The company said net profit grew 5.7 percent to 12.48 billion yen, or $141 million at average exchange, for the three months ended June 30.
Sales for the period increased 1 percent to 289.97 billion yen, or $3.28 billion.
Operating profit jumped 34.6 percent to 26.17 billion yen, or $295.8 million. The company incurred a one-time extraordinary cost linked to asset retirement — a factor that bit into net profits.
Kao’s beauty care segment posted an operating income of 1.8 billion yen, or $20.3 million. Sales for the division, which includes the Kanebo and Jergens brands, totaled 131.3 billion yen, or $1.48 billion, down 2.2 percent from the same period last year.
Kao attributed the drop in beauty care sales to the continued contraction of Japan’s high-end cosmetics market.
“The prestige cosmetics market in Japan continued to contract due to a shift in consumer preference to lower priced products, despite a sense that the market is bottoming out,” the company stated.