Daikin Industries told investors on Aug. 4 that group operating profit rose 7.6% to ¥130.6bn in the quarter through June 2026, on sales up 17.5% to ¥1.43tn. Net profit attributable to shareholders slipped 1.7% to ¥80.1bn, a gap the air-conditioning and chemicals maker did not close despite the top-line jump.
The quarter is a study in contrasts. In the Americas, Daikin said residential air-conditioner demand "remained limited" and stopped short of a full recovery, citing tariff-driven inflation, persistently high mortgage rates and the economic uncertainty stemming from tension in the Middle East. Its filter business told a similar story: US sales fell as the residential market cooled.
Applied air conditioning, the equipment that cools data centres rather than living rooms, moved the other way. Chiller and custom air-handling-unit sales grew significantly on data-centre demand, with new acquisitions adding further revenue. The same pattern showed up in Asia-Oceania, where data-centre-linked applied air conditioning expanded even as delayed construction projects weighed on other equipment sales.
China supplied the sharpest split. Daikin said real-estate weakness sharply slowed demand there, yet regional sales still rose on favourable currency translation, and the company said segment profit held at previous high levels through premium-product sales, a push into solutions and cost cuts.
| Segment | Sales | Sales YoY | Operating Profit | Profit YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air Conditioning & Refrigeration | ¥1.33tn | +17.0% | ¥118.2bn | +3.1% |
| Chemicals | ¥77.2bn | +28.8% | ¥11.5bn | +75.6% |
| Other (hydraulics, medical, electronics) | ¥24.6bn | +15.9% | ¥0.9bn | +735.7% |
The chemicals business, Daikin's smaller but higher-margin division, benefited squarely from the semiconductor upcycle. Segment sales rose 28.8% to ¥77.2bn and operating profit jumped 75.6% to ¥11.5bn, led by fluoropolymers sold into semiconductor and data-centre uses and by etching agents used in chip-making processes.
Group comprehensive income, which folds in currency-translation effects, swung to ¥145.5bn from ¥59.1bn a year earlier, a 146.0% increase; the year-earlier period had itself fallen 70.2%.
Daikin left its full-year targets and dividend forecast unchanged from the outlook it issued on May 12: sales of ¥5.15tn (up 2.7%), operating profit of ¥436bn (up 5.1%) and a full-year dividend of ¥360 per share. Management repeated the same list of swing factors it named in May, including US tariff measures and Middle East tension pushing up naphtha-derived material and logistics costs, as reasons the outlook could still move.
For a company whose revenue depends on both AI-era infrastructure spending and ordinary household air-conditioner replacement cycles, the quarter shows those two worlds are not moving in step. Data centres and chipmakers are buying; American and Chinese homebuyers, for different reasons, are mostly waiting.