The Avanti Group the equities research house based in Tokyo, providing professional trading and investment research solutions to institutional and private investors across the globe have recently drawn their investor’s attention to Rakuten Inc, the Japanese online retailer controlled by billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani having endured market backlash over the purchase of Viber, an internet messaging and calling service that would see Rakuten begin to encroach on territory dominated by regional internet goliath Tencent Holdings Ltd and Naver Corp. The $900 million Viber acquisition is the first to cause consternation as the company continues a yearlong buying spree of assets totaling over $2 billion.

“Rakuten is simply suffering through what all publicly traded companies have to endure from time to time, shareholders who simply do not understand what the company’s business is about. Viber is an expensive purchase, but without it, Rakuten cannot compete with the likes of both Tencent and Alibaba, something that would leave them dead in terms of regional user growth. What is even more disappointing is that Rakuten has grown in value year after year for 13 years in a difficult environment and has just gotten through paying these same shareholders an increased dividend,” said a Senior Analyst and Researcher at The Avanti Group.

Rakuten, for whom Viber will provide a distribution channel for the range of Rakuten’s digital products, also plans to create a game platform utilizing Viber, which boasts 300 million users of its instant messaging and free Internet phone services. The Viber acquisition is part of a spree of such purchases that the Japanese company has made over the last 18 months to boost its market base including Last year’s purchase of digital content platform Viki Inc, 2012’s acquisition of Wuaki.tv, a Europe-based video-on-demand and streaming service, and a minority $100 million stake in Pinterest Inc.

“Odd as it may sound this market panic that saw Rakuten lose as much as 13% is a near perfect opportunity for any investor that actually follows the industry to either take up or expand their holdings in the Japanese internet concern. With all of the fair-weather attention being paid to this growth sector at the moment, it is quite incomprehensible that someone would actually be pulling investment out of one of the most consistently performing companies on the planet and this opportunity should be leapt at,” concluded the Senior Analyst and Researcher at The Avanti Group.

Rakuten for whom the share-price drop trimmed Rakuten’s climb in the past year to 83%, also competes for online sales with Yahoo Japan Corp, whose biggest shareholder is billionaire Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Corp and has cash and disposable cash holdings worth near 345 billion yen ($3.4 billion) as of Sept 30, almost a quadruple increase in the amount held by the company at the end of 2011.

The Avanti Group is an equity research house providing research and analysis outsourcing solutions for institutional financial traders worldwide, founded in early 2003.