Earnings, deals and disclosures from Japan's listed materials & chemicals companies, in English.
Nine people, six Nippon Paper employees and three contractor staff, died when an earthquake hit the company's Yatsushiro Mill in Kumamoto Prefecture, and production there remains halted while the company checks damage and taps other plants and inventory to keep supply flowing.
Higher manufacturing costs and weaker sales volumes crushed operating profit in Tokuyama's core chemicals business by 81% in the quarter to June, yet the group is still lifting its dividend for a fourth straight year.
Nitto Denko's operating profit rose 15% in the June quarter as AI server and data-center materials demand outweighed a memory-chip-driven slump in laptop and tablet components, and the company raised its full-year profit forecast to ¥200bn with a bigger dividend and a ¥50bn buyback attached.
SFC CO., LTD., the South Korean subsidiary of Tokyo-listed Hodogaya Chemical, filed for preliminary KOSPI listing review on July 24, but regulatory approval and the listing timetable remain undecided.
An April rush of orders tied to Middle East supply fears, followed by price increases, pushed Konishi's quarterly operating profit up 52.5%, with its Bond adhesives unit up 69.5% and Chemicals up 67.2%, while a Construction segment profit fell 24.7% on delayed projects; the company kept its full-year forecast unchanged from April.
A Singapore fund's stake in Soken Chemical has reached 22.60%, above the roughly 20% needed to block special-resolution votes at the company's annual meeting, and Soken's new defense plan sets out notice periods and a board review window, run past an independent committee, before any further buying toward 23% can proceed.
Shin-Etsu Chemical's quarterly operating profit rose 4% as AI-driven demand for silicon wafers and photoresists offset a one-third profit drop in the segment selling PVC and caustic soda, and the company is guiding to higher full-year profit, a bigger dividend and the final leg of a ¥250bn buyback.
A cracked lining in a wastewater pit let benzene, toluene and xylene escape near Hokko Chemical's Okayama plant, and the company has idled two synthesis units while regulators bar access to the coastal site.
Daio Paper is dissolving both its Indonesian diaper trading and manufacturing units after sales at the sales arm collapsed to 6.1 billion rupiah and losses widened across both entities, closing out a market entry the company made in 2013 on the strength of Indonesia's birth rate.
The Hiroshima chemicals group is handing its 20.7% stake in Zhejiang Huayuan to co-investor Zhejiang Shenghua for roughly ¥3.48bn, freeing money for its mobility, AI and environmental materials push while it keeps buying pigments from the venture it is leaving.
A March ransomware attack is still slowing COTA's books four months later: the TSE Prime-listed company says its first-quarter results will miss Japan's 45-day disclosure window, with no new date set, while its delayed full-year results are now due July 30.
Nippon Paint says a Bloomberg report on its bid for AkzoNobel's architectural paint unit is accurate at €7.5bn, but insists no acquisition has actually been agreed.
Daicel is committing roughly ¥2bn to a 50-50 joint venture with Formosa Plastics in Kaohsiung to supply Taiwan's semiconductor industry, but Formosa's own board has not yet signed off, and the plant won't start operating until January 2029.
Fujikura and its China unit will hand over their full 60% holding in a Wuhan optical-fiber preform venture to co-founder FiberHome Telecommunication for ¥7.97bn and ¥3.99bn, with the deal closing by late September 2026.
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.
The metals group will collect no interest on ¥35bn of new bonds due 2030, priced above face value and sold only to investors in Europe and Asia, with a second tranche maturing in 2032 filed alongside it but not yet detailed.
Mitsubishi Materials' board approved roughly ¥70bn in zero-coupon convertible bonds to fund a pivot into metals recycling, but a separate buyer's plan to repackage those bonds could carry voting rights over 12.37% of the company, a threshold it says it will never actually use.
Mitsubishi Materials is issuing ¥70bn of zero-coupon convertible bonds, priced above today's share price to limit dilution, to fund a shift from mined ore to recycled copper and tungsten by early 2029; a separate filing shows an offshore buyer repackaging the same bonds for credit investors.
Twelve Tokyo-listed companies disclosed June share-repurchase activity on the same day, and the contrast is stark: Mitani Sekisan bought no stock at all while Kyocera spent ¥29.6bn in a single session.
The number: Resonac will hand shareholders more than 80% of Culasus Chemical, its ¥300.3bn petrochemical unit, on October 1. The catch: the same carve-out triggers a formulaic cut to the conversion price on Resonac's 2028 euro-yen convertible bonds, sized by a five-day trading comparison between the two stocks from September 29 to October 5. The board still has to vote on the spin-off in late August, and the exact price adjustment won't be known until after that trading window closes.
The move: revenue in the year to March edged up to ¥578.13bn, profit rose faster, and Daido then disclosed a 97.54% post-offer holding ratio in Tohoku Steel, linking sturdier earnings to an ongoing consolidation push.
The chemicals group's annual meeting backed current president Yoshiaki Oda as part of an eight-seat board slate, with no other agenda items visible in the disclosure.
The June 26 vote backs four directors and three audit committee directors as the company reports ¥1.30bn in sales, ¥125.47mn in net income and a dividend increase to ¥6.00 a share for the year to March.
The move: Aichi Steel's revenue reached ¥304.34bn in the year to March, while pre-tax profit rose to ¥18.49bn and ROE improved to 4.8%, making this more of a profitability story than a top-line one.