International Housewares Retail's (1373) shares rose after announcing it would rebrand its Hong Kong household goods chain, Japan Home Centre, as JHC, and in Chinese, Zhen Hao Cheng, starting Wednesday, with the first flagship store to open the same day in Causeway Bay.
Its shares rose as much as 9.37 percent to HK$0.70 on Tuesday after the announcement. The retail company was listed on the Main Board in September 2013 at a price of HK$2.81. At the time, its market capitalization reached HK$2.02 billion. Its retail tranche in its initial public offering was oversubscribed 145 times – the second most oversubscribed IPO since 2012.
The retailer said the rebrand aims to adapt to structural changes in Hong Kong's retail sector after the pandemic, the wider adoption of e-commerce, and growing northbound spending by local consumers. The company said it is repositioning JHC as a "one-stop lifestyle platform" serving diverse communities across Hong Kong and Macau.
As the pioneer of the "ten-dollar store", the retailer recorded HK$1.75 billion in revenue and HK$143 million in net profit in the financial year 2014 ending in April. Its shares also reached their highest at HK$4.22 in March 2014.
The retailer was a major high-yield defensive stock between 2020 and 2021 given its low valuation, stable dividend payments, and high earnings. Its share price was trading at nearly HK$3 in mid-to-late 2021.
However, after 2022, as consumption normalized following the pandemic, cost pressures intensified, and government pandemic subsidies were reduced, the company's share price gradually declined to between HK$2.5 and HK$3. In 2023, its shares fell to around HK$1.6.
