In focus: Horiba

Horiba is a holding in the Positive Impact strategy. The company is a Japanese manufacturer of state-of-the-art measurement equipment and analytical devices, used across a wide range of medical, environmental and automotive applications.

Specialists in measurement and analysis

Horiba’s wide variety of measurement and analytics solutions help its customers to deliver an even broader array of positive social and environmental impacts.

One of the company’s largest business segment is automotive, where it is a global leader in exhaust emissions measurement systems, although it also provides a range of mechanical and safety testing solutions. The company expects the accelerated use of electric vehicles and hydrogen energy to increase demand for its solutions. Horiba also manufactures measurement solutions for the capture of carbon in industrial processes, and a host of contaminant and emissions monitors for the semiconductor industry, helping to improve efficiency and yields. This will be increasingly important as growing interest in artificial intelligence technology drives up demand for semiconductors.

Elsewhere, Horiba’s medical offering includes blood testing instruments and reagents. The company created the first analyser to simultaneously measure blood cell counts and C-Reactive Protein, which the body produces in response to internal inflammation, thus facilitating faster and more accurate diagnosis. The company’s solutions are also used in the development, quality control and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.

Engaging for better measurability

Horiba is what we classify as an ‘enabler’ – it provides the tools for others to create positive impacts. While the versatile nature of Horiba’s solutions means that they can be used to make an impact across a variety of environmental and social areas, this also makes aggregated measurement difficult.

We engaged with Horiba in December 2023, to ask the company to provide metrics that would better enable us to measure its societal impacts, as we currently rely on case studies to demonstrate these. The company said that it was working towards finding a way to aggregate its impact into a single metric, or at least arrive at some meaningful numbers around this, and understood the increasing importance of being able to quantify impact. The company said it would welcome our help in this process, and we will follow up in due course.

The information provided should not be considered a recommendation to purchase or sell any particular security.
 

Source: Horiba, ‘Financial information presentation Q1 2024’, ‘HORIBA Report 2023’, (horiba.com).

Impact area: Environmental solutions
Primary SDG: SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production