MUJI parent Ryohin Keikaku raises full-year profit guidance, lifting net income target 8% on overseas strength

Ryohin Keikaku, the operator of MUJI, raised its full-year earnings guidance for the fiscal year ending August 2026, according to a notice filed with the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 10 July. The company's board resolved to lift its revenue forecast 2.3% to ¥907.0bn from the ¥887.0bn it guided in April, and raised its net profit forecast 8.1% to ¥67.0bn.

The revision touches every line below revenue. Operating profit guidance rises 10.1% to ¥98.0bn from ¥89.0bn, and ordinary profit (operating profit plus items such as foreign-exchange gains) rises 12.5% to ¥99.0bn from ¥88.0bn, the company said. The annual dividend forecast is unchanged at ¥32 per share, as previously announced.

Ryohin Keikaku attributed the upgrade to its cumulative nine-month results, in which revenue and profit at every stage came in above the company's own expectations, led mainly by strong sales in its overseas business alongside an improvement in profitability, according to the filing. It pointed to the fuller nine-month kessan tanshin (quarterly earnings report) and an accompanying results briefing, both released the same day, for further detail.

The shape of the revision is the more telling part. Operating profit guidance is rising nearly five times faster than revenue guidance — 10.1% against 2.3% — which points to a margin story rather than a volume one. Set against last year's actual results for the fiscal year to August 2025 (revenue of ¥784.6bn and operating profit of ¥73.8bn), the new full-year target implies revenue growth of about 16% but operating profit growth of roughly a third — a gap the company credits mainly to its overseas business rather than the domestic MUJI chain.

That the dividend forecast holds flat even as the profit outlook keeps climbing suggests Ryohin Keikaku is retaining the extra earnings rather than passing them straight through to shareholders, consistent with a retailer still spending behind overseas store growth. The figures are still management's own target rather than a locked-in result, and the fuller nine-month detail behind the overseas gains has yet to be examined. What the revision does confirm is that MUJI's business outside Japan, not the domestic chain, is now the swing factor in the group's profit story.