On 24 November 2023, KAGA ELECTRONICS, a major electronic components trading company, held its financial results briefing for Q1 to Q2 FY03/2024. It has been revealed that the Company sees underlying earnings having roughly unchanged from the same period of the previous year, although the results have shown a decrease in sales and earnings for Q1 to Q2. According to the Company, operating profit has achieved a level roughly unchanged from the same period of the previous year, when excluding the impacts of one-off factors, i.e., that of having lost sales of spot projects and that of having posted provision for doubtful accounts. Meanwhile, it appears that the Company’s in-house performance target was exceeded by some ¥15.0bn (6%) in sales and some ¥3.8bn (39%) in operating profit, but FY03/2024 initial Company forecasts have remained unchanged. The results were better for Q1, which was also the case for Q2. Still, the Company suggests that it should access near-term demand trends in light of the increasingly uncertain outlook, compared to the beginning of the year. Thus, the Company has decided to hold off on raising its full-year Company forecasts at this time. By the way, President Kado is boldly laying out a policy of focusing on EMS business in the pursuit of a long-term growth. New factory in Mexico is scheduled to be operational by April 2024, while the Company will continue to increase its production capacity overseas and in Japan, calling for prospective sales of ¥300bn in five years for the said business, doubled from the results for FY03/2023.

On 14 November 2023, TOW, planning and producing integrated promotions with strengths on the experience horizon, released its Q1 FY06/2024 results. It has been revealed that order intake is expanding rapidly for large-scale projects of sales promotions on the street and/or expositions as a result of full-fledged revitalization of socioeconomic and other activities after the Corona Disaster. With respect to the mainstay Real-World Events, sales have increased by no less than 57.1% over the same period of the previous year, having accounted for 71.5% of the Company’s sales. According to the Company, it was necessary to intensively allocate own management resources, represented by human resources, upon the operations, which has led to an aspect of stagnated sales for Online Promotions. Nevertheless, sales have increased by 40.6% as a whole for the Company, implying that the Company is seeing performance better than assumptions of Company forecasts. We are to have an interview with the management on the web to discuss the issues more in-depth, so that we should be able to update our Company Report: TOW (4767) Online Promotions (6 October 2023) and release afresh.

On 13 November 2023, YAMABIKO, developing, manufacturing and selling outdoor power equipment (OPE) as the mainstay, released its Q1 to Q3 FY12/2023 results. It has been revealed that record-high earnings are renewed for the actual results of Q1 to Q3. At the same time, full-year Company forecasts are going for the same. The Company’s sales are rather stagnating particularly in Japan, but earnings are driven by a steady progress in sale of highly profitable inventory built up as of the end of FY12/2022, yen’s depreciation and some other factors. Meanwhile, the Company is going for a steady performance from a long-term perspective as found in Midterm Management Plan 2025 (FY12/2023 to FY12/2025), announced on 13 February 2023, which is calling for CAGR of 2.9% in sales and 11.1% in earnings, when setting the FY12/2022 results as the point of origin. Assuming this target is to be met, the Company is to see ROE of 10.0% (versus 8.6% for FY12/2022) for the final year of the plan, i.e., FY12/2025.