Yakult Honsha Co Ltd

Thank you very much for taking the time to attend our financial results and mid-term management plan briefing today. I will begin by explaining our performance last fiscal year and our outlook for the current year. In terms of consolidated results for the previous year, both net sales and profit at each stage declined compared to the previous year. In Japan, the Yakult 1000 series underperformed, resulting in a decrease in both sales and profits. Overseas, we saw sales and profit grow in Americas, but overall, we recorded a decline in both revenue and earnings. For the current year, we anticipate a slight decline in ordinary profit, but we plan to exceed last year's result in terms of net sales, operating profit, and net income. In Japan, the Toshitsu Ofu Yakult 1000 series will now be available in both the home delivery channel and the retail store channel, creating new opportunities for each customer and increase the number of bottles sold per day or daily sales volume. Overseas, growth in the Americas will continue, and we expect a recovery and renewed growth in Asia and Oceania, boosting our overall performance. In February, we announced a revision to our shareholder return policy. We consider the stable and continuous return of profits to shareholders to be one of our key management priorities. With regard to dividends, we prioritize steady dividend increases based on a progressive dividend policy. Dividend amounts are determined after a comprehensive evaluation of future capital requirements for business expansion, financial conditions, and current business performance. For this fiscal year, we have announced a ¥2 increase per share with a full-year dividend forecast of ¥66. Additionally, we are targeting a total return ratio of 10% and will carry out agile share buybacks, taking into account market conditions and cash flow. We plan to execute share buybacks totaling over 100 billion yen by fiscal year 2030. Now, let me explain the status of our business in Japan and overseas. Let's begin with our food and beverage business in Japan. In the previous fiscal year, daily sales volume of all dairy products averaged about 9.68 million bottles, down 8.8% compared to the previous year. This year, we will focus on increasing sales number of bottles sold per day of the high-profit Yakurt 1000 series, one of our core products. Factoring this in, our target for total daily sales of dairy products this fiscal year is 9.8 million bottles. Now, let's look at the Yakkert 1000 series. Average daily sales last year were 3.01 million bottles, a 5.7% decline from the previous year. After a rapid increase in demand, the number of bottles sold per day has gradually declined. As demand grew, more people had the chance to try our products, emphasizing new functions. However, we recognized that for many, the value of the product was not fully communicated, and this didn't lead to sustained consumption. In response to customer concerns about sugar content, calories, and sweetness, we launched Yakult 1000 Toshitsu Ofu for the home delivery channel and Y1000 Toshitsu Ofu for the retail store channel. We hope the launch of these new products will help us reconnect with past customers and reach new ones, increasing the number of customers who will continue to enjoy our products. For this fiscal year, we set a target of 3.3 million bottles per day for the Yakkert 1000 series. The combined sales target for Yakult 1000 and Yakult 1000 Tosu Ofu via the home delivery channel is 2.1 million bottles per day. Currently, introductions of Yakult Tosu Ofu to existing customers are progressing, and product replacement is underway. Daily sales have reached 1 million bottles, indicating strong acceptance. We are actively working to acquire new customers, but it will take time for them to fully understand the product and become regular customers. The contribution from new customers will begin to reflect in our sales performance going forward. In the retail store channel, we launched Y1000 Toshisuofu nationwide in April. Our target for combined daily sales of Y1000 and Y1000 Toitsu Ofu this year is 1.2 million bottles. With both Y1000 and Y1000 Toitsu Ofu products on store shelves, we are increasing promotional efforts and gaining more media attention, leading to greater visibility. While some cannibalization with existing products may occur, many customers have been waiting for those to offer versions, and we expect performance to gradually improve. We are still verifying April's results, but the launch has gotten off to a solid start.

Next, I will discuss overseas food and beverage business. Looking at the number of bottles sold per day or daily sales volume for the overseas, we finished the fiscal year slightly below the prior fiscal year. However, thanks to our China business having bottomed out, the daily sales volume in the third and fourth quarters exceeded that of the prior year. The positive trend has continued, with the first quarter of the fiscal year also exceeding last year's level. While there are still disparities among our business locations, those with stable growth continue to expand, and those that underperformed last year are now entering a recovery phase after hitting bottom. We plan for this overall dynamic to lift our overall results. Now I will explain the situation in our key countries. First is the Americas. The daily sales volume grew more than 5% in the previous fiscal year, with the volume reaching a record high. The number of partner stores also steadily increased, with our products now distributed to about 20,000 stores. However, this is still less than half of the target stores, so there is plenty of room to expand our distribution. On the West Coast, where we have been present for a long time, distribution is generally well established. But in the Mid and East Coast, there are still many stores with low exposure and visibility. We need to work on increasing the daily sales volume per store. On the production side, the California plant is approaching its supply capacity limits, but we are working to improve utilization rate to meet the demand and are confident we will surpass last year's volume. Considering future demand, we recognize the need to increase supply capacity, and thus we're moving forward with the construction of a new plant in southeastern state of Georgia in the United States, aiming to start production in September 2026. The new plant will be about six times larger than the California plant, and we'll be capable not only of producing more of our existing products, but also of producing environmentally conscious and high-value added products. Next is Mexico. The daily sales volume grew more than 3% with the volume reaching a record high. Our longstanding presence in the market has resulted in a deep understanding and strong penetration of our products, forming the basis for stable growth. In Mexico, we implement price increases every year, and this year, we again raised prices in February to keep pace with inflation. Despite this, the daily sales volume has remained steady, maintaining Mexico as a key driver of profit growth. Next is Vietnam. The daily sales volume grew at about 20% in the previous fiscal year, with volume reaching a new record high. There is significant potential for further market penetration, both by expanding sales regions and increasing the daily sales volume per store. With ongoing distribution expansion, we expect to achieve double-digit growth again this year. Next is China. Daily sales volume in the previous fiscal year decreased by about 8%. However, while the first half showed a year-near decrease of about 17%, the second half saw an increase of about 3%, indicating a turnaround. Although the sluggish consumer spending is expected to continue due to the deteriorating economic climate, we have been taking various sales measures through trial and error and the results became apparent in the second half. Furthermore, sales in the first quarter of this year have also surpassed those of last year. Going forward, we will continue to implement short-, medium-, and long-term strategies in parallel, regularly evaluating results and revising our actions to endure effective operations. In addition to recovering daily sales volume, we will continue reviewing expenses to secure profits as much as possible. Recently in April, we launched Yakult Muscat Flavor following last year's release of Yakult Peach Flavor Iron Plus. However, our focus remains on promoting the benefits of the lactobacillus casei strain Shirota and new flavors are introduced to attract customer interest and encourage product trial, not as a shift in product strategy. Next is Indonesia. Daily sales volume in the previous fiscal year decreased by about 9%. The slowdown in consumer demand has had a significant impact, but the year-on-year rate of decline has been narrowing in each quarter. For this fiscal year, achieving a return to growth is our essential goal. We are promoting distribution to supermarkets, conducting campaigns using social media, and opening official shops on e-commerce sites. Additionally, as a horizontal expansion of the successful product strategies in China, we are preparing products tailored to the Indonesian market. We plan to implement a wide range of initiatives, which we believe will definitely help stimulate demand. Moreover, during tough economic times, the support provided by our Yakut Lady organization becomes even more important. We aim to further strengthen this organization and make this year one in which we maximize the power of our 11,000 members. Finally, starting this fiscal year, we are launching a new medium-term management plan. I will explain this in detail later, but I hope to share with everyone our approach based on the three pillars of business strategy, financial and capital strategy, and non-financial strategy. That concludes my explanation. Thank you for your attention.

Please refer to the color version at hand as I provide the overview based on the financial results. To avoid redundancy, I'll keep the report concise by omitting overlapping points. On page 1, as mentioned earlier, overall, we experienced a decrease in both revenue and profit, with domestic operations declining, while overseas, including India, saw increases in both. Key financial indicators are presented on page 2. Since these figures were covered earlier, I'll omit detailed explanations of the numbers. Moving to page 3, the income statement. I'd like to highlight some important items on the right-hand side, which is a gain of 5 billion yen from the sale of investment securities. We are continuing our policy of reducing strategic shareholdings as we did last year. Additionally, under extraordinary losses, there is loss on liquidation of business. As you may know, we recorded a 1.1 billion yen loss related to the closure of our Shanghai plant, including fixed asset disposals and special retirement payments. Next, Key financial ratios and indicators, including total assets, ROE and ROA, are listed here. Notably, ROE decreased by 1.6 points year-on-year to 8.1% due to lower profits. But we plan for recovery in the next fiscal year. Moving on to page 5. The balance sheet details show no significant changes. Property plant and equipment increased by approximately 28.6 billion yen, mainly due to ongoing construction at our U.S. plant and Chiba plant in Japan, accounting for over 20 billion of the increase. These are the major movements in the balance sheet. Now, I'd like to discuss the performance by segment with more details. In domestic beverages, revenue decreased by 9.1 billion yen. Our main product, the Yakkerd 1000 series, saw a 5.7% decline in the number of bottles sold per day compared to the previous year. To reignite growth post-boom, we launched a Toitsu offer version through our home delivery channel in January, aiming to add bottles sold per day. However, it mostly cannibalized existing sales volume, limiting number of bottles sold per day growth. However, DOSU OFF options are popular in the market, and by March, about 1 million units had shifted to the DOSU OFF type. Although we planned growth with the DOSU OFF type product from January, cautious consumer spending hindered significant expansion. As you may know, rice prices have been rising daily or weekly. leading to a strong frugality trend, which likely acted as a break, preventing the number of bottles per day sold to go up in the domestic market. Next is the Americas. The Americas performed steadily in each country. The Americas include Mexico, the U.S., and Brazil. and price increases were implemented in each country this fiscal year. Despite the price hikes, total daily sales volume increased by 2.6%, resulting in a double effect that contributed to steady sales growth in the Americas. Next, Asia and Oceania saw a 1.5 billion yen increase, significantly boosted by currency translation gains due to yen depreciation, which contributed 7.2 billion yen. Over the full year, total number of bottles sold per day declined by approximately 5%. In China, which many of you are watching closely, annual number of bottles sold per day came to 92.4% compared to the previous year. We saw a steady recovery from Q1 continuing through Q2 and into Q4. And the year-over-year quarterly number of bottles sold per day in China last year were 75.3% in Q1, 90.6% in Q2, 103.4% in Q3, and 101.4% in Q4. We began to see signs of recovery around Q3 of last year, suggesting the worst is behind us. Vietnam is still at around 1.2 million bottles per day in volume, but it has achieved approximately 119% year-for-year growth, solid double-digit growth, indicating it's developing into a promising future market. Elsewhere, In other regions, we recorded a decline of about 6.8 billion yen in revenue, which is mostly due to the transfer of pharmaceutical-related sales operations last year. Now, let's look at operating profit on page 8. In Japan, domestic breviary sales came to 37.4 billion yen, down 12 billion yen from the previous year. Meanwhile, overseas operations generated 36.7 billion yen in profit, representing a 5.5 billion yen increase. As a result, total operating profit declined by 8 billion yen year-on-year. Domestically, higher raw material costs for our products had a negative impact of about 1.3 billion yen. In response to product shortages for the Y1000 line, we expanded production capacity. As a result, depreciation costs increased by about 1.8 billion yen over the past year. There were also increases in labor costs and other indirect manufacturing costs at our plants. Altogether, this raised the cost of goods sold by about 2 percentage points. And of course, lower sales volume also contributed to profit decline, resulting in a total reduction of 12 billion yen in operating profit. Next, in the Americas, both price increases and volume growth contributed to performance. While expenses did rise, they were fully upset, resulting in a 1.4 billion yen increase in profit.

Regarding Asia, as I mentioned earlier with reference to the Shanghai plant, we focused on reducing expenses and managed to secure a profit of 1 billion yen. So far, I've explained changes in operating profit by segment. In the other category, sales decreased by 6.8 billion yen and operating profit decreased by about 700 million yen. This reflects a decline in pharmaceutical product sales, but since SG&A also decreased in line with sales, the drop in operating profit was smaller compared to the drop in sales. that covers the status of each segment. Now, page 10 shows the direct sales ratio, and page 11 presents the daily sales volume by country. Among these, as I mentioned earlier, Vietnam in the Asia-Oceania region has been developing into one of our major markets with 119.9% year-on-year growth. For China business, when all related entities are combined, the daily sales volume stood at 92.4% compared to the previous year. Page 13 outlines the impact of foreign exchange with a list and a chart. To reiterate, the total impact from foreign exchange was ¥10.8 billion on sales, ¥1.7 billion in operating profit, ¥2.4 billion on ordinary profit, and ¥1.4 billion on net profit. Overall, these terms' financial results were impacted by a weak yen environment. That covers the financial results of the term. Now please refer to page 14. This is our forecast for the next fiscal year. Overall, we expect both sales and profits to increase. For domestic liturgies, we are projecting higher sales and profits with the introduction of Toshitsu of the Yakult 1000 series. For overseas business, we also expect increased sales and profits due to a rise in daily sales volume. Page 15 presents our management indices. For the next fiscal year, we forecast a sales increase of 6.3 billion yen, an operating profit increase of 3.1 billion yen, an ordinary profit decrease of 1.3 billion yen, a net profit increase of 3.4 billion yen, and earnings per share of 167.13 yen, up 16.65 yen from the prior year. The reason for the decrease in ordinary profit from the positive operating profit is that while last fiscal year, we recorded a foreign exchange gain of 5.3 billion yen. But this fiscal year, although the yen is temporarily weaker against the dollar at this very moment, overall, we expect the yen to strengthen, so we are not anticipating foreign exchange gains anymore. In addition, we are planning to have the funds held overseas be brought back to Japan in the form of dividends and planning to use it for capital investment that the group will acquire. Some countries overseas have higher interest rates, so we also expect a decrease in interest income, which is also reflected in the forecast. On page 16, we show our simulation of foreign exchange impact using the average exchange rates from January to March this year as the basis for the forecast of next fiscal year. As you can see on this page, in recent years, a weaker yen has provided positive impacts on our earnings. But for the next fiscal year, we are projecting the yen to strengthen against all currencies, resulting in negative foreign exchange impacts of 12.1 billion yen on sales, 2.5 billion yen on operating profit, 3.3 billion yen on ordinary profit, and 1.7 billion yen on the net profit. Now, let me discuss the sales forecast by segment. In terms of sales, domestically, we expect an increase of 9.5 billion yen, in the Americas, an increase of 100 million yen, in Asia-Oceania, an increase of 800 million yen, and in Europe, an increase of 100 million yen. While overseas growth is limited, as mentioned, we are factoring in negative currency effects of 8.3 billion yen in the Americas and 3.5 billion yen in the Asia-Oceania. In Japan, we expect a 3.9% increase in sales. The main driver assumed in our budget is that introduction of the Toitsu of low sugar content Yakult 1000 series, which we will focus with good care in this fiscal year. Our promotions will center around this series to drive growth. As mentioned at the beginning, the home delivery channel started sale of this new series in January, the in-store channel in April, and mass retailers began distribution of this new series on April 21 this year. While the daily sales volume is not yet significant, we look forward to a full-scale rollout going forward. Especially in the retail store market, by introducing the Toshitsu office series, we hope to win back customers who had stopped buying due to concerns about sugar and calorie content. In the Americas, While we expect steady growth similar to last year, negative currency effects are expected to weigh on performance. In Asia-Oceania, we also expect performance to be about the same as last year. Regarding overseas operations, as I mentioned at the beginning, the China business has bottomed out, and in the first quarter from January to March, daily sales volume exceeded last year's level at 103.6%. On page 22 of the supplementary financial results materials distributed to you, We have included preliminary daily sales volume for each country from January to March this year. Please refer to this at your convenience. You will see all regions have matched or exceeded last year's daily sales volume during this period. In calculating next year's operating profit, we have factored in an expected increase in raw material costs of 4.7 billion yen. Of this, domestic raw material cost increases account for 2 billion yen, and overseas increases account for 2.7 billion yen. Here, Asia Oceania alone shows a significant operating profit increase of 2.1 billion yen. Major drivers for this increase include the Shanghai plant closure and cost restructuring efforts undertaken within the group. As a result, we are planning a double-digit profit increase of 2.1 billion yen for this region. Finally, page 21 shows the trends in sales and profits and page 22 presents trends in management indices. Although there are many assumptions that need to be considered and the calculations are complex, our forecast is that ROE will recover from 8.1% to 8.6% in the next fiscal year.