[Obayashi] North America — M&A-Driven Growth to ¥564.7bn; GCON Adds Chip/DC Capacity

Note: This article is a factual summary based on Obayashi Corporation’s published IR material (Investors’ Guide, June 2026 edition). It is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Figures are as of the publication of the source material. Investment decisions are your own responsibility.

North America is Obayashi’s largest overseas market by sales, accounting for 21.8% of consolidated group sales (¥564.7bn) as of FY2025 — the biggest of the group’s overseas regions (see Global Network). Nearly all of that scale was built through acquisitions over the past two decades: North American business net sales stood at just ¥90.4bn in FY2005, before the group’s run of M&A began in earnest. Obayashi describes its strategy for the region as achieving continuous growth by stabilizing the performance of its subsidiaries, led by the North American Regional Headquarters, while strategically expanding its business territories and domains through M&A.

The group companies behind ¥564.7bn in sales

Eight entities make up the North American business today: six acquired or founded subsidiaries, one newly consolidated company, and Obayashi Corporation’s own non-consolidated U.S. civil engineering operations. ‘North America’ in Obayashi’s reporting spans both the United States and Canada — Kenaidan Group, the group’s civil engineering subsidiary in Ontario, is the one Canadian entity in the table below.

Company	Business	Main operating areas	FY2025 net sales
E.W. Howell Co., LLC	Building construction (educational facilities, office buildings, medical and welfare facilities, cultural facilities, etc.)	New York	¥45.1bn
Webcor, L.P.	Building construction (office buildings, commercial facilities, educational facilities, medical facilities, etc.)	California	¥181.5bn
GCON Inc.*	Building construction (semiconductor facilities, data centers, etc.)	Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and other states	— (not separately disclosed)
James E. Roberts-Obayashi Corporation	Building construction (residential)	San Francisco Bay area	¥31.7bn
Kraemer North America, LLC	Civil engineering (road and bridge construction)	Wisconsin and other locations across the U.S.	¥98.6bn
MWH Management, Inc.	Civil engineering (water treatment facilities)	Colorado and other locations across the U.S.	¥146.8bn
Kenaidan Group Ltd.	Civil engineering (transportation infrastructure, heavy civil construction, etc.)	Ontario, Canada	¥37.5bn
Obayashi Corporation (non-consolidated)	Civil engineering	Various locations across the U.S.	¥22.0bn

*GCON became a consolidated subsidiary in the third quarter of FY2025; its FY2025 net sales are not separately disclosed in the guide.

By business line, Webcor is the largest single building-construction contributor, followed by James E. Roberts-Obayashi in Bay Area residential work and E.W. Howell in New York institutional and cultural facilities. On the civil engineering side, MWH is the largest contributor at ¥146.8bn, followed by Kraemer North America at ¥98.6bn and Kenaidan Group — Obayashi’s only Canadian subsidiary in the region — at ¥37.5bn.

Two decades of M&A-driven growth

Obayashi’s history in North America goes back further than its acquisitions. The company won its first U.S. construction order — the Surfrider Hotel in Hawaii — in 1966, and in 1979 became the first Japanese construction company to receive an order for a public civil engineering project in the continental United States, the San Francisco Sewer project. Those two milestones, decades apart from each other and from the acquisition era that followed, show North America has been a continuous part of Obayashi’s operations for roughly sixty years, even though the bulk of today’s revenue comes from businesses added far more recently.

Year	Milestone
1966	First U.S. order: the Surfrider Hotel construction project (Hawaii)
1979	First Japanese construction company to win a U.S. public civil engineering project (San Francisco Sewer)
2007	Acquired Webcor (building construction)
2010	Established North American Regional Headquarters as part of the Overseas Business Division
2011	Acquired Kenaidan Group (civil engineering, Canada)
2012	Established JS Builders, an affiliated subsidiary (building construction)
2013	Acquired more shares of James E. Roberts and made it a subsidiary (building construction)
2014	Acquired Kraemer North America (road and bridge construction, etc.)
2019	Established North American Regional Headquarters
2023	Acquired MWH (water treatment-related construction); acquired E.W. Howell (building construction)
2025	Acquired GCON (building construction)

The pattern splits cleanly by business line. On the building side, Obayashi added Webcor (2007), James E. Roberts (2013), E.W. Howell (2023), and most recently GCON (2025), which brings semiconductor-facility and data-center construction capacity in Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon. On the civil engineering side, it added Kenaidan Group in Canada (2011), Kraemer North America (2014), and MWH (2023), which specializes in water treatment facilities. JS Builders, established in 2012, is described as an affiliated subsidiary rather than a consolidated one, which typically means Obayashi holds a minority or equity-method stake rather than full ownership — it does not appear as a separate line in the net-sales table above. Regional coordination was formalized twice: a North American Regional Headquarters was first established within the Overseas Business Division in 2010, then re-established in 2019.

Obayashi’s own reference chart also tracks North American net sales in U.S. dollars, but notes that the dollar figures are a simple translation of the yen figures using the USD/JPY exchange rate at each fiscal year-end — a reference point only, not a separately reported dollar result.

What this means for investors

The GCON acquisition points to where growth in the region is aimed next: semiconductor and data-center construction, the same demand driver cited for the broader overseas building business (see Overseas Construction Overview). Growth here has come almost entirely from adding companies rather than organic expansion of a single entity — eight distinct operating companies, each with its own regional focus and specialty, now stand behind the ¥564.7bn total, up from ¥90.4bn two decades ago. That structure means North American results depend on the combined performance of eight separate businesses rather than one, with the newest addition, GCON, not yet reflected in a full year of results. For the group’s other main overseas market, see our Asia article.

This article is part of our complete breakdown of the Obayashi Investors’ Guide 2026. See the hub article for the full series.

Note: This article is a factual summary based on Obayashi Corporation’s published IR material (Investors’ Guide, June 2026 edition). It is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Figures are as of the publication of the source material. Investment decisions are your own responsibility.