I am Tsutomu Murakawa. I am honored and grateful to have the opportunity to serve as President for KOKEN LTD. Firstly,I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for your continued support and patronage to the Company.
Since its foundation, KOKEN LTD. has grown in the safety business domain with a central focus on the development of respirators for industrial use. Having launched the cleanliness business domain with a central focus on the recently developed KOACH, an open clean zone creator, we are now ready to step up to a new growth stage.
Towards the new growth stage, we have set forth the management principles that are supposed to be contained in the Company’s DNA: “Nurture people,”“Nurture technology” and “Nurture new markets in cleanliness, health and safety business domains.”
For the next generation we would like to establish the health business domain as the third main pillar of operations. Then, by making each of three main pillars of business stand on its own two feet, everybody from the management down to each employee in the Company is now striving as one to achieve a stable and strongly growing company in the future.
We look forward to your continued understanding and support in the future.

Based on our Management Principles: (1) Nurture people, (2) Nurture technology and (3) Nurture new markets in cleanliness, health and safety business domains, through which we will contribute to society, we, at the KOKEN Group, aim to achieve long-term sustainable growth.
The current business environment surrounding our Group remains uncertain at home and abroad due to its fast and drastic change.
In this circumstance, while maintaining the unchanging long-term goal to nurture new markets in cleanliness, health, and safety business domains based on our own original technological innovations, we consider that (1) establishing specific targets and an action plan to achieve them every year and implementing them steadily and (2) achieving each year’s targets by modifying the action plan quickly and flexibly to respond to ever-changing business environment are the best and surest ways to achieve long-term sustainable growth of our Group.
As mentioned above, to establish the “cleanliness” and the “health” business domains as the second and third pillars of operations, respectively, following the “safety” business, we are now striving to develop our own original products such as an open clean zone creator, an automatic endoscope washer/disinfector, an antivirus mask and a copper-based antimicrobial agent, which have never before existed, and cultivate and expand new markets for them.
With such management stance, rather than aiming for a rapid profit growth and capital efficiency, we will right now focus on nurturing new businesses in the domains of “cleanliness” and “health” businesses as a high priority, which may eventually result in an improved operating margin as well as increased net sales and operating income.
In September 2018, the Advanced Technology Center was completed with the main objectives of increasing management efficiency through integration of research and development divisions located separately in each business office, promoting of collaboration and joint research activities with external institutes and corporations, strengthening research and development, and promoting human resource development. I am sure that this new facility will help further increase the customer’s trust and expectation for our Group’s technologies and products and enable us as an R&D hub to further expand the number and scale of cooperation and joint research with various external organizations and corporations that we have been involved in.
The Advanced Technology Center, which was completed in 2018, is a facility where development engineers gather to exchange wisdom and greatly contribute to improving the ability to “nurture original technology.” In the future, we will intensify our efforts to increase its presence as a base for promoting collaboration and joint research with external institutions and corporations, aiming for sustainable growth and enhancement of corporate value.
We hope that our shareholders will continue to look forward to the growth of the Group in the long run.

The business environment surrounding our Group remains uncertain, with the domestic economy continuing to recover slowly amid improvements in employment and income, while the outlook for the future of the Chinese economy is uncertain, with the risk of a downward trend in the economy increasing due to factors such as the impact of continuing high interest rates in Europe and the United States and concerns about the future of the Chinese economy.

In this context, the current outlook after the second quarter (interim period) is as follows:

(Mask-Related Business)
Sales of industrial masks, which were strong in the first half of the year, are expected to continue in the second half as industrial activity continues to improve. Furthermore, infrastructure renovation work is expected to increase, and the Group is focusing on further increasing orders. In addition, due to the amendment of ministerial ordinances and other regulations aimed at the autonomous management of chemical substances, which came into effect in April 2024, the method of selecting masks has changed, so we expect an increase in replacement demand in the second half of this fiscal year.

Sales of infection control masks have decreased significantly compared to the same interim period last year, when we were shipping at full capacity to clear backlogged orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, given the current situation in which infections are still fluctuating between subsiding and spreading, we expect sales in the second half of the current fiscal year to exceed those in the second half of the previous fiscal year.

Sales of protective masks decreased compared to the same interim period of the previous year due to a change in the delivery schedule (from the first half of the previous year to the second half of this year), but the final total number of deliveries at the end of this year is expected to exceed the previous year's results.

(Environment-Related Business)
For the Open Clean Air System "KOACH," deliveries of small and medium-sized models are growing steadily. Sales of the large Floor KOACH were slightly behind schedule at the end of the first quarter, but sales in the second quarter (interim period) exceeded the results of the previous year.

Although sales in this business did not reach the initial plan as of the interim period, the increase in the number of projects exceeded the previous year's figure, mainly due to an increase in the number of projects in the semiconductor market. The results of our problem-solving proposal-based sales efforts, mainly at the Koken Advanced Technology Center Environmental Technical Site and the KOACH Kumamoto Showroom that was opened last year, are gradually becoming apparent.

(Other Business)
Regarding sales of the endoscope washer-disinfector "Kagami-Naishi IIG," we will continue to steadily build up sales results one by one with both new and existing customers.

Regarding business performance forecasts, as announced at the beginning of the fiscal year, we are forecasting sales of 10.8 billion yen (2.0% increase from the previous consolidated fiscal year), operating profit of 1.01 billion yen (0.2% increase), ordinary profit of 1.0 billion yen (2.1% increase), and net profit attributable to the parent company of 700 million yen (0.2% decrease). If any changes to our initial forecasts become necessary due to various factors in the future, we will promptly disclose them.

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