Total sales for January 2006 edged down 0.4% year-on-year, to 109,258 million yen, while existing store sales declined 4.5%. Average daily sales per store were 431,000 yen, and the average amount spent per customer was 593 yen, down 1.8%. The average number of customers per store per day slipped 1.8%, to 725.

The continued decline in customer numbers reflected unusually cold weather.

Although the year-on-year change in existing store markups-an important indicator for LAWSON-decreased, the percentage decline was less than that of existing store sales.

The discontinuation of Highway Card sales accounted for a decrease of over 1.0% in monthly sales.

Wildly fluctuating temperatures continued to pose challenges for stores in terms of maintaining ordering precision and ensuring optimum product selections.

By area, persistently strong sales in Kanto, Chubu and other regions with large urban areas were unable to offset weak sales in provincial areas such as Chugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu, owing in part to snowy weather.

In the rice dishes category, new launches included Omori Gyudon (large bowl of rice topped with beef) (470 yen) and a Gohantei boxed lunch with a juicy Japanese-style hamburger (500 yen). Strong performances by these products failed to counter the effect of declining customer numbers. As a consequence, there was no significant change in the downward trend of category sales.

Fast food category sales remained strong, ensuring another year-on-year improvement.

We expect to have opened most of the stores planned for the fiscal year ending February 28, 2006, by the end of the period. As of January 31, 2006, in addition to our nationwide network of regular LAWSON stores, we had 36 NATURAL LAWSON stores and 18 STORE100 stores. Data for January represents the results of 8,288 stores, excluding STORE100 stores.

LAWSON will announce its earnings for the year ending February 28, 2006, on Wednesday, April 12, 2006.