President's Message
I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all our shareholders for their continued support.
The Akebono Group continues to face an uncertain business environment due to remaining high market prices such as raw material and energy costs caused by worldwide inflation and the risk of economic downturn from rising interest rates.
Under these circumstances, in addition to improvements in the impact of the shortage of semiconductors, there were the recovery of demand for automobiles, and the impact of the yen depreciation. As a result, net sales amounted to 166.3 billion yen (an increase of 8.0%) year-on-year. Although there was an increased burden due to remaining high market prices, Akebono is reflecting the impact in sales prices and has promoted rationalization such as improving productivity. As a result, operating profit amounted to 3.2 billion yen (compared with operating profit of 0.2 billion yen in FY2022) year-on-year.
Despite the increase in both sales and profits for the Akebono Group overall, North American business continues to face a challenging situation. In order to achieve profitability in our North American business, we decided last October to establish a one-plant structure in the U.S., scheduled to be completed by December 2025. This is the final key measure of the business structural reform in the Business Turnaround Plan that we have been working on since 2019, and the entire group is working together to achieve this goal. We intend to accomplish the Plan and rebuild our business foundation for sustainable growth in the future.
We sincerely regret that we will not be able to pay a dividend for FY2023, as we are in the process of working to improve our financial soundness.
We sincerely ask for the continued support of our shareholders.
