Uniqlo's Overseas Boom Outruns Japan as Seven & i Fills Up on Cheap Gas

Seven & i Holdings raised its full-year operating profit forecast to ¥425.0bn, and the upgrade traces to gasoline pumps in the American Midwest rather than rice balls in Tokyo. Gasoline revenue at 7-Eleven, Inc. ran ahead of plan, and the company also revised its dollar-yen planning assumption to ¥157 from ¥150, a rate that flatters dollar-denominated profit once translated back into yen.

The catch: Domestic convenience-store profit dipped as store-investment costs rose, so the forecast lift rests on the US business and the currency assumption, not on stronger footfall at home. Seven & i also moved to cancel 10.92% of its outstanding shares, a capital-return step layered on top of its existing buyback program.

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Applied Materials accounted for 21.9% of Rorze's quarterly sales, up from 15.3% a year earlier, as AI-driven memory investment pushed the Hiroshima wafer-handling equipment maker's semiconductor orders up 1.9 times to a record ¥42.0bn. Rorze left its full-year profit guidance, set in April, unchanged.

Kewpie's domestic operating margin jumped to 7.7% on price increases and a cheaper egg benchmark, but overseas operating profit fell 13% on Americas softness and new-factory depreciation, even as full-year guidance stayed unchanged.

New York-based Indus Capital Partners now holds 11.15% of Suruga Bank's voting rights, up from 9.38%, after an amended large-shareholding report filed with Japan's Kanto Local Finance Bureau on July 8.

Weathernews says AI-driven changes to how it runs corporate weather services cut a cumulative 15,300 hours of monthly operating time compared with the start of the prior fiscal year. The savings helped lower personnel costs and contributed to profit growth for the year to May 2026: net sales rose 4.1% to ¥24.48bn, operating profit rose 16.1% to ¥5.24bn, and net income rose 22.2% to ¥3.81bn.

The catch: A one-off commemorative dividend pushed Weathernews's payout ratio to 99.1% this year, but the company's own forecast puts next year's ratio back down at 58.3%. This year's shareholder return will not repeat.

Treasure Factory raised its full-year operating profit target to ¥5.33bn and added ¥2 to its interim dividend after a quarter where sales rose 16.4% and operating profit jumped 24%, though the company says some of that strength borrowed from the quarter ahead.

Storage-Oh's board has told shareholders to tender into Arealink's ¥1,340-a-share offer, a 42.25% premium over the pre-announcement price, with major holders already locked in and a squeeze-out ready for anyone who holds out.

Japan Display's board has voted to dissolve JDI Hong Kong Limited after the unit's revenue collapsed from $636.6mn to $79.2mn in two years; operations stop September 30, 2026, as part of a wider overseas sales reshuffle.

A former accountant at CKD's service subsidiary diverted company funds into a personal account for more than five years before his July 9 arrest; CKD has already booked the ¥178mn loss and is cutting pay for the executives on both sides of the reporting line.

TSI Holdings has locked in a binding deal for 87.7% of textile maker Toyo Enterprise plus all of its trading arm, which owns the rest, but the purchase price stays secret because the sellers are individuals, not a company.

Aeon Financial Service's net profit for the quarter to May more than doubled to ¥8.97bn as Japanese loan and card-fee income rose and Malaysia and Hong Kong expanded, yet the group's forecast for a 28.9% full-year profit decline is unchanged.

Sales of extreme ultraviolet photoresist ingredients lifted Osaka Organic Chemical's electronics-materials profit 68.4% in the six months to May, and the specialty chemical maker has allied with Sanpo Chemical Laboratories to broaden its semiconductor materials lineup.

Mitsubishi Materials will pay no coupon on ¥35bn of new convertible bonds due 2030, priced above face value and sold only to investors in Europe and Asia, not the United States.

Japan's trade ministry is rewriting the Green Innovation Fund's roadmap for cutting carbon from industrial furnaces in steel and chemicals plants, and manufacturers have until August 7 to comment before the next funding round opens.