Visional's hiring-platform machine is still growing quickly enough to keep its annual plan intact, but the latest quarter shows more spending and a slower pace at the core business. For the nine months to April 30, revenue rose 24.3% to ¥73.157bn and operating profit increased 12.2% to ¥19.612bn. The company kept its full-year outlook unchanged at ¥99.2bn of revenue and ¥23.1bn of operating profit. The latest quarter alone was softer: revenue rose 21.1%, while operating profit fell 5.7% year on year as investment expanded toward the year-end.
| Metric | Nine months | Year on year | Full-year outlook | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | ¥73,157mn | +24.3% | ¥99,200mn | 73.7% |
| Operating profit | ¥19,612mn | +12.2% | ¥23,100mn | 84.9% |
| BizReach revenue | ¥59,714mn | +17.0% | ¥80,300mn | 74.4% |
| HRMOS revenue | ¥6,653mn | +77.7% | ¥9,000mn | 73.9% |
BizReach still carries the group
BizReach, the direct recruiting business that remains Visional's profit engine, delivered nine-month sales of ¥59.714bn, up 17.0%. Pre-corporate-allocation operating profit rose 14.1% to ¥25.479bn, a 42.7% margin. Growth did cool in the latest quarter, but management said that was expected after a strong comparison period and continued marketing spend. Third-quarter BizReach revenue rose 13.2%, and third-quarter profit was almost flat, up 0.2%. By end-April, cumulative client companies topped 43,900, about 2,100 more than at the end of January.
HRMOS is growing faster, with a small but real Thinkings effect
HRMOS posted nine-month sales of ¥6.653bn, up 77.7%, and its pre-corporate-allocation operating loss narrowed to ¥40mn from ¥197mn a year earlier. The latest quarter itself still lost ¥70mn, after the business reached profitability in the second quarter and then stepped up marketing again. ARR reached ¥9.486bn at end-April.
Thinkings, whose sonar ATS by HRMOS product is now inside the group, has been consolidated for seven months in the nine-month total. That helps explain some of HRMOS's speed, but management also said the consolidation effect on progress against the full-year sales plan is minor, even though the full-year guide already assumes 10 months of sonar ATS by HRMOS.
The bigger caution is comparability
Some of the headline HRMOS KPI jumps are not like-for-like. Visional now discloses KPIs across a wider service set, including sonar ATS by HRMOS and other HRMOS tools such as attendance and expense management. That helped lift the disclosed customer count to 10,262, while ARPU fell to ¥77,039 because the mix now includes broader, lower-ticket customer groups.
The acquisition is more visible on the balance sheet than in this year's guide. Thinkings cost ¥13.999bn, including a ¥2.086bn contingent portion held back against potential indemnity claims, and produced provisional goodwill of ¥11.418bn. Group goodwill rose to ¥13.981bn from ¥3.741bn by April 30, largely because of the deal. Even so, Visional says the annual forecast, which already includes Thinkings and about ¥1.1bn of goodwill amortization, does not need changing.
The message is plain enough: BizReach is still the margin engine, HRMOS is scaling fast enough to justify more spending, and Thinkings broadens the product stack more than it rewrites this year's earnings story. In earnings season, holding the line can be a result in its own right.