{"id":5896,"date":"2023-04-11T07:34:44","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T07:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/uniqlo-owner-expected-to\/"},"modified":"2023-04-11T07:38:30","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T07:38:30","slug":"uniqlo-owner-expected-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/uniqlo-owner-expected-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Uniqlo owner expected to post 30% profit rise, as investors eye China results"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rocky Swift<\/p>\n

TOKYO (Reuters) – Second-quarter results from Japan’s Fast Retailing Co, owner of clothing brand Uniqlo, will on Thursday offer a window into how rapidly demand in China is recovering after the lifting of pandemic curbs. <\/p>\n

The company, Japan’s biggest retailer, reported a 2% dip in operating profit in the first quarter, partly due to lingering effects of COVID-19 restrictions in China, its biggest overseas market. China scrapped most of its COVID curbs at the end of last year and reopened to tourists last month.<\/p>\n

Investors will also be looking at how significant wage increases announced in January are impacting the company’s bottom line.<\/p>\n

Fast Retailing’s operating profit for the three months ended in February is expected to rise 30% to 91 billion yen ($682 million), according to an average of seven analyst estimates from Refinitiv.<\/p>\n

For the full year, analysts are expecting profit to reach 347 billion yen, 17% higher than the record earnings achieved last year.<\/p>\n

The company, founded by Japan’s richest man, Tadashi Yanai, has nearly 900 Uniqlo stores in China, making it a bellwether for global retailers in the world’s second-biggest economy.<\/p>\n

As COVID curbs dampened Chinese operations over the past few years, Fast Retailing put increased focus on its North American and European businesses.<\/p>\n

“We see significant risks to the company’s valuation, especially with the China rebound taking longer than expected,” LightStream Research analyst Oshadhi Kumarasiri wrote in a report on the Smartkarma platform. <\/p>\n

“In addition, Uniqlo’s revenue growth seems to have plateaued in North America and Europe and there is also margin pressure from wage hikes and inventory growth.”<\/p>\n

Fast Retailing said it would raise wages by as much as 40%, sending shockwaves throughout corporate Japan. The company estimated at the time that overall personnel costs in Japan would rise about 15% from the previous year. <\/p>\n

($1 = 133.4100 yen)<\/p>\n

\n

(Reporting by Rocky Swift; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)<\/p>\n

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By Rocky Swift TOKYO (Reuters) – Second-quarter results from Japan’s Fast Retailing Co, owner of clothing brand Uniqlo, will on Thursday offer a window into how rapidly demand in China is recovering after the lifting of pandemic curbs. The company, Japan’s biggest retailer, reported a 2% dip in operating profit in the first quarter, partly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":5897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-business"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3A07B-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5898,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions\/5898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}