2026 Stewardship Code Self-Assessment

Cadira Capital Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “the Company”) is committed to its mission of “Connecting the Investment Chain and Beyond”, aiming both to help address global environmental and social challenges and to deliver high-quality investment returns to our clients.

The core principle of Japan’s Stewardship Code—to promote the sustainable growth of investee companies while pursuing the medium- to long-term investment returns of clients and beneficiaries—aligns with our corporate philosophy. Accordingly, we have adopted the Code and disclosed our policies for addressing its principles.

We hereby present our self-assessment regarding the Company’s response to Japan’s Stewardship Code for the one-year period from July 2025 to June 2026, as summarized below.

Principle 1

Institutional investors should have a clear policy on how they fulfill their stewardship responsibilities and publicly disclose it.

Our investment strategies focus on companies that can both contribute to greater societal sustainability and achieve their own growth. For such companies, and for those expected to meet these criteria in the future, we fulfill our stewardship responsibilities through two core activities: (i) direct, engagement-focused dialogue with management and (ii) the exercise of voting rights at general shareholders’ meetings, both aimed at encouraging management improvement.

Based on Japan’s Stewardship Code, we disclose our stewardship policy on our website. In line with this policy, we have conducted dialogue with companies to encourage management enhancement, and exercised our voting rights at shareholders’ meetings to express our position as shareholders.

Principle 2

Institutional investors should have a clear policy on managing conflicts of interest in fulfilling their stewardship responsibilities and publicly disclose it.

We emphasize the balanced development of investee companies’ stakeholders—including the environment, society, and shareholders. Accordingly, in fulfilling our stewardship responsibilities, we take care not to act in ways that would benefit only a subset of stakeholders.

For investments or voting involving companies with which we have business relationships, we follow internal rules and, when necessary, seek input from external advisors to ensure effectiveness.

Furthermore, as an independent asset management company, no specific corporate group influences the stewardship activities we conduct, and as a result, conflicts of interest with our clients and beneficiaries are limited.

As an independent asset management company, we are structurally less prone to conflicts of interest with investee companies. In fact, over the past year, no cases arose in which conflicts of interest posed an issue in our investment decisions or the exercise of voting rights.

Principle 3

Institutional investors should appropriately monitor investee companies to fulfill their stewardship responsibilities with the aim of promoting the sustainable growth of the investee companies.

Our research centers on developing and testing investment hypotheses. These hypotheses involve predicting changes in a company’s financial and non-financial fundamentals, as well as the corresponding share price scenarios. In formulating them, we consider both how a company is affected by changes in society and the environment, and how it impacts stakeholders, including society and the environment. We also account for how our engagement activities may affect the company.

Over the past year, we conducted 802 company research activities. In addition to dialogues with management, IR, and sustainability officers, we also conducted site visits and discussions involving external experts to deepen our understanding of investee companies. In the course of our dialogue with companies, we also confirm, on a case-by-case basis, whether we have received any undisclosed material facts. No such undisclosed material facts were received during the period.

Additionally, to assess how our investment activities affect society, we measure and manage the impacts generated by investee companies (Impact Management & Measurement: IMM), and incorporate this data into our corporate valuation process.

Also, as non-financial information becomes increasingly important in equity investment, we actively participated in seminars and events on sustainable and impact investing, such as the Impact-Driven Financing Initiative, to enhance our knowledge base.

Principle 4

Institutional investors should seek to share understanding with investee companies and work to solve problems through constructive, purposeful dialogue.

Through direct engagement by our investment professionals, we provide support so that investee companies’ initiatives generate virtuous cycles. In our dialogue, we clearly communicate our investment policy to companies, thereby deepening mutual understanding and achieving highly transparent engagement. When misconduct occurs or stakeholders are adversely affected, we encourage corrective action.

Where appropriate, we also collaborate with other stakeholders in dialogue with investee companies, taking a proactive role—including leading such efforts ourselves where useful—to strengthen effectiveness.

Additionally, where doing so contributes to the effectiveness of our dialogue, we disclose our shareholding to investee companies upon request.

Over the past year, we held 343 one-on-one meetings (included in the research figure noted above). Because our investment professionals also lead engagement, each meeting serves both research and engagement purposes.

Key topics included impact and disclosure issues, as well as ESG risks. We monitor outcomes by tracking metrics such as price-to-book ratio (PBR) and our proprietary sustainability scores. To verify the appropriateness of our dialogues, we also survey companies after each meeting. In the survey results for meetings held during the period, 98.4% of respondents answered “Yes” when asked whether “important points were covered,” while 83.2% cited medium- to long-term strategy and 41.6% cited sustainability as important discussion topics for companies; we believe this reflects effective dialogue grounded in a medium- to long-term perspective. The survey response rate for the period was 64.1%.

Additionally, we hosted collaborative engagement meetings with asset owners and investment/sustainability professionals from other asset management firms. Over the period, we held three such meetings, with a total of 40 participants (excluding speakers) engaging in lively Q&A.

Regarding transparency around beneficial ownership, when investee companies inquire about our shareholding status, we respond in good faith.

Principle 5

Institutional investors should have clear guidelines on the exercise of voting rights and disclosure of voting results, and should exercise voting rights in a manner that contributes to the sustainable growth of investee companies.

When exercising voting rights, we aim to contribute to building a sustainable society and environment by considering the interests of both shareholders and stakeholders, thereby serving our clients’ long-term interests.

Since our investments are made based on alignment with management’s direction, we generally respect management’s policies. However, we oppose or abstain from proposals that we believe go against shareholder and stakeholder interests, unless a clear explanation is provided.

We disclose our voting results annually on our website, including details of individual agenda items. For items we oppose, we also disclose the reasons.

Our investment professionals individually reviewed and exercised voting rights on all shareholder-meeting proposals of our investee companies.

Voting results are available here.

Principle 6

Institutional investors should regularly report to clients and beneficiaries on how they fulfill their stewardship responsibilities, including voting.

We report our engagement and voting activities through client reports and meetings, supplementing numerical data such as the number of dialogues with case studies that illustrate the details of our activities. We also consider stakeholders beyond our clients and beneficiaries to be important, and actively disseminate information through our website, social media, and other channels.

We report on our activities through client materials prepared for the funds we manage, as well as through meetings with clients. Over the past year, we held 42 individual meetings with clients and prospective investors.

We also publish a Progress Report to share updates on our progress toward achieving our mission. We further report on and communicate our activities through our annual general meeting. At the annual general meeting held on July 3, 2025, attended by 43 participants from 32 companies, we reported on the highlights of the Progress Report and provided a detailed explanation of our proprietary corporate valuation methodology. Approximately 70% of attendees were IR and sustainability officers from listed companies, and approximately 15% were capital markets professionals, making the event an opportunity for two-way dialogue with a broad range of stakeholders, including investee companies, beyond simply reporting to our clients and beneficiaries. We have also spoken at events such as the Impact-Driven Financing Initiative, the Social Impact Management Initiative (SIMI), and FinCity.Tokyo, working to disseminate information to a wide range of stakeholders.

In addition, we use our website and social media channels to provide updates on our activities. Please also refer to these for further information.

Principle 7

To contribute to the sustainable growth of investee companies, institutional investors should have sufficient capability and resources, including deep understanding of investee companies and sustainability considerations relevant to their investment strategies.

To conduct engagement and voting appropriately, our Investment Management Department plays a central role, supported by both organizational and human resource development.

The most important element of our organizational setup is sharing a common investment philosophy across the firm. Building on this, we integrate investment, engagement, and voting into a consistent process, with ongoing improvements over time to strengthen our framework.

For talent development, we run in-house training on company research and dialogue methods, while actively leveraging external educational opportunities to enhance the skills of our professionals.

Our Board of Directors oversees these activities. The Investment Management Department conducts an annual self-assessment, reports to the Board, and the results are disclosed on our website.

Our investment professionals hold daily and weekly meetings to share our investment philosophy and specific investment ideas. We are also working to strengthen our firm-wide capabilities through company-wide compliance and sustainability training.

In addition, through regular meetings with six external advisors, we receive objective feedback on our activities—at times rigorous criticism—and the presence of these advisors plays an important role in reinforcing our self-discipline. One advisor, for instance, has offered academic insights into our investment process, noting that our approach of encouraging greater sustainability disclosure is academically validated.

As part of our next-generation development efforts, and with the aim of building relationships with prospective future hires and developing our human resource development system, we accepted one student intern.

We also participate in initiatives such as the Impact Consortium, the Impact-Driven Financing Initiative, the Social Impact Management Initiative (SIMI), and 30% Club Japan, working to strengthen our execution capabilities through relationship-building outside the firm. As part of these activities, we actively share, through our website and seminars, the insights gained from developing and applying our proprietary Impact-Integrated Value (IIV) framework, contributing to more active discussion in the capital markets around the growing focus on impact considerations. We incorporate feedback from participants to improve our stewardship practices. Please see our Progress Report for further details.