Jardine Matheson: Revealing the 2030 playbook

Research evidence excerpt

Jardine Matheson: Revealing the 2030 playbook

zeable deals every year.

• Upsizing the buyback program: JM currently has a US$250 million buyback program,

which is 94% completed already (Figure 4JardineMatheson–sharebuyback). At the Investor Day, JM announced a new

US$500 million buyback program till end-2027, representing 2.6% of market cap. If

disposals progress well, we would not be surprised if JM further upsizes its buyback

program.

Key surprises from the Investor Day

• Key positive surprises: We are pleasantly surprised by some portfolio companies’ strong

growth appetite. For example, Jardine Engineering targets to double earnings by 2030

(one-third through organic growth and two-thirds through acquisitions), while

Mandarin Oriental targets to grow its management business revenue by 18% p.a. by

2030. While these two altogether may only account for ~10% of JM’s earnings, they are

still helpful in partially offsetting the potential earnings drag from Astra. Another positive

take is the strong commitment from CEO Mr. Lincoln Pan and his “no free lunch”

philosophy for senior management (including those in portfolio companies). He is

personally committed to (1) invest US$20 million in JM shares (within his first 12 months

with JM) (Table 1JardineMatheson-StakeincreasebyCEOMr.LincolnPansinceDecember2025); (2) invest >50% of STIP into shares; (3) convert RSU compensation

fully to PSUs. In his CEO compensation mix, we estimate that only <15% is from base

salary (Figure 5JardineMatheson-ilustrationofCEOcompensationmix) if all KPIs are met. In the LTIP (Table 2JardineMatheson-long-termincentiveplan(LTIP)), achieving the TSR target has

a 70% weighting, followed by a 20% weighting on “growing run-rate PAT by 2030 from