STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 3 March 2014

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37. Daiwa House to Invest 150 Billion Yen in U.S. Rental Housing

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-03/daiwa-house-to-invest-150-billion-yen-in-u-s-rental-housing.html

Daiwa House Industry Co. (1925), Japan’s biggest homebuilder by market value, plans to invest 150 billion yen ($1.48 billion) in U.S. rental housing, three times more than it had aimed to allocate to overseas investments, to boost revenue.

Daiwa House will acquire and develop leasing properties in Texas and allocate the funds over the next three years, the Osaka-based company said in an e-mailed statement today. The homebuilder targets 50 billion yen of revenue in the U.S. by the year ending March 2019, it said.

Japan’s shrinking population has prompted the country’s homebuilders such as Daiwa House to seek new revenue sources. Texas is the most that Daiwa House is investing overseas for rental housing and compares with the 50 billion yen the company had announced for investments abroad in its mid-term plan in November.

“The investment amount is very aggressive and it seems risky,” said Masahiro Mochizuki, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG via telephone.