Sekisui Chemical Co (SKSUF) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

I am Keita Kato, President and CEO. Thank you very much for joining us today despite your busy schedule. Please turn to page 1. Here are the key points of today's presentation and the messages that I wish to convey. Let me start with the first half results. We started the first half amid an uncertain market environment, partly due to the impact of the U.S. tariff policies. Despite this, we believe our efforts and preparations eyeing next fiscal year and beyond, including our focus to shift toward high-performance products, progressed largely as planned. However, the deterioration in certain markets, particularly the auto sector, was greater than anticipated, resulting in operating profit falling short of the July forecast. For the second half, we continue to anticipate growth in net sales and each profit lines. The full year guidance was revised up based on the first half results. While operating profit will fall short of the target set for the final year of our mid-term plan, we expect to achieve record high profits. We will return to steady growth trajectory in the second half and step up our efforts in development and preparations aimed at sustainable growth for next fiscal year and beyond. Later, I will also talk about the perovskite solar cell business. And our last item on this page is shareholder returns. In the first half, we repurchased and canceled 4 million shares. For dividends, we plan an annual dividend of 80 yen per share as previously announced, achieving a hike of 1 yen per share and 16th year of consecutive dividend increase. Furthermore, at today's Board of Directors meeting, additional share buyback initiative was approved. Our intention is to maintain sufficient cash for future growth while actively returning profits to shareholders. This will br...