H2O Retailing announced its preliminary sales figures for July on the 1st. Hankyu Umeda Main Store saw a 57.7% increase, while Hankyu Men's Osaka saw a 5.2% decrease. Sales at the Hankyu Main Store increased 46.6% year-on-year. While this was a slight slowdown from the 62.9% increase in May and the 79.4% increase in June, sales remain strong. This marks the ninth consecutive month of year-on-year increases.

Hanshin Main Store saw a 15.8% decrease. While sales were down in the single digits in June, when summer clothing sales began to pick up steam, they have since returned to double digits. While branch sales were down 3.9%, company-wide sales increased 9.7%. This marks the ninth consecutive month of company-wide sales growth. Since its grand opening last November, the Hankyu Umeda Main Store has continued to drive overall sales.
The summer sale started on June 28th, but the luxury brand sale started on July 1st. This had little impact on July demand.
Incidentally, the consolidated financial results for the first quarter of the fiscal year ending March 2014 (April-June), announced on July 26th, showed double-digit increases in sales and profits, with sales of 129,829 million yen (up 12.4% year-on-year), operating profit of 2,693 million yen (up 58.3% year-on-year), ordinary profit of 3,319 million yen (up 38.6% year-on-year), and net profit of 1,872 million yen (up 190.3% year-on-year).
Hankyu Umeda Main Store, which has been performing well since the advance opening of the second building on October 25th last year, saw a significant increase in sales, including Hankyu Men's Osaka, of 65.6% year-on-year. Sales for the department store business as a whole were 94.332 billion yen (up 16.4%), and operating profit was 2.192 billion yen (up 121.6%).