Kewpie's operating profit rose 23.9% to ¥20.0bn in the six months to May 2026, and the mayonnaise maker did it almost entirely on the strength of its home market. Net sales rose 3.9% to ¥261.6bn, but the more telling number is domestic operating margin, which jumped 2.4 percentage points to 7.7%.
Two forces did the work. Price revisions added ¥5.2bn to operating profit and a shift toward higher-value products added a further ¥1.2bn (¥800mn domestic, ¥400mn overseas), according to the company's own bridge of profit drivers. Retail salad seasoning prices rose 6% to ¥655 per kilogram. At the same time, Kewpie's full-year cost assumptions show the egg benchmark it uses for planning falling to ¥305 per kilogram from ¥319, even as the vegetable-oil benchmark it also tracks rose to ¥427 from ¥376. Cheaper eggs, in other words, offset pricier oil rather than driving the whole story, but the net effect on the domestic ledger was positive.
The segment breakdown shows how unevenly the gains landed.
| Segment | Operating Profit | YoY Change |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic retail (市販用) | ¥8.4bn | +46.0% |
| Domestic foodservice (業務用) | ¥6.9bn | +55.5% |
| Overseas | ¥6.9bn | -12.7% |
Retail (市販用) operating profit rose 46% to ¥8.4bn and foodservice (業務用) rose 56% to ¥6.9bn, both segments benefiting from the same price and mix effects. Overseas operating profit fell 12.7% to ¥6.9bn even as overseas sales rose 9% in yen, or 3% in local currency. Kewpie blames a temporary sales dip in the Americas and higher depreciation from newly ramped-up factories, not a demand problem. The company's presentation materials also flag a ¥4.5bn full-year headwind tied to Middle East operations, a cost still working through the numbers.
Net income tells a different, less dramatic story than the operating line suggests. It fell 29.7% to ¥13.2bn, but the drop is mostly an accounting base effect: special gains fell by roughly ¥11.6bn because last year's period included a large one-off gain on fixed-asset sales that did not repeat.
Kewpie left its full-year forecast unchanged: sales of ¥530.0bn (up 3.2%), operating profit of ¥38.0bn (up 9.7%), and net income of ¥25.5bn (down 16.4%). The company is effectively betting that domestic pricing power keeps compounding through the second half while it waits for the Americas and new overseas capacity to stop being a drag rather than start being a lift.