Fast Retailing Company, Asia's largest apparel retailer, boosted its annual profit forecast as overseas sales of its Uniqlo brand casual clothes rose, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
Net income will probably be $987m for the year ending August, higher than its previous forecast of ¥84.5bn, the Yamaguchi, Japan-based seller of Uniqlo branded clothing said today in a statement. That compares with the ¥83.9bn average estimate from 20 analysts compiled by Bloomberg.
Billionaire Tadashi Yanai, Japan's richest man, is expanding his chain overseas to reduce reliance on Japan, where the retailer got about 77 per cent of revenue last fiscal year. The maker of Uniqlo brand clothes has said it won't slow down its China expansion, even after violent demonstrations over a territorial dispute with Japan forced it to close as many as 60 outlets temporarily in September.
First-quarter net income rose by 24 per cent to ¥38.5bn, the company said. Overseas sales jumped by 51 per cent for the three months ended November, aided by expansion in China, South Korea and Taiwan.
Domestic Uniqlo same-store sales rose by five per cent in the quarter as lower temperatures boosted demand for winter clothing.
Fast Retailing plans to open as many as 300 outlets every year, mainly in Asia. It expects to have more than 2,000 in Greater China and other Asian countries in the next 10 years, Yanai said in April. Overseas sales are expected to exceed domestic in fiscal 2015, he said.
The Japanese retailer had the highest per-share earnings, almost double that of Zara seller Inditex SA, among the world's 10 largest listed apparel retailers, for the trailing 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.