Morinaga Milk beats profit targets, raises full-year outlook

Morinaga Milk Industry Co. announced consolidated net sales of 293,330 million yen for the first half of FYE March 2026, a 0.9% year-on-year increase. Operating profit surged by 18.9% to 20,805 million yen, significantly exceeding the first-half target by 2.8 billion yen. This strong performance was largely attributed to the Global Business, particularly MILEI GmbH, which benefited from robust whey market conditions, and effective cost controls in the domestic segment.

Following these strong first-half results, the company has revised its full-year operating profit forecast upwards by 1.0 billion yen to 33,000 million yen. While net sales were revised down to 570,000 million yen (from 580,000 million yen), profit attributable to owners of parent remains unchanged at 19,000 million yen. The company aims to achieve a 40% dividend payout ratio, with an interim dividend of 45.00 yen and a full-year forecast of 93.00 yen per share.

The company plans to concentrate resources in growth areas such as ice cream, probiotics, and formula milk for overseas markets, and accelerate the reorganization of production structures. This includes suspending production at the Akita Plant and consolidating other sites, aiming to halve paper pack lines by FYE March 2029. Additionally, the head office will relocate to a new large-scale complex by autumn 2029, a project with a total investment of 46.4 billion yen.