Aeon swings back to a Q1 profit on record revenue, led by drugstore integration and Vietnam mall growth
Aeon posted record quarterly revenue and operating profit and swung back to a Q1 net profit, a turnaround the retail group credited almost entirely to its Tsuruha/Welcia drugstore integration and growth at its Vietnam malls — leaving its core Japanese supermarket business notably unmentioned.
Aeon swung back to a net profit in its first quarter of fiscal 2027 (the three months to end-May 2026), posting its highest-ever quarterly revenue and operating profit, according to results the company filed with the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 10 July. The retail group's turnaround rested on two specific engines: the continued integration of its Tsuruha and Welcia drugstore businesses, and strong growth from its shopping malls in Vietnam.
Operating revenue rose 14.6% year on year to ¥2,941,981 million and operating profit climbed 33.6% to ¥75,203 million — both records for a single quarter, Aeon said. Net profit attributable to shareholders came to ¥13,809 million, reversing a ¥6,570 million loss in the same quarter last year.
Aeon attributed the swing chiefly to its Health and Wellness segment, where revenue surged 89.9% year on year to ¥637,628 million as the group continues consolidating Tsuruha Holdings and Welcia Holdings, the two drugstore chains it has been drawing together under one roof. Overseas, its Vietnamese shopping-mall business posted same-store sales growth of 28.8%, the company said, as new mall openings there continue to add scale.
What stands out is how narrow the stated cause of the turnaround is. Aeon named exactly two drivers for a group-wide swing from loss to profit — a domestic drugstore consolidation and a Southeast Asian mall business — and named nothing else. For a conglomerate whose core business remains its sprawling network of Japanese general merchandise stores and supermarkets, that framing puts the weight of this quarter's record squarely outside the traditional GMS floor: on pharmacy and drugstore retail, where Japan's ageing population and its tax-free shopping appeal to inbound visitors both continue to grow, and on Southeast Asian real estate, where Aeon has spent two decades building a mall network well ahead of most Japanese retailers.
Whether that pattern holds — a group increasingly carried by drugstores and Vietnam rather than by its founding supermarket business — is the question Aeon's next quarters, including the Q2 results due in October, will have to answer.
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