Eisai's fiscal first quarter, the three months to June 2026, produced the kind of numbers that might tempt a company to raise its outlook: revenue rose 15.6% to ¥234.33bn and operating profit climbed 19.2% to ¥24.73bn. Net profit attributable to shareholders grew 26% to ¥18.24bn. Eisai left its full-year forecast untouched instead, sticking with the ¥883.5bn revenue and ¥70.0bn operating-profit targets it published on 15 May 2026, up 7.0% and 58.6% respectively from the prior year.
The growth again traces back to the same three drugs Eisai calls its "3L" lineup. Cancer treatment Lenvima brought in ¥97.3bn, up 15.9%. Alzheimer's drug Leqembi rose 26.7% to ¥29.3bn, and insomnia treatment Dayvigo grew 37.9% to ¥18.9bn.
| Product | Q1 sales | YoY growth | Full-year target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lenvima | ¥97.3bn | +15.9% | ¥345.0bn |
| Leqembi | ¥29.3bn | +26.7% | ¥143.5bn |
| Dayvigo | ¥18.9bn | +37.9% | ¥73.5bn |
Leqembi's headline figure hides a lopsided regional story. American sales jumped 70.5% to ¥15.5bn, from ¥9.1bn a year earlier, as wider early-Alzheimer's diagnosis and blood-based biomarker testing expanded the pool of eligible patients. Chinese sales fell 37.3% to ¥4.8bn, but Eisai attributes the drop to a distorted comparison: distributors there had stocked up ahead of demand a year earlier, inflating the base. Eisai also opened new Leqembi markets in June, launching in Belgium and Australia, then in Brazil and India. In the US, regulators approved an under-the-skin, initial-therapy version of the drug, branded Leqembi IQLIK, on 13 July; Eisai plans to launch it in late August, betting that a home-administered injection will widen access beyond infusion clinics.
None of this came free. Selling costs rose partly because Eisai's profit-sharing payment to Merck & Co. on Lenvima sales climbed to ¥44.3bn from ¥36.0bn a year earlier, a mechanical consequence of Lenvima's own growth under the companies' co-promotion agreement. Stripped of one-off items, core operating profit rose a narrower 13.9% to ¥24.7bn.
On Eisai's own scorecard, the quarter left it at 26.5% of the full-year revenue target and 35.3% of the operating-profit target, both ahead of a straight-line quarterly pace. Management chose to hold its forecast rather than lift it, leaving room to point to currency assumptions, tariff policy and an upcoming US regulatory decision on an expanded Lenvima combination, due 4 October 2026, before revisiting the numbers later in the year.