Daito Trust Construction reported net profit of ¥64.2bn for the six months to September 2026, up 28.6% from a year earlier, but its construction order book moved the other way. Orders received fell 13.2% to ¥237.8bn, according to the company's half-year securities report.
What lifted the bottom line
Sales rose 3.0% to ¥988.7bn and operating profit rose 14.3% to ¥79.3bn. Ordinary profit rose 10.1% to ¥78.6bn, well short of the net-profit gain. The difference includes a ¥9.87bn gain on selling all of its shares in a former equity-method affiliate that ran medical, nursing-care and childcare businesses, booked as an extraordinary item. A write-down on JustCo Holdings shares, listed under extraordinary losses, partly offset it.
What the orders show
Daito attributed the order decline to higher interest rates, which raised clients' funding costs and made investment decisions more cautious. Its order backlog at the end of September was ¥755.0bn, down 4.7% from a year earlier.
Completed construction sales fell 6.1% to ¥248.0bn. The construction gross margin rose 2.8 percentage points to 27.6%, which the company credited to price revisions.
Market backdrop
Rental-housing starts, Daito's main market, rose 13.7% to 171,212 units in April to September. The company said the figure includes a rebound from a year earlier, when starts fell after the Building Standards Act revision and the building energy-efficiency law took effect. Daito's order decline is its own result and does not describe the whole rental-housing market.