Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd.

In the fiscal year ending March 2026, Meiji Holdings showed a clear structure in which the pharmaceuticals segment generates 30% of profit while the food segment accounts for 80% of sales. Food sales came to 941.4 billion yen, or 80.2% of the total, while pharmaceuticals were just 232.2 billion yen, or 19.8%. Segment profit, however, was 68.7 billion yen for food and 30.4 billion yen for pharmaceuticals, with pharmaceuticals reaching 30.7% of the two combined. Profit margins were 7.3% for food and 13.1% for pharmaceuticals, giving pharmaceuticals 1.8 times the thickness. In the fiscal year ending March 2022, pharmaceuticals posted 18.6 billion yen in profit and a 9.9% margin, but over four years profit grew by more than 60%, while food fell to 68.7 billion yen and its margin declined to 7.3%, pushing pharmaceuticals' share of profit from just under 20% to over 30%. In the first quarter of the fiscal year ending March 2027, pharmaceuticals also grew, with sales of 55.6 billion yen, up 13.6% year on year, profit of 8.4 billion yen, up 76.3%, and a margin of 15.2%, bringing their share of combined profit with food's 15.1 billion yen to 35.7%. The share price kept rising from the 2,900 yen range at the end of October 2025 to the 4,400 yen range at the end of August 2026, and as of September it remained in the 4,300 yen range, about 1.5 times the level of last autumn.

Japanese food manufacturers are accelerating investment in the United States, building new plants and expanding existing ones. According to U.S. Commerce Department statistics, the outstanding balance of Japanese investment in the food sector reached 8.195 billion dollars, or about 1.28 trillion yen, at the end of 2025, roughly 2.5 times the level of a decade earlier. Kikkoman, the largest soy sauce maker, reported that overseas operations accounted for 78 percent of its 745.5 billion yen in sales and 90 percent of its operating profit in its consolidated results for the fiscal year ending in March 2026. In the United States, the company has built its third soy sauce plant, in Wisconsin, which began shipping in October, and its U.S. production capacity is expected to roughly 1.4 times its current level around 2036. Hokuto, a major mushroom producer, aims to bring a second plant into operation during fiscal 2028. Morinaga is investing about 20 billion yen to build a second plant to strengthen supplies of Hi-Chew, with operations starting in October, and Meiji is adding a production line for Hello Panda and plans to roughly double its U.S. sales by fiscal 2030 compared with fiscal 2024. The number of American visitors to Japan rose about 22.9 percent year on year in 2025 to roughly 3.11 million, and the Americas division of the Japan External Trade Organization, or JETRO, analyzes the trend as a virtuous cycle in which people who become familiar with Japanese food during their stay continue to seek it after returning home.