Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only, not investment advice. I may own equities mentioned in this article. Investing involves risk, so always do your own research before buying or selling any securities.
I was in the little-known, but oh so amazing, city of Chichibu over the weekend. Of all the things that amazed me, I got the most obsessed with a mountain: Mt Buko.
It towers over the whole city, and from the north it honestly looks like God came down and grabbed one side of it. That bare grey staircase you see on the thumbnail is one of Japan’s biggest limestone quarries.
Next to the mountain, there’s even the Mt Buko Museum (武甲山資料館), where nobody seems to have touched the exhibits since the mid 90s. Rumor has it that the cement company that got the rights to blow up the region’s most sacred mountain built the museum to keep the protesters away.
Haha, so 90s coded, but I loved it.
It also switched my investor brain on, so I started reading about the company that owns the biggest slice of that history: Taiheiyo Cement is Japan’s largest cement maker, with 36.6% of the domestic market, and it makes almost a third of its sales in the US. But since its heyday it has merged twice, and the market it was built for has shrunk by half.
However, maybe the tables have turned... Cement prices are going up again because energy is going up (yeah, the Iran war, among other things). And maybe, just maybe, if the finances are good, this is a great way to get exposure to it! Let’s find out:
