Japan Raises Drug Copays as Chipmakers Raise Profit Guides

Digital Hearts Holdings, the Tokyo-listed game-debugging and enterprise QA group, is heading toward an exit from public markets. Its board has endorsed a tender offer from Sandbox, an acquisition vehicle wholly owned by the company's own chairman, at ¥1,060 a share, and is recommending that shareholders tender into the offer.

The catch: The same disclosure batch revises the dividend forecast for the year to March 2027 down to zero and discontinues the shareholder loyalty program, both contingent on the tender offer going through as planned.

Why it matters: A chairman-led buyout vehicle taking a Tokyo Prime-listed company private raises the usual related-party governance questions, even as it gives public holders a defined cash exit price.

Kokusai Electric told investors on August 6 that the earnings forecast it published in May had already fallen behind reality. The wafer-processing equipment maker raised its operating profit forecast for the year to March 2027 to ¥79.4bn, a 46% jump from the ¥54.5bn it projected three months earlier, and lifted its dividend by ¥18 to ¥65 a share.

What changed: Revenue guidance rose to ¥340.0bn from ¥280.0bn, and net profit attributable to owners is now expected to reach ¥55.5bn, up from ¥38.8bn, all inside a single quarter's revision.

Why it matters: Kokusai cited accelerating chipmaker investment in high-performance DRAM and logic production for generative AI, one of the clearest quantitative signals yet that Japan's memory and logic equipment order books are running ahead of plan, not just holding steady.

Japan's biggest homebuilder now expects ¥266bn in net profit for the year to March 2027, a 17% upgrade from its May forecast, and will raise its dividend to a pre-split ¥178 a share before an October 2-for-1 split, even as last year's one-off pension gain makes the bottom line look smaller on paper.

Mitsubishi UFJ's June-quarter net profit rose 48% to ¥809.4bn on stronger trading income and equity gains, yet the bank kept its ¥2.7tn full-year profit target and ¥96 dividend forecast unchanged.

NTT reported consolidated operating revenue of ¥3.62tn for the three months to June 30, 2026, up 10.9% from a year earlier and a quarterly record, driven by its Global Solutions business. Operating profit rose a more modest 4.9% to ¥425.1bn, and profit attributable to NTT climbed 5.8% to ¥274.8bn.

Why it matters: Revenue outpacing profit by more than two to one shows margin pressure building even at Japan's telecom flagship, and the group's untouched full-year forecast implies operating profit growth slowing to just 0.2% for the year to March 2027.

Japan's Finance Ministry opened a monthlong comment period, running to September 4, on draft guidelines governing how the Japan Bank for International Cooperation lends and invests in overseas projects tied to economic security. The rules implement Law No. 38 of 2026, which added a new line of business to JBIC's charter: financing "certified specified overseas businesses" that a competent minister certifies under the 2022 Economic Security Promotion Act.

What changed: The draft requires JBIC to keep expected losses on these loans inside a dedicated capital account, and gives the bank a forced-exit clause it can invoke if a project's certification is later pulled.

Why it matters: The guardrails determine how freely Japanese companies can tap government-backed financing for overseas ventures Tokyo deems strategically sensitive, a lending channel that did not exist before this year's legal change.

Revenue reached ¥899.9bn for the six months to June, up 11.6% from a year earlier. Strip out currency translation, though, and growth slows to 5.4%. Operating profit rose 3.0% in reported terms to ¥74.0bn but fell 5.4% on a constant-currency basis.

Why it matters: The gap between reported and constant-currency profit shows how much of the headline growth is the yen's weakness rather than underlying demand, with Europe's margins the weak spot and Oceania the standout region.

The US Food and Drug Administration approved Takeda's oveporexton, sold as ORZEYFUL, on August 5 for adults with narcolepsy type 1, a disorder marked by orexin deficiency. Takeda says it is the first and only US-approved drug that treats the disease's underlying cause rather than managing symptoms individually.

The catch: A US Drug Enforcement Administration scheduling review still stands between approval and the first sale, and Takeda expects no material impact on its current-year earnings guidance.