In this episode of **QAV U.S.**, Cameron and Tony dive deep into Japanese financial conglomerate **ORIX Corp (NYSE: IX / TYO: 8591)**—a sprawling, Berkshire-like beast with operations in leasing, insurance, private equity, energy, real estate, and even a baseball team. They discuss ORIX’s intriguing scandal history in Australia, its global diversification, and the tax nightmares of investing in PFIC-designated ADRs for U.S. citizens. The episode also covers the broader Japanese market dynamics (like stocks trading under book value), crude oil’s re-entry as a buy, and the nuances of applying the QAV system to ADRs with foreign currency reporting. As always, the show blends solid financial analysis with historical trivia, sarcasm, and irreverent humour.

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### **🕒 Timestamps & Key Topics**

**[00:00:00 ] News Banter:** Trump’s meme coin windfall and gold phone, G7 drama

– **[00:02:00 ] Portfolio Update:** QAV US Portfolio up 55% since Sept 2023 vs S&P500 up 35%

– **[00:03:00 ] Crude Oil:** Back to “buy” due to Israel/Iran tension

– **[00:05:00 ] Stock Deep Dive – ORIX Corp (IX / 8591)**

– [00:09:00 ] Australian bribery scandal (Coca-Cola Amatil link)

– [00:13:00 ] History, conglomerate structure, and earnings complexity

– [00:23:00 ] Cultural/market-specific issues (Japan’s sub-book valuations, PFIC tax designation)

– [00:29:00 ] Sum-of-the-parts valuation gap (~$33B vs $21B market cap)

– [00:33:00 ] Active ventures: Osaka Casino Resort, Panasonic deal, green energy

– **[00:36:00 ] QAV Checklist Review:** Adjustments for currency, EPS, and price/book challenges

– **[00:43:00 ] Verdict:** Despite quirks, IX gets a QAV score of 0.24 – potential value

AUDIO of QAV U.S. 10

 [00:00:00 ]

Cameron: Welcome back to QAV America, Tony QAV America, episode 10. This is got some big news. Uh, Tony,

Tony Kynaston: Ooh,

Cameron: broken, just popped up on my news alert. The Trump family’s next venture, a gold, smartphone and mobile phone service. So there you go. Get your,

Tony Kynaston: fantastic.

Cameron: in for one of those. Gonna be all made in America and sell for 500 bucks. So, uh.

Tony Kynaston: Really.

Cameron: Can’t wait to see that.

Tony Kynaston: did you see the, uh, the return that showed that, uh, Don had made 70 upping million dollars out of his meme? Coin,

Cameron: How much? 17 million.

Tony Kynaston: I think it was 79 million from memory.

Cameron: Oh, right. Oh, I thought he would’ve made a lot more than that. There you go. It’s a bit of a bit of a [00:01:00 ] shame. Feel sad for him now. That’s all he made. Thought it would’ve been billions.

Tony Kynaston: And, he left the G seven conference without meeting our prime minister.

Cameron: Yeah, of course.

Tony Kynaston: meant to meet our prime Minister, but he ducked off, he ducked our Prime Minister

Cameron: Listen, if you, if you had a good reason to avoid meeting with our prime minister, wouldn’t you take it?

Tony Kynaston: That’s right. Well done Donald.

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, well, Tony, um, we’re gonna talk, I’ve gotta pull pork or a deep dive to do on another American listed stock today. we get into that, I thought I should do the, uh, portfolio report.

Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm.

Please.

Cameron: Um, the US portfolio, the QAV US portfolio. When I did my weekly newsletter this morning for the last 30 days, it was up 3.3% versus the s and p 500, up [00:02:00 ] 1.25%. Over the last 12 months, our portfolio was up 34% versus the s and p 500 up 11, which you said on the last show was about 11. I thought it was much more than that, but it, you’re right, it was only 11.

Um, the s and p 500 in the last 12 months, and since inception September, 2023, our portfolio is up 55% versus the s and p 500, up 35%. That’s probably the number I was thinking of.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Right.

Cameron: So, uh, that’s how we’re tracking. Pretty good still, despite being the best, uh, year, like last couple of months has not been the best for our US portfolio.

But, uh, this month it’s doing pretty, pretty good. No complaints. Um. Have you got anything to talk about in [00:03:00 ] terms of US stuff? Before I get into the deep dive today, Tony,

Tony Kynaston: no, I don’t. I, um, I have been reading the Wall

Cameron: I.

Tony Kynaston: but uh, none of our stocks have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, so I can’t really comment on, uh, on stock specific news this week. I.

Cameron: Well, one thing we can mention is that crude oil is a buy again. Um, as we’ve talked about on the show before. W you know, when we are looking at investments in companies that, uh, tied to underlying commodities, uh, we, we tend to not buy them if the underlying commodity is in a sell state. Judging by Street Point trendline, crude oil had been a sell for quite some time.

And, uh, there was just a little thing people, people probably haven’t. Seen it on the news, but um, uh, Israel and Iran started missiles at each other. I don’t know if anyone caught that in the news [00:04:00 ] in the last week, but, uh, that has caused the oil price to spike quite a lot. It became a buy again, so we’ve been able to look at buying or adding some more oil stocks.

I added an Australian oil stock to one of our portfolios yesterday. Funnily enough, when I was looking through our US buy list to find a company to talk about today, almost every company I looked at either a shipping company or a financial services company on our buy list that I ran last week. And I was so sick about talking about, uh, shipping companies or financial services companies. That I had to go quite a, quite a way down on the list to find one, which is actually a financial services company

Tony Kynaston: it’s, it’s a,

Cameron: more or less,

Tony Kynaston: no,

Cameron: a little bit different

Tony Kynaston: no less.

Cameron: [00:05:00 ] well, it’s a conglomerate. It’s a bit like Berkshire Hathaway, you could say. Berkshire Hathaway is essentially insurance company. Geico, yeah.

Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah,

Cameron: it’s also a lot of other things, and so is the company I’m gonna talk about today, which is Orix Corp on the New York Stock Exchange. Its ticker is IX, the number nine

Tony Kynaston: Number

Cameron: in Roman numerals.

Tony Kynaston: Number nine.

Cameron: It’s listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as 8 5 9 1 is its code in Japan.

Tony Kynaston: Isn’t eight eight’s the good luck number in? Is that, that’s China? Sorry. It might be the same in Japanese. I don’t know.

Cameron: Uh, threes, nines, I think get a, uh, a lot of good luck. Uh, do you know why they have numbers in? Uh,

Tony Kynaston: no.

Cameron: ah, well, I am here to,

Tony Kynaston: good

Cameron: to enlighten you about numbers. Yeah. [00:06:00 ] Japanese.

Tony Kynaston: kanji? They can’t, uh, they can’t put the alpha numeric or the alpha characters into the stock exchange. Okay.

Cameron: This is why you used to win all of those. Uh, I was gonna say charity, not charity. shows. Yes. Um,

Tony Kynaston: my days mansplaining to ai.

Cameron: yeah,

Tony Kynaston: It’s, gonna, that’s gonna be the title of my autobiography,

Cameron: I

Tony Kynaston: mansplaining to ai.

Cameron: I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m gonna do an investigative journalism, documentary that will, I, I think, uncover that behind all of the ais. It’s just somebody’s calling you and asking you to answer all the questions and

Tony Kynaston: Phone the friend.

Cameron: yeah.

Tony Kynaston: gonna launch an AI called Phone The Friend.

Cameron: Phone, Tony.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah.

Cameron: When Japan’s exchanges modernized after World War ii, they needed a code.

Every broker could punch into th