The BOJ Spots a Crack in the AI Trade While Japan Inc. Cashes In

DIC's operating profit for the six months to June came in at ¥51.9bn, beating its own May guidance of ¥29.0bn by 79% and nearly doubling from a year earlier. Sales rose 13.3% to ¥593.0bn, also comfortably ahead of forecast.

The move: The Tokyo-listed maker of pigments, inks and specialty resins used the beat to raise its full-year outlook, lift its dividend to ¥150 a share and authorize a share buyback of up to ¥10bn.

Why it matters: Management credits AI chip demand and its own speed in repricing products for offsetting raw-material costs, one of the clearest examples this week of an old-economy manufacturer catching the same AI wave lifting semiconductor names.

Sumitomo Metal Mining told the Tokyo Stock Exchange on August 10 that it now expects ¥216.0bn in annual profit attributable to parent-company shareholders for the year to March 2027, up 55.4% from the ¥139.0bn it forecast in May.

The number: Management says the reset follows a review of first-quarter results, current non-ferrous metal prices and foreign-exchange trends, not a one-off gain or restatement.

The catch: The company's own price assumptions for the rest of the year are already more conservative than what it saw in the first quarter, when copper averaged $13,324 a tonne against $9,519 a year earlier.

Sony Financial Group told the Tokyo Stock Exchange on August 10 that it now expects pretax profit of ¥37bn for the year to March 2027, reversing the ¥20bn pretax loss it had guided for as recently as May 14. Operating income moves from a projected ¥18bn loss to a ¥29bn profit, and profit attributable to owners of the parent swings from a projected ¥16bn loss to ¥23bn.

Why it matters: Smaller bond-sale losses at Sony Life and a stake sale still awaiting regulatory sign-off drove the swing, but the group's preferred earnings gauge stays fixed at ¥110bn because both factors are excluded from it. Operating revenue guidance rises a more modest 1.9%, to ¥1.07tn.

Lion Corporation, the Tokyo-based maker of Clinica toothpaste and Top laundry detergent, told Japan's financial regulator that operating profit for the six months to June rose 54.7% from a year earlier to ¥20.7bn, on sales up 8.7% to ¥216.8bn.

The catch: A one-off ¥7bn gain from selling two chemical units drove more than half of that increase, not just stronger toothpaste and detergent sales. Overseas business profit rose 66.1% in the period.

Rakuten Group's revenue for the six months to June rose 12.9% year-on-year to ¥1.31tn, and IFRS operating profit turned to ¥50.44bn from a ¥6.61bn loss a year earlier. Pretax profit reached ¥17.88bn, against a ¥66.25bn loss in the same period last year.

Why it matters: Fast growth outside the money-losing mobile business pushed pretax income positive. The company's preferred non-GAAP measure, which strips out one-off items and share-based pay, shows operating profit nearly quadrupling to ¥78.33bn.

The catch: The parent still posted a ¥10.9bn net loss for the period, a reminder that mobile's losses are narrowing, not gone.

Sapporo Breweries, renamed from Sapporo Holdings on July 1, reported first-half net profit attributable to owners of ¥295.4bn, up ¥293.7bn from ¥1.8bn a year earlier.

The catch: Nearly all of that increase came from a single accounting event, the loss of control over its wholly owned property subsidiary after an investment vehicle backed by PAG Investment Management and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts completed the first of three planned share purchases on June 1. Continuing operations, stripped of the property gain, swung into a ¥5.9bn operating loss.

Toyo Tire bought back 30,822,200 of its own shares, worth ¥111.02bn, in a single off-auction trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's ToSTNeT-3 system on August 10, retiring Mitsubishi Corporation as its top shareholder. The purchase equaled 20.01% of shares outstanding excluding treasury stock.

The number: The board had authorized a ceiling of 32,000,000 shares (20.78% of the stock) and up to ¥156.8bn three days earlier; the executed trade came in under that cap, and Toyo Tire has scheduled cancellation of the repurchased shares for late September.

Five banks holding a ¥42.5bn syndicated loan to Tsubaki Nakashima agreed on July 31 not to call in the debt, after the precision-ball and bearing-component maker breached the loan's financial covenants for the second consecutive half-year period.

The catch: The waiver matters more than the flattering headline in the company's first-half earnings, where operating profit rose 66.7% largely because of a one-off asset sale rather than a genuine recovery in the underlying business.