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The Yomiuri Shimbun Seven & i Holdings Co. President Ryuichi Isaka, left, shakes hands with his successor, Stephen Hayes Dacus, after a press conference in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, on Thursday.
By Tomohiko Kanai / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
18:32 JST, March 7, 2025
Seven & i Holdings Co. has rejected a takeover offer from a major Canadian convenience store operator and set out plans to continue operating independently. As concerns about a takeover linger, the ability of Seven & i’s new senior leadership to quickly improve the company’s corporate value will hold the key to achieving that goal.
Stephen Hayes Dacus, chairman of the Seven & i board and the incoming president, is confident the company will be able to retain independent operation.
“How do we solidify our position as a global leader in the convenience store industry?” Dacus said in Japanese at a press conference in Tokyo on Thursday. “To win that competition, we need to provide better products and value compared to everyone else.”
Dacus, who was born in the United States and has a Japanese mother, is a certified public accountant in the United States and a professional manager. Dacus has expertise in the Japanese and U.S. retail markets thanks to his background, which includes senior management positions at U.S. retail giant Walmart Stores, Inc. and a stint serving as chief executive officer of what was then Walmart Japan Holdings G.K., where he ran major supermarket chain Seiyu.
Dacus’ father owned a 7-Eleven store in the United States, at which Dacus worked night shifts during his teenage years.
“I never thought that almost 50 years later, I would be head of the parent company of my father’s store,” Dacus said at the press conference.
Current Seven & i President Ryuichi Isaka said during the press conference that the timing was right for a change in leadership, so the company can achieve growth in the convenience store business as it moves away from the general retail industry. Isaka explained the decision to pass the baton to Dacus as the new president was down to his “excellent language and communication skills and wealth of financial knowledge.”
5 key policies
Seven & i announced five major policies to independently improve its corporate value: a change of president; stock buybacks; strengthening convenience store operations in the United States; listing its North American convenience store unit on the stock market; and selling off its supermarket and other operations.
The company also plans to return a total of ¥2 trillion of capital directly to shareholders by fiscal 2030.
“That’s a next-level stock buyback,” one financial industry insider pointed out.
This move might raise the company’s stock price.
Seven & i’s share price has remained relatively flat in recent years. Isaka even admitted at the press conference that he “certainly wasn’t satisfied” with the stock price. This was one factor behind Canadian convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. putting forward a takeover offer.
The stock market’s lukewarm view of Seven & i’s share price was fueled partly by delays in spinning off its poorly performing supermarket operations, which includes Ito-Yokado Co. Seven & i has announced it will sell its intermediate holding company that controls the Ito-Yokado supermarket chain and other units to a U.S. investment fund, and also focus more on its convenience store business.
Seven & i unveiled a plan to pursue listing its North American unit by the second half of 2026. The company plans to retain a majority of the shares in the unit and to seek synergy between its Japanese and U.S. operations.
“I think these measures will have an immediate effect on the stock price, and markets will probably welcome them to an extent,” one analyst told The Yomiuri Shimbun.
Convenience stores
Seven & i plans to eventually increase the group’s annual sales from about the current ¥18 trillion to more than ¥30 trillion, mainly through its convenience store business in Japan and the United States. However, there is little room for being overly optimistic on this front.
There are about 55,000 convenience stores operating in Japan, but the nation’s declining population and the emergence of small supermarkets in many urban areas has resulted in a saturated market.
“I constantly worry about the future prospects of my business,” said the franchise owner of one store in Sapporo. “I hope management will implement policies in line with the times.”
Expectations for growth in the United States are high, but even there, consumption by low- and middle-income earners — the main customers of convenience stores — has been sluggish due to the rising cost of living.
According to Seven & i’s consolidated financial accounts for the period between March and November 2024, operating profit of its convenience stores in the United States decreased 26%.
The company’s U.S. arm is currently trying to boost sales by increasing the number of new stores offering a more extensive array of food items, such as side dishes made with fresh ingredients.
“I believe that the biggest long-term opportunity in the U.S., the thing that will absolutely differentiate us from all of our competitors, is food,” Dacus said in English at the press conference. “I think if we can bring that same quality of food [available at our stores in Japan] to our stores in the U.S., that would be a huge and sustainable source of growth.”
