Share buybacks, offerings, activist stakes, shareholder votes and board changes at Japanese companies.
A sole share transfer created a pure holding company above Kyushu Electric Power on October 1, the same date its former chairman and president took the same posts at the parent and a 1990 joiner became the utility's president.
Chugoku Electric Power will borrow ¥149.0bn from eight banks under a GX Promotion Organization guarantee to fund safety construction at Shimane Unit 3 and a turbine rebuild at a hydropower plant in Ochi District, Shimane Prefecture, with the loan contract due September 28 and disbursement scheduled two days later.
erex has sold ¥8.4bn of unsecured bonds in 1.5-, 3- and 5-year tranches priced at 2.740%, 3.506% and 4.516%, the first drawdown under a ¥50bn shelf registration filed in July, with most of the proceeds set to repay bonds maturing next spring and fund growth spending that includes renewable energy.
Daiwa, Nomura and Mizuho will underwrite a Kansai Electric transition bond earmarked for nuclear-restart safety work, hydrogen co-firing research and grid renewal, but the utility still has not disclosed how large the issue will be.
Hokkaido Electric Power priced a 3.458% coupon on ¥30bn of new 10-year bonds and is routing the proceeds to its grid subsidiary for renewable-linked network upgrades, including expansion of the undersea interconnection with Honshu.
A quarter of the ¥32.12bn spent buying up Shikoku Electric Power shares was borrowed, and more than 10 million of the acquired shares are already pledged to two banks as collateral.
Japan Credit Rating Agency lifted RENOVA's long-term issuer and bond ratings to BBB+ from BBB, saying cash flow from newly full-scale biomass plants and a growing battery-storage business justify the change.
Tokyo Gas will be able to sell up to ¥400bn in bonds once its new shelf registration takes effect on August 26, but the filing fixes no coupon, maturity, or size for any individual note before then.
Hokkaido Electric's first public hybrid bond fixes a 3.393% coupon until 2033, runs to a 2063 maturity, and gives the utility discretion to defer interest payments, terms that let R&I and JCR count half the ¥80bn issue as equity rather than debt.
A pro-rated buyback into JX Metals' own tender offer trimmed ENEOS Holdings' stake from 42.38% to 35.28%, a shift worth roughly ¥194.8bn according to the filing's own disclosure.
The catch: Hokuriku Electric's shareholders wanted to cut the dividend to ¥5 a share and send the difference to Noto earthquake relief and rate cuts; the board's ¥15 payout won with 98% support instead. Six separate proposals to quit nuclear power and reprocessing were also voted down, though the filing doesn't disclose how close those specific votes were.
The move: TEPCO’s 13-director slate was approved, but 190 shareholders used the annual meeting to press a charter amendment for a Kashiwazaki-Kariwa accident fund, revised from ¥23.4tn to ¥3.8tn and designed to be funded through customer electricity charges.
ENEOS said 57,274,900 JX Metals shares will be sold into the self-tender at ¥3,401 each, for gross proceeds of ¥194.8bn. Its stake falls to 35.28% from 42.38%, though the company notes the before-and-after percentages use different share-count bases.