Subaru sales rose, but profit before tax fell back near 2022 levels

Subaru's latest annual securities report lays out an awkward equation: slightly more revenue, much less profit. Revenue in the year to March 2026 rose to ¥4.78tn from ¥4.69tn, but profit before tax dropped to ¥107.47bn from ¥448.51bn, and profit attributable to owners of parent fell to ¥90.84bn from ¥338.06bn.

That matters because the filing's own multi-year summary makes clear this was not a problem of shrinking scale. The ¥4.78tn top line is the highest figure in the five-year run shown in the excerpt, above ¥4.70tn in the year to March 2024 and well above ¥2.74tn in the year to March 2022. Yet profit before tax is now almost back to the ¥106.97bn level posted in 2022.

In plain English, Subaru sold a bit more and kept a lot less. Basic earnings per share fell to 125.50 yen from 458.03 yen a year earlier, and comprehensive income attributable to owners of parent slipped to ¥205.99bn from ¥289.36bn. The balance sheet, at least from the publishable excerpt in the packet, does not look like the immediate problem: total assets increased to ¥5.49tn and equity attributable to owners of parent rose to ¥2.78tn.

For Japan-equity watchers, that makes this less a scale story than an earnings-protection story. The packet quantifies the squeeze clearly, but it does not identify a single main driver in management's own words, so readers can see the damage without cleanly assigning the cause. It is also worth treating the filing as confirmation rather than a bolt from the blue, because the packet itself warns that the annual securities report probably formalises figures already discussed earlier. What it adds, even in excerpt form, is the starkness of the trade-off: a higher top line bought Subaru far less bottom-line comfort in the year just ended.