ASKUL Corporation's first-quarter results, covering May 21 to August 20, 2026, show a company still climbing out of a hole dug nearly a year ago. Consolidated sales fell 8.2% to ¥112.3bn, and the operating line flipped from a ¥1.05bn profit a year earlier to a ¥418mn loss. Ordinary profit swung to a ¥452mn loss from ¥938mn, and the loss attributable to shareholders came to ¥508mn, versus a ¥344mn profit last year, working out to a loss of ¥5.68 per share against ¥3.73 in profit previously.
| Metric | Q1 last year (May-Aug 2025) | Q1 this year (May-Aug 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Net sales | ¥122.3bn | ¥112.3bn |
| Operating profit/loss | ¥1.05bn | -¥418mn |
| Ordinary profit/loss | ¥938mn | -¥452mn |
| Net profit/loss attributable to owners | ¥344mn | -¥508mn |
| Earnings per share | ¥3.73 | -¥5.68 |
The damage sits almost entirely in e-commerce. ASKUL, the core business-to-business unit, posted sales down 12.2%, and the consumer-facing LOHACO business fell 12.3%. Management attributes part of the decline to a comparison quirk: last year's extreme heat drove unusually strong sales of drinks and heatstroke-prevention goods, and the Middle East situation had produced a one-off demand spike in the prior fourth quarter, both of which reversed this year. But the underlying story is the ransomware attack that hit ASKUL on October 19, 2025. Mid-size and large corporate customers have returned close to pre-attack sales levels, the company says, but smaller business customers are still rebuilding, and the company is targeting a return to pre-attack revenue levels for the full fiscal year.
Margins tell their own story. Gross margin fell 1.5 percentage points to 23.3%, which the company attributes to the price cuts it used last year to win back customers after the attack and which are still working through the numbers. That was partly offset by a 0.3-point improvement in the SG&A ratio, to 23.7%, which the company attributes to the absence of one-off costs it booked last year, including startup costs for the Kanto distribution center, among other items. The smaller logistics segment, run through ASKUL LOGIST's outside contract work, fared worse: sales dropped 25.7% to ¥1.42bn and the segment posted a ¥53mn operating loss after a contract renegotiation.
Despite the loss, ASKUL left its full-year forecast untouched: sales of ¥490bn (up 22.4%), operating profit of ¥7bn, net profit of ¥4bn and earnings per share of ¥44.68, alongside an unchanged ¥20 annual dividend. That guidance implies the company expects to make essentially all of its projected operating profit in the nine months from September through May, a considerably steeper climb than the roughly flat quarter it just reported. Total assets stood at ¥219.9bn at quarter-end, with the equity ratio ticking up to 21.1% from 20.8%. In its supplementary briefing, management called the quarter's results "roughly in line with plan" and described the second quarter onward as the period that will determine whether the promised re-acceleration actually shows up in the numbers.