The HIP Investor

Japanese Business vs. Japanese Culture

An article found in this week’s Economist, “Take a leaf out of his book,” presents a candid message to Japanese business executives: it’s time to break with the past if you don’t want to break your company!

The article points out that in Japan certain cultural characteristics such as humility, loyalty, respect and consensus, which are seemingly positive, may be holding back Japanese businesses. 

Proving HIP Approaches Work: Wharton Professor Uncovers Link between Employee Satisfaction and Shareholder Value

Dr. Alex Edmans, an assistant professor at the Wharton School at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, just released a new analysis demonstrating that companies with high employee satisfaction and recognized by Fortune magazine's "Best Companies to Work For" list, tend to have higher long-term shareholder value. In addition, these "intangibles" appear not to be priced into the short-term valuations of equities (along with other environmental, social and governance issues).  This gives investors applying a HIP framework an advantage to buy in at a discount and later benefit if they hold for the longer term.

      
This study reinforces the tenets of the HIP methodology and approach - that focusing on Human Impact leads to Profit and shareholder value. Since employees are the core engine of a company, the developers of its intellectual capital, the face to the customer, and the managers of its assets, the focus of keeping them satisfied (like Southwest Airlines - NYSE: LUV) will typically result in investor benefits over the long term.

CLICK HERE to read the insightful abstract and download the full fascinating paper.

Want to Make More Money? Hire Women to Lead.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, likely the most customer-friendly in the industry, is positioning itself to make more money.  How?  By appointing Pamela Nicholson, who's worked her way up from the front-line ranks when the company was only 200 people over 27 years  ago, to the role of President in this family-owned private company.

Does adding women leaders make companies more money?  The research of Catalyst.org, a non-profit based in New York, has  consistently shown that the top 25% of companies with the largest share of women Directors on a public-company Board beat the bottom quartile companies with a return on equity 53% higher (13.9% for Boards with more women; 9.1% with fewer or no women).  For public-company Boards with 3 or more women (the upper echelons of the top quartile), the return on equity skyrockets to 16%.  Read more details about higher financial returns when women are represented in leadership – which is not yet close to the 50% of women in the population, or the 47% in the workforce.  At HIP Investor, we evaluate how companies that represent the population in Boards, executive teams, managers and staff drive higher "Human Impact" which tends to increase "Profit" and financial returns.  This Human Impact + Profit, or HIP, correlation can be tracked – and a useful measure for both companies and investors.

Walmart's Supplier Scorecard on Sustainability - Coming Soon!

As the world’s largest retailer, Walmart serves 200 million customers with nearly 2 million staff and a base of 60,000-plus suppliers, who provide the products to sell – which also contribute 90% of the chain’s total environmental footprint. Byy one estimate, the total revenues of Walmart’s suppliers equal one-third of global output (GDP) – with a likely similar share of environmental impacts. Shift this supply chain and you can change the world fast.

How? By scoring your suppliers on sustainability. Corporate leaders like Walmart are beginning to rate and rank suppliers with a scorecard tracking sustainability, weighting those factors alongside price, quality and service, and shifting the mix of products that is merchandised in stores. Walmart expects to start at the company level, proceed to the category level and end up at the product level when it’s complete – from local, national and global suppliers (including the large share of China’s exports that Walmart receives).