Investing in Japanese Companies Operating in Video Gaming, Esports and Animation with Global X Japan’s new ETF Tracking Solactive Index
The global pandemic created a massive boom in the home entertainment industry, benefitting creators of video gaming and media streaming services. As a globally renowned hub for digital entertainment, Japan’s video gaming and animation industries, in particular, delivered its fans their precious goods to watch and play. According to a recent study, the Japanese gaming market was valued at approximately 1.5 trillion Japanese yen in 2019, and it is expected to reach a value of close to 1.8 trillion yen by the end of 2026.[1] Due to strong demand in both domestic and overseas markets, the Japanese animation industry reached a market value of 2.51 trillion Japanese yen in 2019, following a ten-year consecutive growth trajectory[2]. To enable investors to access the vast potential of Japanese video gaming, esports, and animation companies, Global X Japan, now issues its Global X Japan Games & Animation ETF tracking the Solactive Japan Games & Animation Index.
The Solactive Japan Games & Animation Index serves as a representation of Japanese securities that have business operations in the field of video games and animation. Eligible stocks must be listed on either the Tokyo Stock Exchange or the JASDAQ Securities Exchange and must be exclusively incorporated in Japan, ruling out American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) for index inclusion.
The index, which is composed of 20 stocks, tracks companies operating in five sub-themes. To determine the index universe, Solactive’s proprietary natural language processing algorithm ARTIS® has been employed once again. ARTIS® is utilizing advanced algorithms to parse high volumes of public documents evaluating companies’ exposure to various themes or topics. The sophisticated procedure not only detects potential index constituents considering a firm’s exposure to a theme but also ranks its importance to the very subject or industry.
ARTIS® identifies video gaming, esports, and animation companies that have or are expected to have significant exposure to the provision of the following products and/or services: Developing and/or publishing video games; providing the streaming or distribution of video gaming and/or esports content; operating and/or owning competitive esports leagues and/or competitive esports teams; producing hardware used in video gaming and video game related esports activities; or which produce manga, Japanese comics, and/or anime. Each company identified by ARTIS® receives a score that reflects its exposure to the index strategy.
Timo Pfeiffer, Chief Markets Officer at Solactive, comments: ”Digitalization paved the way for the streaming and the gaming industry, and it is expected that this trend – now even more corroborated by the pandemic – is not over yet. With social distancing, customers more and more accommodated to the on-demand availability of their favorite games and animation series, a luxury that is very likely to become a new normal even after the pandemic is over. We are very honored that Global X Japan decided to utilize Solactive indices again, a step, which we regard as a compliment and demonstration of trust towards our services.”
Jooyoung Yun, CIO at Global X Japan, comments: “After launching our Japan Digital Innovation ETF together with Solactive in January, we are excited to expand our successful collaboration with the German indexing house, bringing the next innovative and tailored product to the Japanese market. The new Global X Japan Games & Animation ETF is yet another demonstration of our ambition to become the pioneer in thematic ETF investing in Japan.”
The Global X Japan Games & Animation ETF started trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) on June 23rd, 2021.
[1] Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. – IT Navigator 2021
[2] https://aja.gr.jp/download/anime-industry-report-2020-summary