OREANDA-NEWS. Yoshinoya Holdings Co., an operator of a beef bowl restaurant chain, posted Friday a group operating loss of 700 million yen for the March-May quarter, a sharp reversal from a 300 million yen profit a year earlier.

Sales rose 7% to 42.5 billion yen, marking the first uptick for the quarter in four years. The Yoshinoya business's domestic sales climbed 8% to 22.8 billion yen as the company slashed the price of its mainstay beef bowl by 100 yen in April, leading to a more than 10% increase in customer traffic.

But procurement costs for U.S. beef rose as the Japanese currency weakened against the dollar and rice prices remained high. Combined with the price cut, the ratio of costs to sales edged up more than 2 percentage points to 37%.

The firm has left its guidance for the year through February 2014 unchanged, with operating profit forecast at 3 billion yen, up 60% on the year.