Sumitomo Pharma filed a detailed rebuttal on August 7 to a short-seller report published four days earlier by Gotham City Research LLC, titled "Sumitomo Chemical and Sumitomo Pharmaceutical: The ¥116 Billion Swiss Shuffle." The company said the report contains numerous claims that are "clearly different from the facts" and noted that Gotham City Research disclosed a short position in the stock, meaning it profits if the shares fall.
On profit quality, Sumitomo Pharma confirmed the ¥49.0bn gain booked from selling part of its Asian business stake in the year to March 2026, but said the gain was recognized under applicable accounting standards and had already been flagged to investors in a May 2025 disclosure. On the separate claim that a spike in receivables signals channel stuffing or inflated sales, the company pointed to three technical factors: its North American unit stopped factoring receivables that had previously reduced the balance, revenue is booked net of returns and rebates while receivables are gross, and the prior year's Asia-business receivables were excluded because that unit was classified as held for sale.
The more pointed allegation concerned a ¥164.5bn dividend paid by Swiss subsidiary Sumitomo Pharma Switzerland GmbH, which the short seller suggested was engineered to flatter earnings ahead of the company's public share offering. Sumitomo Pharma said ¥116.2bn of that dividend reduced the book value of its SMPS shares while ¥48.3bn was recorded as dividend income on its standalone (non-consolidated) accounts, cutting the related-company share balance by ¥109.5bn from a year earlier. The underlying asset traces to an August 2025 intra-group transfer tied to rights over its three main U.S. products, and the company said the transaction is eliminated entirely on consolidation, leaving no effect on group profit.
Sumitomo Pharma said its consolidated and standalone financial statements for the year to March 2026 received an unqualified opinion from its outside auditor, and warned it may pursue legal action over "inaccurate or misleading" statements. Parent company Sumitomo Chemical issued a matching notice the same day confirming the subsidiary's explanation.