Japanese five best trading houses, all supported by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, predict that their income will fall due to insecurity, according to US President Donald Trump's trade policy caused global markets, Nikkei said exclusive Friday.
Five, Mitsubishi Corp., Mitsui & Co., Itochu Corp., Marubeni Corp. And Sumitomo Corp., warned this week that the profit of the financial year, which ended in March 2026, was significant.
Two companies, Mitsubishi and Mitsui, assume that their net profit will fall in the third year in a row. Others project that Trump's tariffs are damaged by tens of billions of yen.
Profit forecasts fall but shareholders' return
Mitsubishi Corp., one of the largest and most profitable groups in the group, has predicted a 26%decline in net profit in the current financial year. According to the company, there is no one -off benefit from the sale of assets, which had increased performance in the previous period.
But the car manufacturer announced Today, he raises his dividend by 10 yen to 110 yen ($ 0.76) per share and continues his 1 trillion yen stock repurchase plan.
After talking to journalists, CEO Katsuya Nakanishi said the support of shareholders, especially Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, made Mitsubishi confident in the frozen future of the tariffs.
”We understand that Warren Buffett is entrusted to our strategy and management method“Nakanishi noted.
Mitsui & Co. notice Investors are preparing for a difficult year. The company predicted a whole year's cleaning income of 770 billion yen ($ 5.5 billion), which is a decline in 15% last year and much lower than analysts' expectations of 853.3 billion yen.
Mitsui shares fell almost 7% before the announcement was cut in Tokyo. In a Thursday statement, Mitsui named the US “extensive and high rise in tariffs” as a threat to the global economic balance.
Itochu Corp. There was a single optimist among the five. Thanks to the strength of its resource companies, the company is aimed at a record 900 billion yen net profit per year. He intends to maintain the shareholder's disbursement ratio of 50% and announced the repurchase of 150 billion yen, equivalent to 2% of its shares.
At the same time, Maruben and Sumitomo each separated large buffers to absorb potential tariff damage. Maruben allocated 30 billion yen and Sumitomo 40 billion yen to the US Trade Policy stop.
Maruben also announced that it distributes 210 billion yen in shareholders' returns and points to 4.2% of its shares, accounting for 70 billion yen. Sumitomo increases its every year of dividend from 130 yen to 140 yen and back up to 2.9% of its shares for a total of 80 billion yen.
“We are going to something that has never been experienced.” Sumitomo's CEO thought at a press conference on Friday morning.
Buffett is still confident in Japanese investment
Buffett repeated in his year's annual letter that Berkshire plans to hold his Japanese house in a “very long term”. If reported Cryptopolitan had originally accepted that they would not exceed 10% of the ownership in every company, but they alleviated this limit in early April that Buffett and other US investors buy more shares.
At the end of 2024, Berkshire's total cost of their stakes was $ 13.8 billion, with a market value of $ 23.5 billion. In March, the shares of five commercial houses rose after Berkshire disclosed That he had raised his contributions to 1.0-1.7%in each company. The company now owns 8.5-9.8% of each.
In the meantime, Japanese bank reduced its economic forecasts on Thursday and now assumes that Japan's GDP growth will slow to only 0.5% in 2025, less than 1.1% projection in January.
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