Seven & i Holdings has raised its profit forecast for the year to February 2027, and the reason has less to do with rice balls than with gasoline pumps in the American Midwest.
The Tokyo-based owner of 7-Eleven now expects full-year operating profit of ¥425.0bn, up from the ¥405.0bn it guided in April. Full-year operating revenue is projected at ¥10.43tn, a ¥982bn increase from the prior forecast of ¥9.448tn. Management said the upgrade reflects two forces: gasoline revenue at its US subsidiary, 7-Eleven, Inc., that ran ahead of plan on market conditions, and a yen that weakened more than the company had assumed.
A currency reset, not just a tailwind
Seven & i had built its April guidance on an assumption of ¥150 to the dollar. It has now revised that to ¥157 for the full year and ¥158 for the six months through August. That is a meaningful reset, not a rounding adjustment, and it lifts the yen value of every dollar 7-Eleven, Inc. earns in the United States.
| Metric | Previous Forecast | Revised Forecast | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-year operating revenue | ¥9.448tn | ¥10.43tn | +10.4% |
| Full-year operating profit | ¥405.0bn | ¥425.0bn | +4.9% |
| Full-year net profit | ¥270.0bn | ¥278.0bn | +3.0% |
| Interim (H1) operating profit | ¥190.0bn | ¥234.0bn | +23.2% |
| Dollar-yen assumption (full year) | ¥150 | ¥157 | n/a |
Overseas gasoline offsets a squeezed home business
The first-quarter numbers show where the swing originates. Consolidated operating profit for the three months to May rose 61.4% year on year to ¥105.0bn. Within that, overseas convenience-store operating profit jumped to ¥65.6bn, more than seven times the year-earlier figure, as gasoline earnings and the exchange rate both moved in Seven & i's favor. Group operating revenue actually fell 14.3% to ¥2.38tn, but that decline is a reporting artefact: Seven Bank and the York Holdings supermarket group were deconsolidated last year and no longer appear in the consolidated top line.
Domestic convenience stores had a rougher quarter. Operating profit at the Japan business fell 4.2% to ¥52.2bn, as spending on in-store cooking equipment and next-generation store systems outpaced the benefit of higher same-store sales.
A dividend increase and a smaller share count
Seven & i also raised its full-year dividend forecast to ¥60 per share, up from the ¥50 paid the previous year. Separately, the board resolved on July 9 to cancel 284.3mn treasury shares, 10.92% of shares outstanding before the move, effective July 15. That retires the entire stock the company bought back under an authorization from April 2025 and will leave 2.32bn shares outstanding once the cancellation clears.
The upgrade rests on two things Seven & i cannot fully control: US gasoline margins and the yen. If either one turns, the next guidance revision could run the other way.