Earnings call transcript: Lixil Group sees improved Q1 2025 performance

LIXIL Corporation reported its Q1 2025 earnings, showcasing a significant improvement in financial performance despite a challenging market environment. The company’s revenue increased to ¥364.7 billion, up by ¥5.1 billion year-over-year, while core earnings rose to ¥9 billion, a notable increase of ¥8.4 billion from the previous year. According to InvestingPro data, the stock’s RSI indicates oversold territory, suggesting potential value opportunity. The stock saw a decline of 1.63% in recent trading, though it maintains a positive 8.44% return over the past year.

Key Takeaways

• LIXIL’s Q1 revenue increased by ¥5.1 billion year-over-year.
• Core earnings improved significantly, reaching ¥9 billion.
• The company is exiting the ceramic siding business by March 2026.
• LIXIL maintains its full-year forecast despite market challenges.
• Stock declined by 1.63% following the earnings release.

Company Performance

LIXIL demonstrated strong performance in Q1 2025, with improvements in revenue and core earnings. The company’s strategic shift towards higher-priced products in Europe and the Middle East, along with an emphasis on renovation products, contributed to these gains. As a prominent player in the Building Products industry, LIXIL maintains a solid market position with a market capitalization of ¥3.26 trillion. Despite challenges in the U.S. housing market, LIXIL’s market share in the GROHE segment, particularly in shower products, continues to grow. InvestingPro analysis reveals the company trades at an EV/EBITDA multiple of 8.52x, suggesting reasonable valuation metrics for the sector.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: ¥364.7 billion, up ¥5.1 billion YoY
• Core Earnings: ¥9 billion, increased by ¥8.4 billion YoY
• EBITDA: ¥29.4 billion, up ¥7.6 billion YoY
• Quarterly Profit: -¥900 million, improved by ¥4.9 billion
• Gross Profit Margin: Improved from 31.7% to 34.2%

Outlook & Guidance

LIXIL remains cautiously optimistic about the future, maintaining its full-year forecast despite Q1 challenges. The company anticipates potential market improvements in Q3 and Q4, with a continued focus on renovation and high-value product segments. InvestingPro data shows the company maintains a FAIR overall financial health score of 2.04, with particularly strong performance in relative value and growth metrics. The U.S. market presents ongoing challenges due to affordability issues in the housing sector, though the company’s strong current ratio of 1.21 provides financial flexibility to weather market uncertainties.

Executive Commentary

CEO Kinya Seto commented, "We have essentially completed the majority of the large initiatives that we had planned two and a half years ago." This reflects the company’s progress in structural reforms and strategic shifts. CFO Mariko Fujita noted, "Renovation gives us higher margin, but we’re prioritizing at the moment," highlighting the company’s focus on high-margin segments.

Risks and Challenges

• Supply chain disruptions due to tariff negotiations could impact operations.
• The U.S. housing market remains challenging, with affordability issues persisting.
• Potential market saturation in key segments could limit growth.
• Macroeconomic pressures, including inflation, may affect consumer spending.
• Transitioning ERP systems could pose operational risks.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts queried the potential impacts of U.S. market challenges and product mix improvements in the GROHE segment. LIXIL addressed concerns about the ERP system transition and explored tariff and inventory implications, providing insights into its strategic direction and risk management. Notably, the company has maintained dividend payments for 34 consecutive years, currently offering a significant 5.22% dividend yield. For deeper insights into LIXIL’s financial health and growth potential, investors can access comprehensive analysis and additional ProTips through InvestingPro’s detailed research reports.

Full transcript - Lixil Group (5938) Q1 2026:

Set Oguchi, IR Office MC, LIXIL Corporation: As scheduled, we’d like to start the earnings call to explain the financial results of the first quarter for the fiscal year ending March 2026 for LIXIL Corporation. This earnings call is streamed live on the Internet and from this occasion we have changed the time to disclose the earnings result. 1:00 P.M. the presentation materials for this earnings call is posted on IR page of our corporate website. Please allow me to introduce the attendees from LIXIL Corporation: Director, Representative Executive Officer, President and CEO, Mr. Kinya Seto; Executive Officer, Executive Vice President and CFO, Ms. Mariko Fujita; and Senior Vice President, Leader of IR Office, Ms. Aya Kawai. The MC for the earnings call is Set Oguchi, myself from the IR office, and please allow me to explain the program for today’s earnings call. Ms.

Fujita, CFO, will first explain about the overview of our earnings result. We will then have time for our Q and A. During the Q and A session, the CEO and Mr. Seto will also join to respond to your questions. We are expecting to finish at 3:45 P.M. Tokyo time. I would now like to call upon Ms. Fujita, our CFO, to explain the overview of our earnings result. I am Ms. Fujita and please take the podium so I will give the explanation about the overview of our earnings result. I’d like to start with the key highlights.

A summary of the results for the first quarter for the fiscal year ending 2026 for Japan domestically, we have been able to make steady progress for sales growth of the water related renovation product and we also experienced unexpected surge demand before the amendment to the Building Standard Act, which was abolition of Article 4, the Special Provision. The revenue was short of budget but the sales for new housing did not fall as much as we had expected. We achieved according some expectations. Overseas, the revenue come down year on year. However, core earnings made a significant improvement and for Europe and Middle East we saw a shift to a higher priced product and maintaining a strong performance. For the U.S., as for external factor, the tariff negotiation caused some market confusion but we also had internal factor which was the negative impact from ERP system transition.

As a consequence, both revenue and profit remained somewhat low. Another matter for LHT, we have decided to withdraw from the ceramic siding business, and as a consequence, we are booking some losses. Completion of this withdrawal of business is planned for the end of March 2026, and we also booked expenses related to reorganization of bases in Europe. The larger scale structural reform that we have been talking about previously has more or less been completed as a consequence of this. Next, I’d like to explain about the business environment for now and also outlook for 2026. As I have explained, regarding the article 4, the Russia demand, we may experience some reactionary fall in the second quarter almost as a consequence, but we are seeing a steady progress of the sales for water related business, so we are not expecting to change our forecast for the full year.

LHT renovation sales, we are promoting sales promotion measures, and with that, we’re expecting to see increase in sales going forward for international business. Full demand recovery for the European business is expected to occur from next fiscal year onwards, and we have not changed our forecast. As a result, we are continuing to work, and we do expect ourselves to continue to improve. For U.S. and China, we still see the unclarity in terms of the new housing business. In particular for U.S., because of tariff policy, inflation continuing, the long-term interest could remain high, and as a consequence, that could potentially cause the housing market to slow down even more. We do feel that there is such a risk. Like I said before, it’s for structural reform. We now have visibility to a certain extent, nearly completion, so we’re not expecting to book any significant costs.

At the end of last year, we have sold a bathing business, and benefit from this is expected to be materialized after FY 2027 as we have previously communicated. Even due consideration of these factors, there is no change to the full year forecast. This page is the first quarter performance highlights. On a year-on-year basis, revenue decrease with core earnings increase. As for revenue, ¥364.7 billion, which is plus ¥5.1 billion. Core earnings ¥9 billion, up ¥8.4 billion. EBITDA ¥29.4 billion, increasing by ¥7.6 billion. As a consequence, profit for the quarter ended up at minus ¥900 million but has improved by ¥4.9 billion year on year. As for the details, the other expenses, which is structural reform cost, and we also booked foreign exchange loss in terms of finance costs and also had impact from the tax benefit accounting.

As a consequence, the profit for the quarter ended up being -¥900 million, and this page shows the details of the numbers that I have just explained. What I would like for you to focus upon is the gross profit margin. In comparison to last year, this went from 31.7% to 34.2%. In terms of our core earnings ratio, it has improved from 0.2% to 2.5%. As for EBITDA, the percentage also increased from 5.9% to 8.0% as shown on the slide.

Mariko Fujita, CFO, Executive Vice President, LIXIL Corporation: Thank you very much. This slide is about Q1 business results by segment. LWT were able to find core earnings increase for both Japan and international. This is a ¥6.4 billion increase for core earnings versus last year, and this was driven by strong performance margin in Europe and the Middle East. For LHC business, we saw a slight decline in revenue. However, due to price optimization, there was an increase in profit even with decline in revenue. The increase in core earnings was ¥1.5 billion. Living achieved both revenue and core earnings increases supported by strong sales across all product categories. Therefore, all in all, we have been able to find for Living that’s ¥0.8 billion. For entire LIXIL, this was a ¥8.4 billion increase versus last year. This is a slide that shows business results under previous reporting segments. This is for your reference.

Next, this is about consolidated financial position. Total assets increased marginally, and this is because there was this impact of foreign exchange rates on assets held in Europe. Equity ratio is 33.6%. This is my final slide. This is about cash flow status and cash balance for working capital. There’s been a slight increase. However, operating cash flow remained flat due to improved profit before tax. Free cash flow was able to remain positive as we ended Q1. That is all for me in terms of the recap of our Q1 result. Thank you very much.

Set Oguchi, IR Office MC, LIXIL Corporation: Thank you very much, Ms. Fujita. We would now like to proceed to the Q and A session. Before we take questions from the participants, CEO Seto will give some supplementary remarks regarding the earnings result. Mr. Seto, over to you. When we look at the housing facilities or construction material condition around the world, except for the Middle East and Far East, the difficult situation continues. Despite that, revenue has not really changed all that much, but still we’re able to grow our profit quite significantly, which I think was quite a strong performance. The strong performance in that regard is as a result of the effort made by everyone to realize the structural reform. We have been able to sell differentiated product with high added value, which has led to increase in profit margin.

As a result of these efforts, I’d like to express my sincere appreciation to our employees. In terms of structural reform, we made plans two and a half years ago, so the sidings and logistics sites in Europe to be restructured. These are some of the things that we have done and we have essentially completed majority of the large initiatives that we had planned two and a half years ago. We will no longer be booking large costs related to structural reform. Putting these two together, next fiscal year, if the business condition in Europe recovers, the housing condition recovers as we are expecting, and if environment improves, we should be able to increase our profit quite significantly. We have been able to make that preparation in that regard. One area of concern is the U.S. In terms of the U.S., the situation remains very unclear.

Regarding the demand for housing, both for new houses and renovation, the difficulty remains, and this is one as a result of the price of the housing increasing quite significantly. Right now the houses today are priced five times the income of the U.S. citizens. It used to be only three times the annual income. One reason for this is the continued inflation because of the tariff policy. Aluminum or iron or copper, these, the core raw material, the prices increase. In the case of United States, somewhat impacted by the policies. The tougher immigration policy, which has led to decrease in the labor, which has caused the labor expenses to increase. The recent hurricanes and the bushfires have caused the insurance premiums to increase for housing. Housing is no longer affordable in that regard. People who can’t build new houses have to rent, but those people are renting.

The multifamily construction boom has essentially come to a halt because of the prices increasing so much for the housing. Also, the single family houses have become smaller. In that regard, there is a significant demand-supply gap in essence. There is large demand and small supply for housing right now. The real problem right now is that housing is not affordable, which has kind of suppressed the demand for housing. As a consequence, the business condition for housing overall is expected to be quite poor. That’s where we are right now. At the same time, when we think about our competitors, Kohler or Toto, main competitors, putting them aside, Home Depot, Lowe’s, or Walmart, for those types of companies, or even Costco and the PB private brand, essentially manufacturers in Asia or China, because of that tariff there is a possibility of the volume coming down.

The supply will come down, so the competition should ease. Demand coming down, supply coming down. Given the possibility for both coming down, it’s difficult for us to predict what may happen. That’s where we’re at in one sense. For our situation on a standalone basis, last year we have sold to ABG Bathing business as a project. The benefit of that will be experienced from spring next year. Over the one year period, we will continue to operate our business while the assets are owned by them. That’s the kind of a deal that we have struck. The cost benefit is not fully benefited this year. The true benefit from restructuring in the U.S. will only be felt from spring next year. That unclear situation in the U.S. will continue, so we need to take a cautious stance for this year.

As for this quarter, all of the businesses performed quite well, made a significant effort, but when we look at demand going forward, we do still see some clarity and the unclarity in the U.S. If we take that into consideration, it’s a little bit too much to expect continued increases in the second, third, and fourth quarter. We took somewhat of a cautious stance and decided not to change the full year forecast. As a background as well as the preparation for the future, I think we’ve been able to address those parts quite well.

Mariko Fujita, CFO, Executive Vice President, LIXIL Corporation: Thank you very much, Mr. Seto. We’d like to now open the floor to take the questions from participants. If you have any question, please use the raise hand button that you see at the bottom of your screen. The moderator will nominate who can ask the next. Please state your question directly by unmuting yourself. We do like to make sure that we’d be able to answer to as many questions as possible, so make sure that you limit your question to two, and if you wanted to ask further questions, please wait till your next turn. If you mistakenly put on the raise hand button, you’ll be able to cancel it by pressing the button once again. Now we’d like to open the floor to take questions first. The first question will come from Okada-san from Goldman Sachs.

If you see the confirmation screen, please click Join as panelist. You can, or you can turn on your, put your video off. This is Okada. Thank you very much. I have two questions I’d like to raise. My first question is about your U.S. revenue recovery. It seems like it is taking quite a long time, but for example goodwill amortization, what is the progress thus far? Allow me to answer your first question. The impairment loss risk of the U.S. business. Last year we actually did some impairment test with the auditors and as a result at this moment we find no signs of having to book an impairment loss. That’s where we are today. Of course, in the future there is a chance that what we see now may change. At this moment it’s not that we’re expecting any impairment loss at the moment.

We know that the economy is turning sour at the moment. DPI, we divested DPI last year and we’ve also divested the bathing business last year. Naturally that means the P&L is really going to change and that’s really going to become more visible next fiscal year. That’s the premise and we do expect so. You can look at the chances of impairment thinking of what is going to be the P&L next year. Thank you. My next question, my second question. LWT in Japan margin is improving at the moment, but then I think it is outpacing your annual expectation. Price optimization is, and price optimization versus revenue increase, which contributed more? On price optimization, I think there was a slide where we did note our observation. That’s slide 18. We do have a waterfall chart.

This compares the actuals from last year and this mix LWT, that’s ¥2.3 billion. In other words, the contribution of mix pricing, that’s plus ¥2.3 billion for LWT. Of course, revenue from renovation did contribute, but the price optimization from April has also contributed a lot. Thank you very much. If I may add, for sure it’s better to go for renovation. Renovation gives us higher margin, but we’re prioritizing at the moment, so we know that renovation has high profitability, but then it also requires a lot of work. We also have to keep a balance on how much SG&A reduction we’d be able to keep. This time, LWT did find a plus ¥2.3 billion increase in terms of the mix pricing. Last year, it was 54% renovation proportion, but now it’s increased to 57%. On the other hand, SG&A, we have been able to keep good control.

AIBI, by utilizing AIBI, I think we are able to manufacture efficiently. Thank you very much.

Set Oguchi, IR Office MC, LIXIL Corporation: Thank you very much, Miss Okada. The next question is from Daiwa Securities, Teru Okasan. Once the confirmation screen comes up, please click on participate as a panelist. Please ask your question. Sorry, this is Teruka from Daiwa Securities. I have two questions. On this occasion, the profit improvement or recovery in GROHE made significant progress, and the revenue in Europe and the Middle East shifted to a higher price, and there was also operational improvement. You’ve explained various factors, but which factor contributed the most? That’s the first point that I wanted to confirm. Product mix has kind of shifted upwards. Specifically speaking, color. From a chrome single color to a multicolored version has started to account for a larger portion of the sales, which has improved unit price, which has led to improvement in profit.

From ourselves to distributors, based on the request, we sold, and that has led the margin to improve. As to whether we are able to maintain this profit margin or not would be somewhat dependent on how it will sell going forward. The second question is in regards to the U.S. Two things I wanted to check. First is ERP updating impact, and that was a negative fact that you have mentioned. Specifically, could you explain what happened there? For next year spring, you will start to see the benefit of the sale of the bathing business. In terms of core earnings, how much can we expect to see impact show? First of all, in regards to the ERP, we essentially replaced the old SAP system to the new SAP system.

We’ve completed this complete replacement in May, so we weren’t used to the new system, and there was a bug in the system. There was a delay in the shipment as a consequence. When we have delays in shipment, particularly for e-commerce business, sometimes customers may go elsewhere, so that leads to the sales loss to an extent or delays in dispatching the product to the customer. We were incurring some impact from those, and of course those were things that we needed to have avoided, but right now we have come back to normal operation. Your second question, after the project has been completed, how much profit can we expect to see? We have not been able to scrutinize numbers as yet, so it’s difficult, but we are expecting to be able to stably register profit, understand it, and that’s it. Thank you.

Mariko Fujita, CFO, Executive Vice President, LIXIL Corporation: Thank you very much, Mr. Teraoka. We’d like to take the next question from Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities. It’s Yagi-san. Yagi-san, if you please.

Set Oguchi, IR Office MC, LIXIL Corporation: The.

Mariko Fujita, CFO, Executive Vice President, LIXIL Corporation: Screen come up please join as panelists. Please turn your audio on. Please ask your question. Yes, thank you for the presentation. This is Yagi from Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities and I also have two questions I’d like to raise at this point. GROHE and American Standard. I actually do have questions for each. For GROHE, the core earnings margin itself is doing well. I think it was because of good product mix, but for example, excluding that product mix, do you think GROHE is really, I feel like GROHE is still able to generate good core earnings even without that product mix. Now if we try to baseline this current good environment, what is going to be the baseline? Towards that, how much do you think product mix would be able to put some add-ons?

In other words, I want to know what the normal capability of GROHE is at this moment. That’s quite a difficult question that you just raised because product mix, we haven’t really been able to analyze to the extent that we’d be able to disclose. It’s quite difficult for me to answer right away to your question. As I mentioned earlier, we’re trying to make sure we are able to provide high value-added type of product in that sense. Color, we really did not think that it would perform so well, and this is what is creating add-ons. In terms of profitability, it’s really about whether or not we see more volume because volume itself has not increased from last year. We expect if we look at all the projects, of course there’s advanced cost when we try to run some project, but that itself is doing well.

We do believe that towards the year end we should be able to see volumes of projects, which in the end should be able to generate higher profit. If we try to look at this overall, DIY actually is going down. There is a mix of what’s working well and what’s not. That’s what makes it difficult for me to answer. Some of the next positive turn I think is really going to be depending on volume, in other words, depending on product mix. I don’t believe we go back to where we were regardless of product mix because some of the products that turned to converted to color series, once this goes out more into the market, probably we’d see a lot of the color products go out until the market gets more used.

The next step would be can we offer more volume there for color, which is going to be another challenge. I know I’m not really able to answer your question straight off, but because of this competition that we’re finding at the moment, I’m not ready to disclose all the detail. Thank you. In other words, there’s no extra unique factor other than product mix. That’s right. Once we have more color, again the color proportion is going to become higher. In other words, that’s why we have more color proportion in April rather than May or June. In the end, we expect it’s going to normalize. Yes, thank you very much. Now I’d like to ask about American Standard. There’s another question actually from a different perspective. In Q1 it made a loss due to a lot of system prohibition, etc.

From second quarter and onwards, what do you expect looking at the current demand trend? Do you think American Standard is going to suffer making losses? Some of the activities, I did hear that you expect some of the better turns from next year and onwards. How are you supposed to take the surrounding American Standard business? Some of the major factors I think could, I think I can point to two uncertain areas. In short-term perspective, it’s really about supply and demand. We expect weak demand, but for supply that’s one area where it’s not exactly easy to nail down to a specific answer. China and Asia, some of the competitors’ product due to tariffs may be priced higher or maybe the volume would go down, and that means in the short term we’d be able to see better performance.

During March there were a lot of volumes that came into the market because people expected the tariff is going to become higher from April, and that is now being consumed at this moment. The next time when we expect this, the term to change is whether or not the retail side will start to pile up inventory towards October looking at the year end. That negotiation is probably going to start in the next couple of months. If there’s going to be a halt of supply coming from Asia or if there’s going to be a change in price, that’s going to be a very, very favorable turn for us. The next thing we want to look at is the product mix. Basically, again what’s sold for builders versus trade, that’s really for new houses.

On the other hand, retail, that’s really for the remodeling or renovation and it goes back to what I mentioned earlier. We’re not really seeing housing being sold or volume of housing is not really flourishing, and that means there’s less trade. In other words, the product mix wise, it’s going to deteriorate. It’s not that we’re not finding any housing being built. Some of the houses for the more affordable people, yes, we’re seeing that, but then we don’t exactly have much high share in that space. We do need to have the entire housing industry recover. Otherwise, the product mix recovery would not, we would not be able to enjoy in that short term perspective. We do have good items, but the trade proportion, which is going to give us more contribution over the long run, that’s something that we need to see contribution in next year.

It’s not exactly something that we’d be able to do through our internal effort because it does have to do with the external effort. It goes back to some of the questions that Terahoka-san asked earlier. For example, project, so how much cost reduction we’re able to find could be one factor behind whether or not we’ll be able to see a better turn. In short term, what can we do? It’s really about how much cost reduction we’d be able to achieve. Thank you. I got that. Thank you very much.

Set Oguchi, IR Office MC, LIXIL Corporation: Thank you. Yagi-san. Next question is from CLSA Securities, Mochizuki-san. Once the confirmation screen comes up, please click on participate as a panelist and turn on the audio. The video is optional, so please ask your question. Hello, this is from CLSA. Two questions. First question is just confirmation. No, you didn’t change the forecast for the year. When we look at the results from the first quarter, your sense against the plan, how did you progress against the plan? If you look at the progress, in comparison to the last couple of years, I think it’s been quite good. As against the plan, was it good, bad, or what’s your take on the progress? It was good, good progress, if I jump to the conclusion. There were areas where better than expected result was achieved and the Article 4, the special provision.

The housing start increased at the end of March as did rush demand. To what extent this will have impact for the full year? In this regard for Article 4 special provision, as a consequence of approval being slow, I thought that April to June were not to be all that good and we expected a gradual pickup from there. There was rush demand as a result of the Article 4, the special provision, and April, May for us were not that bad at all. These were some of the unexpected positives that we’ve experienced. In Europe, the color sold very strongly as I’ve explained before. In other words, product with higher added value sold, and the renovation ratio improved, HDA didn’t increase. These were probably better than expected performances. I think I would consider the first quarter result to be great.

If we didn’t have that unclarity going forward, we would have been able to say a stronger remarks for the future. The unclarity in the U.S. is likely to have impact on other countries. If China cannot export, that could potentially impact Southeast Asia, leading to a decrease in the performance overall for Japan too. What will happen in terms of new housing starts going forward? It’s difficult to read at this point in time, but what I can say for certain is that renovation or remodeling, we are able to capture this more steadily overseas vis-à-vis new houses. That would be an area that we are going to focus more going forward. Where it was good on this occasion, we’ll try to make even further improvement so that we can add to numbers. That’s what we are thinking of.

The second question is in regards to the impact from the Trump tariff. In your explanation at the year end, how much the retailers will purchase in terms of inventory, they said that there could potentially be an impact. The impact of the tariff, when would you start to see that show in your result? Is that the third quarter or around the fourth quarter? Probably the biggest would be October, November. At that point in time, we are expecting this to show not as a quantity but as a product mix. For us, we are able to, if we were in a situation to be able to demand a better product mix for us, that would be good as a pricing strategy. We’re expecting a 20% increase, but I suppose it’s not clear. What’s the kind of pricing range? What assumption should we take?

It is a kind of a complex equation here, but Asia and China to begin with, will they increase the price to match the increase in tariff or will they, like with the Japanese automotive manufacturing in the past, are they going to lower the price to try to not change the price all that much? We don’t know. We should have more clarity towards August. Another factor, if Asia and China do not supply the volume, then in the future when Asia and China are able to supply the product in order to change the market environment, then from two piece main to one piece main by making that kind of effort for the product mix. Where we have been able to increase price in the past, we are able to make them more permanent. That would be good.

If that’s the case, we’re able to achieve higher price increase. Increasing price by making something that is more difficult, and to do that I think will enable us to realize sustainable price increase and that would lead to change in the market itself. The China market in fact has many manufacturers right now, but market as a whole, of course the volume came down. On the other hand, the pricing is changing in terms of the composition and that’s the kind of way we want to lead in the U.S. In China, it’s majority one piece toilet now.

Mariko Fujita, CFO, Executive Vice President, LIXIL Corporation: We’d like to take the next question from SMBC Nikko, Kawashima-san. If you see the confirmation screen, please join in as a panelist. Please turn your audio on. You can or don’t have to turn the video on. This is Kawashima from Nikko Securities. I actually have two questions I’d like to raise. My first question is about new housing built in Japan. In Q1, how much was the rush purchase and do you think there’s going to be a negative rebound? Of course, it really depends. You mentioned June housing start and you didn’t really see so much of a comeback. Whenever you see these events, do you think the standard itself is really going to go down? We know that new housing build is really on a decline at this moment, but how do you see these ups and downs of the short term?

In other words, is that really going to change how you see the business itself? For example, for the ceramic siding, you’re going to exit from there, but is there going to be a little more revisiting required as we try to analyze this business? How do you look at this business currently and what do you expect in the future? First of all, how much delay are we going to see? Generally speaking, it’s usually like a month after where LHT results will be visible. For example, window or bathroom usually would be ordered first and then after that water related areas will be ordered for a new house, usually like two or three months after. The inflation that we, the increase that we saw in March, it was quite large and the speed of these housing builds maybe was a bit slower.

What we saw in March, did it all end in April and May? I don’t know. That’s something that we still have to see. If we look at the April-June quarter, if we look at the revenue, it’s not that it really is inferior. April was high and a gradual decline from May and June. It’s not that all in all during that quarter we saw a large decline. It’s not that we’re expecting there was going to be another downfall from here. Realistically, if we look at where we.

Set Oguchi, IR Office MC, LIXIL Corporation: Are.

Mariko Fujita, CFO, Executive Vice President, LIXIL Corporation: Housing and the new housing is not flourishing, but it is stabilizing, and in the end, renovation is actually, for example, water related areas is doing well, more than expected, which is giving us the result where we are today. Frankly speaking, window renovation was lower, the performance was lower than expected. We’re trying to implement some initiatives to ratchet this up. Renovation proportion is something that we do want to increase. We had been shifting too much on the new housing build, and we’re trying to shift more to renovation. Compared to last year, it’s like 1.7 percentage points increase in a renovation portion. At this point, we’re trying to continue our works so that we’d be able to make up for the gradual decline in new housing through the renovation works.

Also, if we look at each product, it really goes back to what Okada-san from Goldman Sachs asked at the very beginning. Renovation gross profit usually will be better gross profit margin. Again, as we try to control SG&A, as we try to utilize AI, we should be able to improve the margin itself. Indirect cost needs to be lowered. The structural reform that we’re trying to go through is to make sure we’d be able to do practice that way. I think we’ve been able to make a good success progress thus far. If we are going to find, for example, the new housing really drop more, is there anything else that we’d be able to do? We do have plans. At this point, it’s not that we at this moment feel that we’d have to get started on a new structural reform taking cost.

We do have confidence that we should be able to keep up with some of the changes that may happen in Japan, structurally speaking. This is Kawai from IR. Allow me to just follow up with some numbers. In this material on slide 18, we have a waterfall chart. If you look at the top part, we show domestic others renovation or renovation, below that there’s others. Again, new housing has been affected by 1 percentage point. It’s been improved from last year for both LWT and LHD. Now, LHT side, there is some, is still like minus 2% because we’re seeing more impact from new house. For example, there has been some impact coming from the abolition from that special proposition of Article 4. Other than that, LWT, that’s minus 2%, it was minus 3% for LHD.

In Q1 we have been able to minimize the impact, and that’s something that we’ve been able to see from the numbers. Thank you. One more question that I had is about GROHE. I think there was another person that talked about this, but I’d like to ask about the sustainability, so utilization. I think you’ve been able to speak about that from last year and Q2 and onwards. I guess from here, the change of the growth of revenue and profit is probably not going to be as drastic as we saw. Is it correct to understand that it is going to keep on? In other words, there’s going to be increasing both revenue and profit from here. Do you think there’s going to be a fluctuation depending on how color goes? Can you share with us what you expect? Right.

Honestly speaking, there are a lot of things that we still can’t really say specifically, but some of the project base that we currently find or some of the orders that we’re hearing at this moment, it is something that we’re capturing in a sluggish economy. It’s not that we’re expecting there’s going to be real growth in Q2, but from Q3 onwards, some of the advanced works on the project side, we’re starting to see good signs now. How much change that would bring is probably going to be the point, and it is true the current supply demand is not giving us much reason to say there’s going to be much growth in Q2 or Q3. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Set Oguchi, IR Office MC, LIXIL Corporation: Next question from Jefferies Securities, Yoshida-san. Once the confirmation screen comes up, please click participate as a panelist. Yes, please ask your question. Fukuhara from Jefferies Securities, thank you for the opportunity to ask your question. I have two questions. The first question is in regards to GROHE. You’ve been talking about the profit margin, but in terms of GROHE, the presence in the market, also market share, the changes there from the previous year’s fourth quarter to the first quarter this fiscal year. Were there any changes there? That’s the first question. Market share has been increasing gradually from last fiscal year, particularly for shower, and also on this occasion because of color, we have been able to increase our market share. Can we expect a similar type of trend going forward as well? Of course, that is what we are expecting.

Where we have lost market share, those companies who lost market share will try to regain them back, but for now it’s quite good. For GROHE, it’s not just Europe but that region as well. For example, in the Middle East, we are making significant growth there right now, and here in comparison to our competitors, I think our growth is quite prominent, particularly for the Near and Middle East, for China too, and other products or other brands, and not just us but they’re all struggling. GROHE is still growing, and Southeast Asia, in India, in those markets, G4 of GROHE, and we’ll be launching G5 going forward, and we are receiving a lot of strong inquiries. If we look at the situation for GROHE overall, we are seeing quite a strong performance across the board except for the U.S. Thank you.

My second question, the full year forecast, we have not changed this. If we look at the image for the first half of the year versus the second half of the year, the first quarter was good, but the decrease in the second quarter, but the third quarter, if we look at the quarterly trend, we may expect to see an increase. Would we see the same seasonality this year that we used to see in the past? That’s a difficult question to answer as well. Conventionally, if we look at the pattern over the last number of years, of course there’s been some fluctuation in numbers. First quarter number one, second quarter two, third quarter number four, in the fourth quarter zero. That’s the kind of profit breakdown, and we may have to change the forecast if that is the case.

Because it’s somewhat unclear there, we’ve not changed the forecast. Unfortunately, I’m not able to respond to your question directly. That’s the actual situation. However, in terms of the third quarter, we do have expectations for things improving. Put differently, the profit in the second quarter, is there a risk of this coming down significantly or that we don’t have to be worried about that? For now, there is nothing to indicate that there could be such a concern. Understood. Thank you.

Mariko Fujita, CFO, Executive Vice President, LIXIL Corporation: Thank you. We have been able to answer all the questions from those who wish to ask a question. It seems like there are no further participants who would like to raise a question. We’d like to end the Q&A session. Actually, we did have a button be pressed. Fukushima-san from Nomura Securities, if you see the confirmation screen, please join in as a panelist. Please turn your audio on. Please state your question. This is Fukushima from Nomura Securities. Sorry, I know you were trying to end the session, but I’d like to raise my question. My first question is about the U.S. in Q1. It’s a $19 million loss. That’s within your disclosure. This $19 million, if we try to analyze this, how much sanitary ware drop did you find?

I understand in toiletries there were some issues, but then within the sanitary ware, can you share with us how it performed? There are a lot of elements behind this. We hadn’t been doing this per product analysis, so apologies, but most part of the revenue comes from American Standard ceramic products. If we try to analyze this by product, I’m sure that’s what we’ll find. For bath faucets and showers, it wasn’t that flourishing in terms of numbers this time around. From your question, I think it’s fair to say most is ceramics. Thank you very much. My second question is about the ceramic siding business that you have exited, and that’s already baked in within the numbers here. This ceramic siding, how much loss did you find during a year? Was it like $200 million or $300 million?

Or is that the amount of the positives that we’d be able to find next year? That’s my second question. Do we have the number? We do disclose operating profit. I don’t have the number at this moment, so we’ll make sure that we come back to you. It’s a slight negative. It’s not large, it’s just a slight negative. This ceramics, I don’t think we—this is about exterior. I think that’s the way we call it. When we say exterior, it’s about ceramics, resin, and metal. When it comes to metal and resin, it’s making profit, but ceramics was making a loss. That’s exactly why we’re going to exit from this business. We don’t exactly disclose the breakdown of the figure just for the ceramics. You just heard Kawai-san saying that we’d be able to give you—the operating profit basically was break even.

Sometimes there will be several hundred million positive and several hundred million negative. If you just focus on the ceramics business, the size of the loss was a bit larger than that. The ceramic siding, we decided to exit from this business. For ceramics, even in the past, it was a tough business. We were struggling from before. It was really because we were number three in this part of the space. We are the only player that only has a factory in Kashima. If we wanted to send it to the western part of Japan, we always had to suffer a loss. That was really why we wanted to focus just on the business in the east part of Japan instead of the west. That sort of halved the revenue in the past six years.

We really had to ask if this was a sustainable business for us to begin with. To go into a little more detail, within the exterior business, ceramic siding is really about new housing built. Resin and metal are also used in renovation. As we find new housing to go down, that means the ceramic siding. There was always the risk that we may have to suffer even further loss when it comes to metal and resin. For example, when we’re trying to work on heat insulator coating, paint was the only alternative. We know for renovation, trying to use resin, this renovation part should give us a lot of positive. That is why we just wanted to split where we were making a loss. Thank you for that.

Set Oguchi, IR Office MC, LIXIL Corporation: Are you okay with your question? Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, Chef Kushima san. We have responded to all of the questions that we have received thus far. In regards to some of the questions that we have received on this occasion, I’ve not been able to provide a straightforward response and apologize for that. The numbers that we are not disclosing, it’s difficult to respond in terms of giving details about those numbers. Please understand. For structural reform, as I’ve explained before, we planned it about two and a half years ago, and the structure of reform that we had intended to undertake over the two and a half year period, we have been able to complete them mostly. Of course, if the environment changes in the future, there could be other things that we may have to do.

When it comes to Japan in particular, from the past on the assumption of demand coming down, we have been addressing this as required. What was needed in terms of making changes or format, we have been able to create a platform upon which we are able to undertake our business without incurring large costs. I think we’ve come to a milestone in that regard as far as numbers are concerned. Where we still have clarity is the United States. How are we going to respond to the unclear situation in the U.S.? From our perspective, I must say that we don’t have a full visibility there as yet. We have been struggling, but we have undertaken this structural reform and the outcome, we are starting to feel more confident about what we have been able to achieve as a result.

Mariko Fujita, CFO, Executive Vice President, LIXIL Corporation: Thank you. I think we’ve been able to answer all the questions. With that, we’d like to end the Q and A session. We’d like to end LIXIL Corporation Q1 financial results for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026. Once again, thank you very much for your participation.

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