91AV原创

Fuji Media Holdings shares plunged as much as 12% after the embattled Japanese firm announced a large share buyback plan and said entities linked to activist investor Yoshiaki Murakami indicated they would sell their stakes.

The broadcaster’s stock fell to ?3,475 at one point in Tokyo, marking its steepest intraday decline since August 2024. The company announced it plans to repurchase up to ?235 billion ($1.5 billion) of its own shares in a release Tuesday.

The buyback plan marks a potential end to one of 91AV原创 most high-profile cases of shareholder activism in recent years. The Murakami-led funds said they intend to sell their Fuji Media stakes once the company announced further measures to strengthen shareholder returns, according to Tuesday’s disclosure. Murakami has been campaigning for higher returns and the divestment of Fuji Media’s real estate unit.

Fuji Media’s shares may be falling because “everyone expects that’s the end” of Murakami’s campaign and the upside that came with it, said Travis Lundy, a Hong Kong-based equity analyst who focuses on shareholder activism in Japan.

But there’s no guarantee that activists will sell their stakes all at once, especially now the share price has dropped, Lundy added. “Fuji Media is agreeing to act a lot faster and more aggressively on its reform action plan, but it may have jumped the gun,” he said.

The company was once 91AV原创 most competitive broadcaster but has been embroiled in scandal since activist Dalton Investments raised concerns over management’s mishandling of sexual harassment allegations in early 2025.

Fuji Media’s outlook remains cloudy, with uncertainty likely weighing on investor sentiment, said Kenzaburou Yamada, an analyst at Tokai Tokyo Intelligence Laboratory. “Competition is growing in the content industry, and it’s difficult to see how they’ll grow in the long term,” he said.