# Unlocking Jardine Matheson's holdco value with Cayucos Capital's Dom St George Yet Another Value Podcast · 2025-10-07 · 44 min · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH_K8SjTtSM ## Transcript Andrew Walker Today's episode is on Jardine Matheson. Jardine Matheson is a holding company trading at a sum-of-the-parts discount. Our guest, Dom from Kaio Capital, has done a 200-year history here, and it's a really interesting discussion. The thing in the back of my mind is that 10 years ago, when I first started out, I used to love holding companies. It was all I did. You'd take a company with $100 per share of tangible value, trading with $50 of cash and $50 of stocks, and it would be trading for $80. Awesome. Over the years, the history of holding companies over the past 10 years has been awful. Holding companies with shady management teams have been terrible, too, but a lot of the greats who had holding companies have done really, really poorly. I'm looking at you, IAC. I'm looking at you, Liberty, and several others. They've really underperformed, so I've gotten really skeptical of holding companies over the past 10 years. I think you'll hear that in the conversation, and I think it makes for an interesting divergence of style. With me today, I'm happy to have on for the first time Dom St. George from Kaio Capital. Dom, how's it going? Dom St. George Good, thanks. It's a real pleasure to be here. Andrew Walker Dom, the reason you're hopping on is that you did a great write-up on your Substack about Jardine Matheson. The ticker is JM. Two-thirds of the way through your write-up, you mentioned, “Hey, I've been following this stock since 2012,” I think. You've been following it for a long time, but I'll pause there and ask: What is Jardine Matheson, and why is it so interesting? Dom St. George Thank you. I love to delve into the ancient history of companies, so I can't get going without talking about the founding story here because it's just so fascinating. Most people will be aware of the British East India Company, which in the 19th century had a monopoly on trade with India. Fewer people may be aware that one of their main exports out of India was opium. Andrew Walker I think if you've ever watched a TV show with a little historical fiction, they make it pretty clear what was coming out of the East India Company, to be honest with you. Dom St. George Maybe that's more well known than I thought. The East India Company didn't want to send its people into China directly because it didn't want to ruffle too many feathers. So it left the actual import of opium into China to enterprising traders such as Jardine and Matheson. William Jardine, in particular, made so much money from this trade, as you can imagine, that he used that wealth and his seat in the House of Lords—which is similar to the Senate in the U.K.—to lobby for the end of the monopoly that the East India Company had. Eventually, he was successful. The East India Company tried to limit the flow of opium, whereas when that monopoly ended, you had a complete free-for-all of opium coming into China. That forced China to ban opium outright, and that was so deleterious to the British Empire that it went to war with China over the ban. The subsequent treaty after that war led to the creation of Hong Kong as a British colony. So, basically, the history of this company led, in effect, to the creation of Hong Kong as a British colony. Let's fast-forward a couple of centuries. Jardine Matheson is, for context, what I describe as a perennial value stock. Anyone with a value inclination in Asia probably groaned when they saw somebody pitching the stock because it's been cheap forever. The group essentially made a leveraged property bet in the mid-1980s, which turned out to be very poorly timed. It came months before the British and Chinese announced the eventual handover of Hong Kong back to China, and that led to a property slump. The company started to be circled by would-be suitors. In order to avoid a takeover, the group instituted a very complex cross-holding structure in which it had 2 holding entities, each with a controlling shareholding in the other. That essentially made it impervious to outside influence. Anyone who's looked at this over the years—as you mentioned, I first looked at it in 2012—knows that it's always traded at a large discount to NAV or sum of the parts. But ultimately, who cares? There have been some quite substantial changes in recent years. It seems that Ben Keswick, who's the fifth generation of the family, has consolidated control over the group, and he's done a number of very interesting things. The first is to unwind the cross-holding structure, so there's 1 clear holding company: Jardine Matheson. Secondly, there have been a number of disposals across the group, which add up to around $4 billion. That's pretty substantial relative to what is today an $18 billion market cap. The third thing is that the group has been very insular historically. It had a graduate scheme that trained people up, and basically all of the senior executives were lifers. What really caught my attention was that they announced earlier this year that they were bringing in a new CEO, a gentleman named Lincoln Pan, who was the co-head of private equity at PAG, one of the largest private equity groups in Asia. When I started to dig some more, I realized it wasn't just him. They have a number of senior, big hitters from private equity on the board. There's a gentleman from KKR and a lady from Carlyle. If you look at who's now heading up the China business, it's a guy called Steve Sun, who was co-head of China for TPG. His number 2 was a senior investment banker, I think the head of Asia for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. So it's quite a substantial change. Just to reiterate, Lincoln Pan actually starts on December 1, in a couple of months' time. Despite the $4 billion of disposals they've already done, it's quite clear there's a lot more to come, and they've given us a road map for some of that, which I can get more into. Andrew Walker That's great. Let's just pause there. You've got a company with literally centuries of history, and what you're saying is that the fifth generation comes in. They've been there for a while, but they've really just cemented their control, hired a bunch of outsiders with deal experience, and you think the path from here is great. I would normally ask why this is an opportunity, but I think you laid that out. The place to start would be: As you and I are speaking today, frame the upside for me. The stock is trading at $63—63-ish per share. What does NAV look like here? What does value look like here? Dom St. George Yeah. So again, I've done a sum-of-the-parts analysis. Almost all of the entities in the group are publicly listed, so it's pretty easy to do. And so I get to basically a 16% discount to NAV, which is not very exciting in and of itself. It’s more all of the potential corporate activity that could happen. Andrew Walker Then let’s go through the different pieces of the NAV. I thought one of the really interesting pieces is that they’ve got Hongkong Land, and there’s the market price, but then they say, “Hey, if you look, these are trophy assets. We think the real value of them is like 2× the market price.” I thought that was interesting. We can talk about all those pieces, but as you said, one of the questions I’m going to come back to is, “Hey, a 16% discount to NAV isn’t that interesting.” At holdcos, what is the go-forward path that makes you so excited? What is the go-forward path? Because if you told me there’s a 16% discount and they’re liquidating tomorrow, I’d say, “Oh, that’s pretty cool. A 16% discount.” What are they going to do to grow NAV, or what are they going to do that’s going to allow us to, as I like to say, capture a risk-adjusted alpha opportunity by buying the stock at a 16% discount to NAV? Dom St. George I think it would be useful to start getting into the businesses. As you said, very roughly, you’ve got 1/3 Hongkong Land, 1/3 Astra International—which is the largest business in Indonesia by revenue, a very broad conglomerate—and then 1/3 is everything else. Starting with Hongkong Land, it’s about a $13.5 billion market cap today, and they own 53% of it. But they would tell you the net asset value of their assets is actually $35 billion. So what’s the differential? One, they’re a little bit aggressive in terms of the cap rates they use. The biggest portion of it—about 2/3 of it—is Hong Kong office. Hong Kong office is about half of Hongkong Land, and then a little bit more comes from Hong Kong malls. They use a 3-ish% cap rate on those assets. You could say, well, that’s a little bit aggressive. But one data point that is quite interesting is that they actually sold one of their spaces—they sold 9 floors of one of their prime Hong Kong towers earlier this year to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at roughly a similar cap rate. I also think that’s quite symbolic because, as I say, it’s basically the jewel in the crown. It’s the asset that they almost went bust buying in the 1980s. So it kind of demonstrates to me that they’re willing to sell anything and everything. Again, it’s a $13.5 billion market cap. They’ve announced that they want to do up to $10 billion of capital return by 2035. Now, that’s quite a long lead time, obviously, but it’s because most of it comes from basically winding down the development assets that they have. They’re building office towers and malls, mostly in China. Andrew Walker When we talk about the 16% discount to NAV that Jardine Matheson trades for, we’re talking about Hongkong Land, which is about 33% of their value when using the market price to calculate NAV. They’re saying, “Hey, we think this is worth double, more than double, the market price.” Who do you think is right? Do you think they’re right, or do you think the market is right here? Dom St. George I think it’s somewhere in the middle. I don’t want to say that the market is wrong. But I think the reason it’s interesting is that they are actually taking steps to realize that NAV at close to their cap rate. Andrew Walker Because what’s interesting here is, if I just do the math in my head, right? If they’ve got $33-ish of their $100-per-share value, and I’m just doing that as NAV at the market price, if they say that $33 is worth $66 and you think it’s somewhere in the middle, so it’s worth $50, that takes your NAV discount from 17% to about 33% just on that alone. I guess my pushback would be, look, I’ve done a lot of this holdco investing. When I first started, all I did was holdcos, to my detriment, right? I just loved these things, and I was like, “Oh, these smart families that control…” Over time, I’ve gotten really disillusioned with them. One of the reasons I’ve gotten disillusioned with them is that every time I heard a controlling holdco say, “Hey, we’ve got this crown jewel. We think it’s worth way more than anyone’s giving it credit for,” traditionally, it was actually really bad. It was bad for one of 2 reasons: A, they way overvalued it; or B, they way overvalued it, and because the market was trading at $33 and they thought it was worth $66, they plowed more money into it. Then, when it turned out the market was right, they had wasted all the money. So I guess when I look at them saying, “Hey, crown jewel worth these low cap rates,” I get really worried that it’s got the traditional disillusionment of holdcos, if that makes sense. Dom St. George I think you’re totally right. Actually, I’m always very hesitant to describe myself as a value investor. The reason for that is, similarly, I’ve discovered that a lot of the mechanisms to recognize value that exist in the US—let’s say activists, for example; private equity directors with statutory responsibilities to minorities; even bankruptcy, transferring assets from bad owners to good—a lot of these mechanisms just don’t exist, or exist to a lesser extent, in emerging markets or even internationally. So you do have to be very skeptical. Alignment with the key decision-makers is very important. But I think there’s just so much evidence here that they are shifting the portfolio from— Andrew Walker Great. Let’s go to that, then. I think the crux of your thesis is, hey, you have this company where the 5th generation, even though they’ve been there for a while, really just cemented control, right? The 4th generation, as you say in your write-up—I think you’ve got “science progresses by funerals”—and you say that’s how family holdcos work too, right? The 5th generation really just took full control because the 4th generation died out. You say, hey, they’re bringing in these heavy hitters to be the next CEOs, right? They’re going to bring in private equity heavy hitters. I get that. That is exciting. And you say, hey, they’re only bringing in the private equity heavy hitters for one reason: the private equity heavy hitters are going to be on the other side of investment bankers and other private equity firms in deals. I think you alluded to asset sales and capital returns being kind of where your mind goes. That’s not where my mind goes. This is a 5th-generation family company. I don’t doubt they’re going to sell some, but what you’re kind of suggesting is a windup. When I see them hiring all the—you know, a former BPEA head of private equity—what I see is, hey, we’re going to go do a lot of investing. Maybe we sell the old stuff, but we’re going to be full speed ahead building out a family holdco. This is going to be a conglomerate. I’m worried that’s the direction they go, because if that’s the direction, a 16% discount isn’t that interesting. Maybe they hit home run after home run. I don’t know. I think the base rate when you’re doing family holdco investing is that the investments are done with a quote-unquote long-term time horizon. That’s a quote-unquote long-term time horizon because they all underperform, and you say, “Hey, 1 year, 1 year is going to be our year.” So I threw a lot out there, but what do you think about that go-forward path? Because I think that’s where you think the catalyst is. Dom St. George To be clear, I don’t think this is going to be wound up and the whole thing is going to be taken private. I’m arguing for simplification, and there’s so much low-hanging fruit to achieve that simplification. I think you are right. So let’s get into the people they’ve hired to run Hongkong Land. Again, outsiders: the CEO who’s been hired and the CIO, chief investment officer, both came from Mapletree, which is the real estate subsidiary of Temasek, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund, one of the biggest investors in Asia. Interestingly, before that, they were both at Goldman Sachs. At Goldman, they did a lot of the REIT IPOs in Asia. If you look at their presentation, they are saying, “We’re going to go from about $40 billion of assets under management to $100 billion,” in part by managing third-party capital. So they’re going to become, in part, more of an asset manager as opposed to just owning 100% of everything and trying to generate returns that way. The plan long-term has to become more of a fee business, and the people they put in charge are indicative of that. Andrew Walker I mean, that is certainly interesting, but [laughter] it’s a lot of money to raise, and you have to hire a whole team and build out. Let me ask 2 questions on the base rate: have you seen family holdcos successfully build asset-management businesses like they’re suggesting here? Dom St. George That’s a good question. I have seen family companies raise third-party minority stakes in group companies. Generally, for example, Exor is going to buy The Economist—they buy 80%, and they bring in co-invest for 20%, right? But that’s more co-invest. They’re talking about going from $40 billion to $100 billion, and if they could raise $60 billion—let’s just say it’s $60 billion of outside capital at 1-and-10—I mean, you would put a fee—you would put a multiple on that that would be worth quite a bit of money. That would cover a lot of overhead here, so I’m interested. I can’t think of any examples of one having done that. Doesn't mean it can't be done, but if they could, and it seems like that is interesting, I just can't think of one that's done that. Dom St. George Yeah. I mean, I think it's the direction of travel. Whether they're going to get to $100 billion, that's quite an aspirational thing. But I do think the more they can do to demonstrate that the 3% number—the 3% cap rate they're using—is actually a number that people are willing to pay, and third parties are willing to pay, I think that's all positive. And again, the $10 billion they want to return from Hongkong Land by 2035 is a slow pace, but just this month, they announced a $660 million sale of a Singapore- and Malaysia-focused residential developer. So it's a business I didn't really know even existed that they plucked out of their portfolio and put a $660 million number on it. Not bad when you don't even know there's something in there, and it returned. Andrew Walker Let me ask this question a different way. This is a fifth-generation holdco. He's hiring a bunch of private equity people. Forget what I said about third parties. You've done a lot of holdcos; I've looked at a lot of holdcos. Can you think of a family-controlled-ish holdco that has transitioned to kind of a professional group? They're hiring a private equity firm, they're hiring former bankers. Can you think of one that has done that and done well? Dom St. George Well, you mentioned Exor. I think that would definitely be up there as one of the best. Andrew Walker You know, it's funny you mentioned Exor, because I'll just transition to Exor. You talk about the 16% discount. Exor has done quite well in terms of NAV and compounding. I looked at Exor when I was prepping for this. Exor's NAV, they're painting it as €180 per share, and they're trading at €80 per share. So I think the results have been good. I haven't followed them as closely as you used to, but I would just say they're trading at 40% of NAV. It looks like—if that's right, if that's a good case here—careful what you wish for, I guess. Dom St. George Yeah. The market in general does not like conglomerates. I think that's absolutely clear. There's a family conglomerate in South America that has made phenomenal decisions long term. Andrew Walker Is this a process? Dom St. George No, it's called Quiñenco. It has quite a small free float, but it's a Chile-based group, and they've made some fantastic decisions. But again, you're right, the discount to NAV is—I haven't looked at it very recently—but it's kind of 50% to 60%. The market doesn't give businesses credit. But every dollar that's returned to shareholders, I value that dollar in my pocket at a dollar. So if a lot of it comes back to us, then that can lead to good returns. Andrew Walker I actually think what you just said is what I was trying to get at as my risk factor, right? To me, a family holdco—a holdco at a discount—is great if they're going to return the capital, like a liquidation wind-down. I think what I'm worried about here is Hongkong Land. They sell, and they realize it's trading at a 6% cap rate. They think it's worth 3%. They realize it at a 4%, 4.5%, 4%, whatever it is. What I'm worried about is that, because they hired all these private equity guys, the answer is not going to be, "Take that money from Hongkong Land and return it to Jardine Matheson shareholders." Now, Hongkong Land might return it, but once it gets to the Jardine Matheson level, I think you've got these private equity guys who are going to say, "All right, it's time to go buy something." And the history of that is poor. I worry—you know, I haven't followed Exor closely in a while—but I kind of worry you get the Exor treatment or the South American treatment you're talking about, where they do great sales, plow the money into new businesses, and the stock just lags. It just keeps trading under NAV, and you have a perennial underperformer. I guess that's where I'm trying to drive my worry. Dom St. George Yeah, I mean, it's certainly possible. To be clear, the recent history of the investments that this group has made over the past decade has been very poor. One of the things that's interesting to me is that a big part of those $4 billion of disposals they've done in the past 4 years is unwinding past acquisitions. So it seems very much like they're in sell mode rather than buy mode. But it is possible that once this private equity team is assembled, they're clearing the decks in advance of that, and then they will go out and do more M&A. I think they know that the market will not look fondly on M&A, but you're right, they may not especially care. Andrew Walker Are you familiar with Liberty Media at all? Dom St. George Some. Andrew Walker I was reading John Malone's book. We just did our book club on it. The thing I was laughing at is that every decade AT&T can be trusted to make a terrible acquisition and then unwind it. When you're saying Jardine Matheson, one of the reasons they get into the complex holdco structure is that in the 1980s they buy real estate at the height of the market, right? And it takes them almost 40 years to unwind that. Then in 2020, as you say in your write-up, one of the reasons they get in trouble is that in early 2020 they buy $4 billion-plus of Chinese real estate, and then COVID hits. The ink is probably dry on the parchment, and the real estate is probably down 90% by that time. It reminds me of AT&T, right? And now we're saying, "Hey, they've got these new guys, these outsiders." And I'm like, "Yeah, they're going to sell a lot of stuff." I would not be surprised if 5 years from now Dom's on and we're saying, "Hey, they sold a lot of stuff, and they moved into AI at the absolute top of the market, and it was bad," or something. Dom St. George Yeah. I would say that the very poorly timed acquisition of a big parcel of land in Shanghai in 2020 could well have been the straw that broke the camel's back and convinced them, "Okay, our track record was not very good over the last 10 years. Bring in outsiders; we'll really radically change the strategy." That's the optimistic take. One of the things that struck me, reading their annual report, is that year after year there's this huge focus on, "Our goal, our North Star, is superior 5-year total shareholder returns." It's kind of funny because when you read the annual report, their 5-year return is negative. They don't compare to an index, but indexes are not negative over the past 5 years. I wanted to ask you about that. When they talk about that—and we can talk shareholdings and stuff in a second—when they talk about wanting to drive superior 5-year returns, how do you think they're thinking about it? Andrew Walker Well, I think it means an asset-light strategy. I talked a bit about Hong Kong Land and what they want to do. One of the smallest but most high-profile parts of the group is that they own the Mandarin Oriental chain of hotels. Again, they've talked about moving toward a management model rather than owning the real estate and owning and operating the hotels, and they've already sold a couple of hotels. They sold Washington and Paris, one of which they also retain the management contract for. That's indicative of what they want to do. So, as I say, an asset-light model, and then also simplification. In the third bucket—the other bucket—the biggest chunk of that is a retail group called Dairy Farm International. Historically, that was Hong Kong as well as Singapore and Malaysia. They had grocery stores in Indonesia and the Philippines, and all of those have gone now. They've all been sold. It's a much simpler group. It's basically just Hong Kong. They run the IKEA franchise in a few countries, and they're the 7-Eleven operator across a few jurisdictions. It's radically simpler than it was and has very little debt now. Both those entities—Dairy Farm is owned 78% by the group, and Mandarin Oriental, which they've been buying, is owned 88%. So they could very easily privatize those assets. I did not realize Mandarin Oriental was publicly traded, and obviously they own 88%, so publicly traded is kind of a loose thing. But I do think that's interesting. That is a place where you could see a family holdco with a long-term vision really creating something. For those who don't know, Mandarin Oriental is—I’m not staying at $1,500-a-night hotels—but I believe it's about the highest-end hotel chain out there, and they're building it to 40 units. You could imagine how every new unit they build, and obviously there's a cap on that, right? They're not going to build a Mandarin Oriental in Lafayette, Louisiana. I love Lafayette, Louisiana, but they're not going to build a Mandarin Oriental there. There's a cap on just how many they can have. But every new trophy Mandarin that you build in a trophy city kind of adds to the network. And you have to imagine that if and when they ever put that up for sale, every large hotel group is going to see that as a trophy property that Marriott would bid out the nose for because they want access to that customer. It’s a hugely synergistic piece of their business. The CEO probably wants to stay at the Mandarin instead of the Westin when he’s traveling around, if you’re being completely honest with everyone. So I think that’s a really interesting example of a place where a family holdco can maybe take a longer-term view and create value. Anything you want to say there or add on to that? Dom St. George Yeah, luxury hotels are one of those things that you have to take off the list if you’re a mega-billionaire. You want to own a sports franchise, a massive jet, and a chain of hotels or one flagship hotel in New York or something. Andrew Walker It’s funny you say that. They really do. And I get why you’d want to own a sports team. I get why you’d want to own a jet. I don’t know why you’d want to own the hotel. Why do you want to own a luxury hotel? What’s the point? Dom St. George Well, it’s the VIP treatment that you get. There’s no better directorship than being on the board of a high-cost airline because you get the VIP treatment. But on the subject of hotels, it’s quite interesting. You own a commercial tower, an office tower, and you get to hold that as investment property. You get to basically mark to market every year; you get to use a cap rate and mark to market every year, whereas hotels are a very similar asset, but the way they’re held, it’s a depreciating asset. So it’s kind of disadvantageous to run a building as a hotel as opposed to an office. Mandarin Oriental owns a lot of its land and property assets. And actually, they had an old hotel in Hong Kong and decided to redevelop that as an office. They’ve just announced this week that they’re in talks to sell about half of the office space to Alibaba for $900 million, which compares against the $2.6 billion market cap for Mandarin Oriental. So, very material. There’s a lot of value in those property assets. Andrew Walker It’s one of those things. I mean, it’s not unheard of for hotel chains to trade well below their real estate value, but when do you realize it, and do you really trust it? Let me ask: just on the 5-year shareholder returns, again, I completely understand the family holdco and everything, but to me, they trade at an NAV discount, and they clearly believe their NAV is way, way higher than the share price. I look at this and say, why aren’t they buying back stock? The stock buyback is token at best and basically zero, if we’re being honest with each other. They do pay the progressive dividend and everything, but if they’re saying, “Hey, we want to deliver superior 5-year returns,” there’s nothing they could do that would deliver that better than buying back stock at under market NAV. Forget their NAV. Why do you think they aren’t doing that? Because to me, it’s just like, again, we’re dancing around the elephant in the room. I’m worried about empire-building. It seems like a red flag here. Dom St. George Yeah, it’s a very good question. One obvious answer could be that, as I say, the CEO hasn’t actually sat at his desk yet. He joins on 1 December. So that presumably is something that’s on the to-do list: to be a bit more aggressive about buying back the stock. As I mentioned with Mandarin Oriental, they have been selectively increasing their stakes in some of the main entities. The biggest entity by market cap is an intermediate holding company called Jardine Cycle & Carriage. That holds the stake in Astra International, which is the Indonesian conglomerate. They own 85% of Cycle & Carriage, which I believe they’ve increased in recent years. So one of the more obvious things that I think they’re likely to do in the next couple of years is to buy out the 15% minority in Cycle & Carriage, which again simplifies the group and allows more of the dividends to accrue up to the top. Andrew Walker Let me ask you: there’s some interesting language in the annual report about board remuneration, incentive alignment, and everything. They’ve got the 1947 Trust. Can you explain how the 1947 Trust works to me? Dom St. George No, the short answer is no. The 1947 Trust is one of the main family vehicles, but there are 2 family vehicles which own just over 25% of the company. But beyond that, I don’t really know how decisions are made within the family and exactly how the trust works. Andrew Walker No, that’s completely okay. There’s just this weird thing where—and again, it made my head spin when I was reading it—the 1947 Trust, which again owns, I think, 8% of the company, maybe 10%; I can’t remember the exact number, is controlled by the company and pays out dividends, and they use that dividend stream to in part pay the directors, who are then required to use some of that dividend-stream money to buy shares on the open market. But the executive chairman—the family, the 5th-generation family member we were talking about—is the one who controls how much of the 1947 dividend goes to the directors. And I’ve just never seen anything like it before. And it strikes me as really weird because you could say, “Hey, huge alignment,” right? They’re getting dividends that they’re forced to plow back into the stock—huge alignment. On the other hand, you could say, “Huge misalignment.” A, they want to keep paying a dividend because that’s how they’re getting paid from the 1947 Trust. And B, because the executive chairman decides how much of the dividends go to the directors, they need to stay on his good side no matter what. Right? If he’s walking around wearing no clothes, they’re going to say, “Hey, great suit, sir,” because they kind of serve and get the dividends at his pleasure. That was my understanding. I could have been wrong. I’d never seen anything like it before, but that’s kind of why I was asking about it. Dom St. George Yeah, it’s kind of how you might run a private family entity, right? As the owner of the business, as the family owner, it’s kind of your discretion to decide how much equity somebody gets and how much they get paid. It’s kind of like a private profit share. Andrew Walker I think you’re exactly right. It’s just the way it was structured was a little strange to me. I’ve never seen that before. Let me ask one last thing, and then we kind of wrap it up. Again, holdcos are difficult to talk about because, hey, NAV is 100. It trades at 80. Should it trade at 90? Is NAV actually 100 or 150? But it’s tough to really ask why Jardine Matheson, right? You laid out a 15% discount to market NAV. You probably think NAV is—I’m just going to put words in your mouth—25% understated. So that 15% is closer to 35% or 40%. I mentioned Exor. I think Exor, based on their numbers, trades at half of NAV or under half of NAV: $35 per share of stock price, $40 per share in cash, plus MGM stock, plus other stuff that’s probably worth another $10 per share. So that’s trading at, if I’m doing that math in my head, right, 70% of NAV. Pershing Square is a popular one: a 27.5% discount to NAV. Obviously, there are fee issues, control issues, and everything, but that’s what comes with holdcos. I just listed 3. We could probably find 20 more. Why Jardine Matheson over any of these other discounted holdcos that I just walked through? Dom St. George Well, I think because of the delta—the change. I mean, you know this business; this industry is the job is filtering. Anyone who’s looked at Jardine Matheson over the past 30 years would have concluded, as I did a decade ago, horrible governance in the past. And it takes a long time for people to really believe when something has fundamentally changed. I see lots of evidence that that change is happening, firstly. And secondly, there’s just so much low-hanging fruit. We haven’t even got into Astra International, which again is the Indonesian conglomerate. I was looking at it, and I believe I found 10 publicly listed subsidiaries of Astra, which itself is a subsidiary of a subsidiary. So there’s a lot you can do to restructure, simplify, and realize value. Andrew Walker I mean, go with that. Anything in particular? Obviously, I was just focused mainly on the holdco NAV, but anything in particular you want to say about that one, or that you think is particularly interesting? They’ve got, I think, if I remember correctly, a third of NAV. Is there a reason to believe that NAV is understated, or there’s going to be some inflection point there, or anything? Dom St. George Well, they’ve really said very little about Astra International. I think one of the reasons for that is that, again, it’s the largest business in Indonesia by revenue. And so, in some ways, it’s almost like a quasi-state company, and so they have to be a little sensitive about the changes they make. I understand that BCG is in there doing some sort of strategic review, and I just find it hard to believe that, with all that’s going on in all the other group companies, there’ll be nothing done at Astra International. As I say, it’s incredibly complex, with 10 companies within the business. The main entity of Astra is the largest dealer and manufacturer of cars in Indonesia. They’re the exclusive distributor of Toyota, and they account for well over half of the cars sold in Indonesia, which is a country with a population of 250 million. I think 80% of all 2-wheel motorbikes are sold and financed by this entity, Astra. So it’s a massive business and, again, is a sprawling conglomerate. There’s a lot that you can potentially do, and Indonesia is a very unpopular place at the moment with equity investors. Andrew Walker I’m just laughing because, with 10 listed subsidiaries and the complexity of that, we can do another follow-up podcast on the whole of Astra International. It reminds me a little bit of Wendel in France, where you just get holding-company discounts on holding-company discounts. Cool. Well, look, I think we’ve gone through all my questions. I just want to ask: Is there any asset that we covered? Obviously, we could go deeper into them, but I think this is more holding-company-focused. Is there any Astra asset that we haven’t talked about, or that we kind of glanced over, that you think is just worth highlighting? Or is there anything else that I should be asking about Jardine Matheson that I haven’t hit on? Dom St. George Not really. You can get into the weeds, and there are so many—you can find more and more businesses. So, for example, they’re in Asia with Schindler, which is the giant elevator manufacturer. Jardine Matheson is their JV partner. They run 1,000 Pizza Hut and KFC locations, mostly across Asia. Once you peel back the layers, there are so many businesses, and for me, given the evidence of change, all of that creates optionality. Andrew Walker Is KFC still a dominant brand in Asia? Dom St. George It’s generally very successful. Andrew Walker Okay. I just remember, 10 years ago, when I was up and coming, everybody talked about KFC over in China. It’s nothing like KFC over here. It is the place. It’s the hot spot—it’s upscale. It’s where everybody wants to eat. I wasn’t sure if that had changed at all in the past 10 years. Dom St. George Yeah, I think it continues to do very well.