Japan Machinery Sector: Asian investor visit feedback

Research evidence excerpt

Japan Machinery Sector: Asian investor visit feedback

Global Research

21 July 2026ab

Japan Machinery Sector Equities

JapanAsian investor visit feedback

Factory Equipment

Tsubasa Sasaki

We visited with about 50 Asian institutional investors Analyst

On 13-17 July, we visited Hong Kong and Singapore and held meetings with about 50 tsubasa.sasaki@ubs.com

major Asian institutional investors. During the visit, the market entered a risk-off phase, +813-5208 6207

mainly in factory automation (FA) and semiconductors, and one of the central themes in

investor discussions was the background to recent share price declines. In addition,

while FA was the consensus long within the machinery sector among institutional

investors through H1 2026, we noted signs of interest broadening to non-FA subsectors.

As the capex cycle enters its latter stage, our impression was that that discussions were

increasingly focused on earnings sustainability and valuations.

Investor views on the correction in the FA sector

Many institutional investors saw the recent decline in FA shares as being driven more by

position adjustments than by deteriorating fundamentals. Many were of the opinion

that the emergence of low-priced AI models in China and the correction in

semiconductor-related shares in the South Korean equity market, which has become

increasingly linked to Japanese equities, had spilled over to FA, which had been viewed

as part of the AI/semiconductor-related trade. In addition, many also noted that because

market expectations for solid FA fundamentals are high, when results fall short of

market estimates, as seen in Yaskawa Electric’s Q1 results, share prices can be prone to

sharp corrections. For the near term, the prevailing view appears to be that risk/reward is