conversation last week.

“A false narrative dominated public discussion for over a year,” she said. “This resulted in hygiene theater — scrubbing of hands and surfaces for little gain — while the pandemic wreaked mass destruction on the world.”

Some people working in infection prevention and control and related fields have stuck rigidly to beliefs that minimized aerosol transmission, despite evidence challenging their views because “they do not want to lose face,” said Julian Tang, a clinical virologist and honorary associate professor in the department of respiratory sciences at England’s University of Leicester.

“We all have to adapt and progress as new data become available,” Tang said. That’s especially true in public health, where official policies and guidance based on “outdated and unsupported thinking and attitudes can cost lives,” he said.

Morawska said she hopes the attention that the pandemic has drawn to face masks and the risks associated with inhaling someone else’s exhaled breath will be a catalyst for cleaner indoor air.

“If we don’t do the things we are saying now, next time a pandemic comes, especially one caused by a respiratory pathogen, it will be the same,” she said.

Published : May 18, 2021

By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jason Gale

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China seeks red tourism boost from Communist Partys 100-year milestone

Two Chinese provinces are taking a lead in promoting “red tourism” ahead of the Communist Partys centennial, as President Xi Jinping seeks to boost domestic consumption while consolidating power.

Jiangxi party chief Liu Qi announced at a news conference in Beijing last week that his province would host a China Red Tourism Expo with neighboring Hunan in October. The party is trying to improve coordination between the different red tourism sites that attracted an estimated 1.4 billion visits in 2019 before the pandemic stymied travel, according to the tourism ministry, roughly equal to China’s population.

Eastern Jiangxi province is home to Jinggangshan — the so-called cradle of the Chinese revolution — while Hunan has Shaoshan, the hometown of late party patriarch Mao Zedong. Other key red tourism sites around the country include Yanan in Shaanxi province and Zunyi in Guizhou province.

The party will celebrate 100 years since its founding later this summer, an occasion which Xi is also using to showcase his own grip over the ruling party. In the lead-up, the government has been pushing study of party history by all sectors of society including the business community, promoting lectures and gala events and encouraging people to visit key historic sites that commemorate important events.

One person answering the call is 70-year-old Qingdao resident Zhao Fangan, who with her husband and a group of friends planned to visit several such red tourism sites including Ruijin, the former residence of Mao, also in Jiangxi as well as Yanan, near the end point of the Long March.

“We all want to see these places where the Chinese Red Army has gone,” the former teacher told Bloomberg News last month on the steps of the Jinggangshan Revolution Museum. “This year is a very special year — the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China — we want to commemorate it in this way.”

While many of the visitors observed during a government-led reporting trip to Jiangxi and Guizhou province in April were senior citizens, there was also a push to kindle interest in history among other groups including teenagers. They will be offered interactive experiences such as “taste the red rice” of the revolutionaries or to sing Red Army ballads, Liu said. He added that the May Day holiday saw tourism traffic at “red heritage” sites in his province grow by 300% compared to the previous year. While he didn’t provide specific numbers on the provincial level, he did cite the Nanchang Aug. 1 Memorial in the provincial capital as an example, saying the 5,000 tickets to the venue were “sold out” every day during the period.

“You can see tourists flooding all of the red tourists sites such as the ones in Jinggangshan,” Liu said. “As we mark the centenary of the CPC this year, we should seize the opportunity of party history, learning and education, and try to improve Jiangxi’s red tourism in terms of format, content and services.”

Published : May 18, 2021

By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg

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Biden calls for cease-fire in Israel-Hamas fighting as pressure mounts to halt violence

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Monday called for a cease-fire to end a week of fierce fighting between Israel and Hamas militants, urging both sides to “protect innocent civilians” in a statement that amounted to a subtle rebuke of the Israeli government, a close ally of the United States.

Biden “reiterated his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks” during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House said. But in adding that Biden “expressed support for a cease-fire,” the administration went further than previous accounts of U.S. interactions with Israeli officials in describing the closed-door diplomacy and suggesting a private push.

Even as pressure mounted from fellow Democrats and others urging a cease-fire, Biden administration officials had stopped short of joining their calls until Biden spoke to Netanyahu and then issued a carefully worded statement afterward.

On the whole, the comments from Biden and his top advisers reflected their determination to cautiously navigate the ongoing conflict. The administration had declined to weigh in earlier Monday on whether Israel’s military assault against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip is proportionate to the risk posed by Hamas rocket fire, as behind-the-scenes efforts to bring conflict to a close continued.

Biden’s conversation with Netanyahu was their third since the deadly exchanges began, amid rising political pressure in the United States to do more to rein in Israeli airstrikes that have killed more than 200 Palestinians in Gaza.

The death toll among Israelis from rocket fire and rising Israeli-Palestinian violence stood at 10, and at least 15 Palestinians have died in clashes in the West Bank.

Pressed during her daily press briefing on whether Biden still believes Israel’s military response has been proportionate, White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to answer directly.

“We’re not going to give a day-by-day evaluation,” said Psaki, who stressed the concerns that Biden communicated in weekend phone calls to Israeli and Palestinian leaders about lives lost on both sides of the conflict.

Biden and other U.S. officials have repeatedly endorsed Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas rocket attacks, which target Israeli towns and cities indiscriminately.

“The role we are playing, the action, the prism we are making all of our decisions through is how can we help bring an end to the violence and bring an end to de-escalate the situation on the ground,” Psaki said. “And our calculation at this point is that having those conversations behind the scenes, weighing in with our important strategic partnership we have with Israel, also with other countries in the region, is the most constructive approach we can take. So our approach is through quiet, intensive diplomacy, and that’s where we feel we can be most effective.”

The muted tone reflects a decision by the Biden administration that heavy public pressure on Israel is likely to backfire. Multiple U.S. officials are applying some pressure and advice behind the scenes, with the goal of winding down the conflict, ideally within days.

It is not clear whether either Israel or Hamas would agree to a formal cease-fire, but U.S. and some Arab officials have signaled that a de facto agreement to end hostilities may suffice.

Egypt is a key go-between and had achieved some success last week in persuading Hamas to temporarily cease firing long-range rockets into Israel. The conflict has since escalated, however, and Israel appears to be following a pattern from past conflicts with Hamas, in which Israel attempts to quickly run down a list of Hamas targets before agreeing to pull back.

“The Israelis have a list of Hamas targets they want to hit, so they’re not open to a cease-fire” now, said one State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.

One Western diplomat familiar with discussions said there is a “race-the-clock” aspect to the Israeli actions, with the clock being the buildup of international pressure to end active hostilities because of civilian loss of life. Israel maintains that Hamas intentionally endangers civilians by locating military targets among homes, schools and ordinary commercial buildings.

Pressure from the United States is often most persuasive, both from administration officials and from members of Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday that he agrees with colleagues who put their names to a letter Sunday calling for an immediate cease-fire.

“I want to see a cease-fire reached quickly and mourn the loss of life,” Schumer told reporters.

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and 28 Senate Democrats had called for a cease-fire, broadening the previous notes of criticism of Israel and the Biden administration’s response that came largely from liberal Democrats.

Young, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., joined a statement saying: “Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas’ rocket attacks, in a manner proportionate with the threat its citizens are facing. . . . Both sides must recognize that too many lives have been lost and must not escalate the conflict further.”

Asked for her response to growing calls inside the Democratic Party for the United States to take a harder line against Israel, Psaki said political considerations must not be the primary focus.

“Our message is sometimes you have to step back from politics for a moment. It’s not easy to do,” Psaki said. “And we recognize and agree that watching the lives lost of these Palestinian children, of these families – the fear you see in the eyes of the Israeli people, it is heartbreaking.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken drew short of calling for a cease-fire or a statement at the U.N. Security Council on Monday.

“We are ready to lend support if the parties seek a cease-fire,” Blinken said at a news conference in Copenhagen as part of an unrelated tour of Nordic countries.

When asked why the United States would not sign on to efforts at the United Nations to advance a cease-fire, Blinken said, “We are not standing in the way of diplomacy.”

“The question is, will any given action, or any given statement, as a practical matter, end the violence?” he said. “If we think there’s something, including at the United Nations, that would advance that, we’d be for it.”

Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan both spoke with their Israeli counterparts on Monday.

Blinken “expressed deep concern at the inter-communal violence,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

“The two discussed the path forward, and the Secretary noted that the United States would remain engaged with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and other regional stakeholders as part of our diplomacy to ease tensions and put an end to the hostilities.”

For days, the United States, a staunch protector of Israel at the United Nations, has blocked efforts by China, Tunisia and Norway to move the Security Council forward on a statement, including a call for a cessation of hostilities.

Blinken’s qualified support for a cease-fire – only if the parties themselves agree – has been interpreted as an accommodation of Israel’s goal to hit more Hamas targets. Israel also dislikes the term cease-fire because it could imply that Hamas is a legitimate government able to negotiate a formal agreement.

“It’s a pretty clear signal to Israel that it has time to finish the job on its terms,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. director at the International Crisis Group.

Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. official who has advised both Republican and Democratic administrations on Middle East issues, said waiting on Hamas or Israel to endorse a cease-fire is a recipe for further violence.

“The longer this goes on the greater danger of a mass casualty event either by errant Hamas rockets or Israeli air/artillery,” he said. “Biden is clearly giving Netanyahu the time and space and political support.”

“Clearly, Biden et. al. have had conversations with Netanyahu about his timeline for ending this. And the IDF isn’t done yet,” he said, using the acronym for the Israel Defense Forces.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been a leading voice in the region criticizing Israel’s conduct during the current conflict, on Monday condemned the Biden administration’s decision to approve new weapons sales to the Netanyahu government.

“You are writing history with your bloody hands in this incident, which seriously, disproportionately attacked Gaza and caused the martyrdom of hundreds of thousands of people,” he said after a cabinet meeting in Ankara, in comments that wildly inflated the death toll from Israel’s airstrikes in Gaza.

Published : May 18, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Anne Gearan, John Hudson, Sean Sullivan