On 1 December 2023, DAIKEN MEDICAL, running operations to develop, manufacture and sell medical devices (some 85% being exposed to disposable products in terms of sales) mainly used for prevention of hospital-acquired infections and postoperative pain control, held its financial results briefing for the actual results of Q1 to Q2 FY03/2024. It has been revealed that the recovery of performance is in full swing. The Company has been suffering from price competition due to the expiration of patents on its mainstay products, soaring material costs, the impact of the Corona disaster and higher procurement costs from overseas contract manufacturers due to yen’ weakness, which resulted in performance stagnated over the past five years or even longer. More importantly, however, the impact of the Company's Growth Strategies appears to be starting to emerge. The Company is shifting from its existing products to newly patented products such as AMY and Modified BYRON and focusing on in-house manufacturing, while announcing a policy to increase its gross profit margin up to some 50% in the future versus 41.3% for the actual results of Q1 to Q2. The Company has also begun formulating midterm management plan based on the said policy.

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.