DIC 2026 New Year’s Message

This is a summary of the 2026 New Year’s address by Takashi Ikeda, President and CEO of DIC Corporation, to DIC Group employees.

Looking back on 2025, we faced a challenging business environment marked by higher U.S. tariffs, hyperinflation and regional conflicts. Despite these difficulties, we achieved our performance targets and improved our performance over the previous fiscal year thanks to the dedicated efforts of our employees, who boldly tackled these challenges.

Fiscal years 2024 and 2025 were a period for foundation building. Having firmly repositioned the DIC Group onto a growth trajectory, we see fiscal year 2026 is a pivotal year during which we will strive to fully demonstrate our capabilities. With record-level operating income in sight, we have set ambitious targets for this fiscal year. In February 2026, we plan to announce Phase 2 of our DIC Vision 2030 long-term management plan.

We believe the keys to our success are summarized as follows:

1. Clarity
Corporate goals are clearly linked to departmental challenges and individual activities. We ask everyone to reaffirm their commitment and focus on creating tangible value and results. Starting in fiscal year 2026, the DIC Group will transition to a global operating model (GOM) with the aim of expanding both the scope and quality of Group activities. By clarifying responsibilities and authority, we will ensure the swift and reliable achievement of results.

2. Robustness
We must remain prepared to address uncertainty. This includes not only developing backup plans, including for supply chain diversification and formulation sharing, but also devising bold contingency measures that can be executed swiftly when needed. Close cross-border collaboration among manufacturing, sales, technology and management is essential.

3. Spark
Advancing our “direct to society” business creation mechanism is indispensable to realizing growth. Each of us must break free from conventional thinking and habits and embrace transformation toward activities that connect to society and the future. Exchanging diverse ideas and opinions and leveraging the synergy of mutual inspiration will enable us to work together to create new value and strengthen our operating foundation.

Under our new framework, we will endeavor to embed this mindset and promote behavioral transformation. Recognizing the achievement of this year’s targets as our minimum commitment, we pledge to take further dramatic steps forward toward fiscal year 2030.

(This is a summary of the New Year’s address delivered to DIC Group employees on January 5, 2026.)

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