Nippon Paper Industries pulled its full-year earnings forecast for the year to March 2027 on August 5, telling investors it cannot yet calculate the financial damage from two disasters that have knocked out production at plants on opposite sides of the Pacific.
The company's US subsidiary, Nippon Dynawave Packaging, lost a chemical storage tank at its pulp plant in Washington state on May 26, killing 11 people and injuring eight; the plant remains shut. Then, on July 28, the Reiwa 8 Kumamoto earthquake damaged Nippon Paper's Yatsushiro mill in Kumamoto Prefecture, killing nine people and halting operations there too.
Before the withdrawal, Nippon Paper had told investors on May 15 to expect sales of ¥1.22tn, operating profit of ¥25bn, ordinary profit of ¥18bn and net profit attributable to shareholders of ¥10bn for the year, with earnings per share of ¥86.72. That target already implied a lighter bottom line than the year just finished: in the twelve months to March 2026 the group posted sales of ¥1.19tn, operating profit of ¥25.2bn, ordinary profit of ¥23.1bn and net profit of ¥11.7bn. Now none of those figures stand. The company has replaced them with "undecided" across the board and says it will publish new numbers once it can reasonably assess the toll from the two incidents.
| Metric | Previous FY2027 Forecast (Withdrawn) | Year to March 2026 (Actual) | Q1 FY2027, Apr-Jun 2026 (Actual) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | ¥1.22tn | ¥1.19tn | ¥314.5bn |
| Operating profit | ¥25bn | ¥25.2bn | ¥2.9bn |
| Ordinary profit | ¥18bn | ¥23.1bn | ¥2.5bn |
| Net profit attributable to shareholders | ¥10bn | ¥11.7bn | -¥233mn (net loss) |
| Earnings per share | ¥86.72 | ¥101.69 | -¥2.02 |
The first quarter gives some sense of the strain even before the shutdowns fully bit. Sales for April through June rose 7.5% year on year to ¥314.5bn, helped by newly consolidated subsidiaries and a weaker yen, but operating profit fell 47.0% to ¥2.9bn and ordinary profit dropped 54.8% to ¥2.5bn. The group swung to a net loss of ¥233mn, against a ¥1.9bn profit a year earlier, as cost inflation and competition hit its overseas paper and packaging units.
The guidance freeze arrived the same day Nippon Paper pushed ahead with a separate restructuring step. Its Australian subsidiary Opal agreed to sell its bag-manufacturing business, which lost about A$8.3mn on A$54.5mn of sales last year, to a special-purpose entity backed by the US family office The Magan Group. The deal, expected to close September 1, is meant to let Opal concentrate on integrated corrugated-board production, and it will generate an estimated ¥6bn extraordinary loss in the current fiscal year.
For now, investors have no replacement range to work with, only management's word that a new forecast will follow once damage assessments at the Washington-state plant and the Yatsushiro mill are complete.