TOKYO BASE Co., Ltd., the Tokyo-listed apparel group behind STUDIOUS, UNITED TOKYO and PUBLIC TOKYO, posted first-half consolidated revenue of ¥12.47bn for the six months to July 2026, up 21.1% from a year earlier. Ordinary profit rose 34.8% to ¥920.9mn and net profit attributable to owners climbed 11.9% to ¥518.2mn. The growth came from two sources that pull in different directions: more stores, and more tourists.
Tourists did the heavy lifting
Duty-free sales at the company's domestic stores rose 42.4% to ¥3.40bn, from ¥2.38bn a year earlier. That lifted tax-free purchases to 36.4% of domestic store revenue, up 6.3 percentage points from 30.1%. The company says the ¥1.01bn increase in duty-free sales accounted for 72.0% of the entire rise in store revenue this half. May and June were especially strong, with duty-free sales up 152.2% and 155.0% year on year, and the current run-rate is now 2.1 times the level of two years ago.
The home-brand problem
Strip out the tourist effect and the picture is less flattering. Same-store sales across the whole group rose 5.7%, but that average hides a split between TOKYO BASE's newer, buzzier formats and its original ones. THE TOKYO, CONZ and STUDIOUS all posted double-digit like-for-like gains, while UNITED TOKYO managed only 1.1% growth and PUBLIC TOKYO and CITY both fell, to 89.0% and 90.3% of the prior year.
| Format | Same-store index |
|---|---|
| STUDIOUS | 111.9% |
| UNITED TOKYO | 101.1% |
| PUBLIC TOKYO | 89.0% |
| CITY | 90.3% |
| THE TOKYO | 119.2% |
| CONZ | 118.9% |
| All formats | 105.7% |
Management names this directly: recovering profitability at existing stores in its own original formats is "the next challenge". The company attributes the half's revenue increase mainly to new store openings and the launch of a new format, KEY TIMEZ: 20 openings against 8 closures took the store count to 116, and KEY TIMEZ added ¥371.9mn in sales from a standing start.
Margin and balance-sheet notes
Gross margin slipped 0.4 percentage points to 53.6%, which the company attributes to introductory-period selling costs for the new KEY TIMEZ format, a shift in format mix from expanded store openings, and clearing older inventory through ZOZOTOWN. TOKYO BASE also booked a ¥67.8mn impairment loss tied to relocating PUBLIC TOKYO and CITY floor space during a renovation at Ikebukuro Parco. During the half the company bought back about ¥500.0mn of its own shares and paid ¥263.8mn in dividends, while cash on hand fell by ¥873.8mn to ¥3.52bn.
The filing, submitted to the Kanto Local Finance Bureau on September 14, leaves the underlying tension unresolved: TOKYO BASE's growth now runs substantially on inbound spending it does not control, while its own original-format stores post falling like-for-like sales.