JEOL's industrial equipment segment sold ¥14.9bn in the six months to September 2026, down 44.7% on a year earlier, and the company puts the drop down to the timing of sales and tighter export controls on its mask writers.
What hit the segment
The multi-beam and single-beam mask writing systems drove the fall. JEOL said sales of both declined because of shifts in when sales were booked and stronger export restrictions. The results note names no affected countries and does not say how much of the decline each factor explains.
One line of business moved the other way. Orders for spot-beam electron-beam lithography systems kept growing, mainly for producing optical devices used in AI data centres. Segment operating profit was ¥3.8bn, against ¥11.7bn in the same period a year earlier.
Why the group number is different
Group sales fell 19.8% to ¥65.8bn, and operating profit fell 56.5% to ¥5.2bn. Part of that comparison reflects a change in the group's perimeter. JEOL moved its medical equipment business into a new company on 1 April 2026 and sold all of its shares to Sysmex the same day. The prior-year half included ¥7.4bn of sales from that business.
Medical equipment was a separate reporting segment, so the sale does not account for the 44.7% industrial decline. The group now reports two segments. The scientific and measuring instruments segment, led by electron microscopes, grew sales 6.8% to ¥50.9bn.
Guidance unchanged
JEOL left its full-year forecast as published on 15 May 2026, which has sales of ¥164bn, down 8.6%. It noted that its sales and profit tend to concentrate in the fourth quarter. The company is scheduled to brief institutional investors and analysts on 19 November 2026.