Hirose Electric, the Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed maker of electronic connectors used in factory-automation equipment, smartphones and vehicles, reported sales of ¥62.08bn for the quarter to June, up 26.8% from a year earlier. Operating profit rose 35.6% to ¥13.34bn, lifting the operating margin to 21.5% from 20.1% a year earlier. Orders climbed even faster, up 36.6% to ¥71.06bn, an early sign the current demand cycle has not yet peaked.
Net profit told a different story: it rose just 1.4% to ¥7.33bn even as pre-tax profit jumped 41.3% to ¥14.47bn, a gap consistent with a tax charge disclosed elsewhere in the filing. The company's balance sheet shows unpaid corporate tax rising ¥1.62bn between March and June, which the filing attributes to a transfer-pricing back-tax assessment. The disclosure does not say how much of that assessment hit this quarter's income statement, so the exact size of its drag on net profit is not spelled out.
The operating strength was broad. General industrial machinery sales, driven by factory-automation orders, rose 46% to a record ¥20.6bn, beating the previous quarterly high of ¥18.0bn. Automotive and mobility connector sales rose 22% to ¥15.6bn, the segment's first quarter above ¥15bn. Telecom-infrastructure sales, which include AI-server-related connectors, rose 92% to ¥2.5bn. On the strength of that order book, Hirose Electric raised its full-year sales forecast to ¥250.0bn from the ¥230.0bn set in May, and lifted its operating profit forecast to ¥50.0bn from ¥46.0bn. Full-year net income guidance rose more modestly, to ¥35.0bn from ¥34.0bn.
| Metric | Year to March 2026 (actual) | May forecast | August forecast (revised) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | ¥211.3bn | ¥230.0bn | ¥250.0bn |
| Operating profit | ¥43.0bn | ¥46.0bn | ¥50.0bn |
| Net income | ¥33.1bn | ¥34.0bn | ¥35.0bn |
The company also authorized a share buyback of up to 700,000 shares, equal to 2.14% of shares outstanding excluding treasury stock, capped at ¥15.0bn and running from August 10 to November 30. The purchase sits inside a four-year, ¥60.0bn buyback program announced in May 2025, under which Hirose Electric bought back roughly ¥20.0bn of its own stock in the year to March 2026.
Separately, Hirose Electric will build a new logistics center at its Hirose Korea unit to handle rising automotive-connector demand, with construction starting in September 2026 and completion expected in December 2027. The eight-story building will have a building area of 3,781.8 square meters on a 6,404.7-square-meter site, with automated storage and retrieval systems intended to keep supply steady as automotive-connector order volumes keep climbing.