Japan Tobacco Inc. (JAPAY) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-05-10 10:46:01 ET

Japan Tobacco Inc. (JAPAY)

Q1 2025 Results Conference Call

May 7, 2025 06:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Hiromasa Furukawa - Group Chief Financial Officer

Dinesh Babu Thotakura - General Manager

Nobuya Kato - JTI Deputy CEO

Conference Call Participants

Kazuaki Hashiguchi - Daiwa Securities

Tsukasa Furuta - SMBC Nikko

Takashi Miyazaki - Goldman Sachs

Haruka Miyake - Morgan Stanley

Makoto Morita - Nomura Securities

Satoshi Fujiwara - JPMorgan

Hiroshi Saji - Mizuho Securities

Presentation

Hiromasa Furukawa

Good afternoon. I'm Hiromasa Furukawa, CFO of the JT Group. Thank you for joining us today for JD Group's First Quarter 2025 Earnings Briefing. First, I'd like to touch on the transfers of both the pharmaceutical business to Shionogi and the shares of Torii, which we have announced today. JT entered the pharmaceutical business back in 1987 and welcomed Torii as a member of the group in 1998.

Over the years, together with Torii, JT built an integrated value chain for the pharmaceutical business. And by maximizing synergies and opportunities, the pharmaceutical business has been providing prescription drugs that are trusted by many patients.

The environment surrounding the pharmaceutical business has been changing in recent years. International competition has intensified. Also joint R&D activities of the pharmaceutical business with external partners have been gradually restricted due to the constraints related to the presence of tobacco product at JT. Based on our assessment, it appears that under the current structure and considering the highlighted environment changes, the mid- to long-term growth outlook of the pharmaceutical business will be uncertain. As a result, we have decided to transfer the pharmaceutical business, including Torii, to Shionogi.

Shionogi is a global pharmaceutical company that has grown over the past 140 years by primarily providing prescription drugs. And like JT's pharmaceutical business, it has a strength in original drugs based on small molecules. We believe that this aligns well with JT's pharmaceutical business' R&D strategy. In addition, the compound pipeline of both companies have little overlap, creating incremental complementarity across their portfolio.

Moreover, Shionogi has a longstanding policy of investing in R&D and in a consistent and significant manner. We believe that Shionogi is the best company to transfer the pharmaceutical business and optimize the drug discovery potential and human resources expertise and capabilities....

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