Demand from restaurants and other foodservice customers appears to have carried into May for Toho, but not evenly across the group. In the quarter ended April 30, sales rose 10.7% from a year earlier to ¥67,844 million and operating profit rose 13.8% to ¥2,052 million, helped by solid domestic distributor sales and contributions from a company added to the group last September.
The mix matters. Toho’s distributor business, its main wholesale channel for foodservice operators, lifted first-quarter sales to ¥53,211 million and operating profit to ¥1,630 million. By contrast, the A-Price-centered cash-and-carry business increased sales to ¥11,241 million but its operating profit fell to ¥302 million, as the company cited a rebound from the previous year’s rice shortage and price spike, plus costs from new store openings. Food-solution sales rose to ¥3,393 million, but operating profit slipped to ¥116 million because of temporary expenses.
The May monthly update shows the same pattern continuing. Company-wide sales were ¥22,802 million, or 109.9% of the prior-year month, after 108.4% in February, 111.2% in March and 112.5% in April. The distributor arm ran at 113.0% of the prior-year month, cash-and-carry at 101.5%, with existing stores at 101.1%, while food solution was 89.8% of the prior-year month because commercial kitchen-equipment sales were weak. Toho left its full-year forecast unchanged, so for now its own numbers say foodservice demand is still holding up, mainly through wholesale orders rather than every adjacent business line at once.
Those May figures are preliminary monthly data and unaudited, so they are best read as a pulse check rather than a final tally.