First-quarter profit is ahead of the full-year plan, but the assumption of a slowdown in the second half remains

In FY2027 1Q, revenue was ¥123,602 million, up 8.6% year on year, operating profit was ¥2,827 million, up 55.1%, and ordinary profit was ¥3,191 million, up 66.5%. Meanwhile, net income attributable to owners of the parent was ¥2,059 million, down 0.9%, indicating that the improvement at the operating level did not flow through uniformly to net income.

1Q progress against the full-year forecast was 24.7% for revenue and 28.3% for operating profit. Operating profit progress was approximately 3.6 percentage points ahead of revenue progress, meaning that profit was advancing faster than revenue as of 1Q. The 1Q operating margin was approximately 2.3%, up from approximately 1.6% in the same period of the previous year.

However, the FY2027 full-year forecast is ¥500,000 million in revenue and ¥10,000 million in operating profit. Revenue is expected to increase 5.9% year on year, while operating profit is planned to decline 4.5% from ¥10,476 million in the previous fiscal year. After deducting 1Q results, operating profit of ¥7,173 million is required over the remaining 9 months to meet the full-year plan. This is 17.1% below the ¥8,654 million recorded in the remaining 9 months after 1Q in FY2026, on a simple comparison that does not take seasonality into account.

The company has not provided separate FY2027 first-half targets for revenue and operating profit, so ¥250,000 million in revenue and ¥5,000 million in operating profit are merely mechanical 50% benchmarks. Next time, the cumulative first-half figures and margins will need to confirm whether the high 1Q operating margin was maintained, whether costs and upfront investment in the core business pressured profit from 2Q onward, and whether it remains reasonable to leave the full-year forecast unchanged.