Rakuten Group Inc. said Tuesday that it is preparing a listing for its Rakuten Securities unit, as the company diversifies beyond e-commerce.
The firm said a listing for the securities business would help it expand the ecosystem for Rakuten offerings, which range from e-commerce to finance and wireless services. The date of the prospective listing has not yet been set.
Hiroshi Mikitani, the company¡¯s chief executive officer and founder, has been expanding Rakuten¡¯s businesses while facing competition from Amazon.com Inc. in its core e-commerce operation. The U.S. online retailer has invested heavily in Japan as one of its key overseas markets.
Mikitani has made an enormous wager on wireless services by building a fourth mobile network in Japan to compete with leaders NTT Docomo Inc. and SoftBank Corp. Rakuten¡¯s operating loss tripled in the first quarter from a year earlier, missing analyst projections.
Some analysts see potential for the company to cut losses in mobile in the quarters ahead however, and then boost revenue by cross-selling financial services and other offerings to its customers.
¡°Their percentage of users who use two or more services reached a record high of 74.8%,¡± Amir Anvarzadeh, an analyst at Asymmetric Advisors, wrote last week. ¡°This is precisely why we think those who value the mobile unit purely as a stand-alone one miss this crucial fact and the importance of the mobile interface in selling many other services.¡±
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