Rakuten Reports 15 Percent Profit Increase in Half-Year Results

Japanese retail broker Rakuten Securities (Rakuten) announced its financial results for the six months ending on the 30th of September this Tuesday. The results indicate that it saw substantial year-on-year revenue growth in that period of time.

In this period last year, Rakuten reported total revenue of ¥25.29 billion ($230 million). This year, that number grew to ¥29.54 billion ($260 million) - equivalent to a 16.8 percent increase.

That growth was largely due to an increase in what Rakuten has termed ‘Trading Income’ in its financial report. This year, during the aforementioned six month period, the broker raked in ¥6.97 billion ($62 million) from ‘Trading Income.’ That was a 78.7 percent increase on last year’s ¥3.90 billion ($35 million).

Rakuten - admin expenses up, profit up

Another area of growth was in the firm’s ‘Financial Revenue’. This grew by approximately 16 percent, from ¥9.94 billion ($89 million) in 2017 to ¥11.53 ($100 million) billion this year.

The firm’s administrative expenses also increased this year by 18.3 percent to ¥17.62 billion ($160 million). Last year, for the same period, the figure was ¥14.89 billion ($130 million).

Despite that increase, the firm was able to record better operating income this year than last. In 2017, Rakuten reported a total operating income of ¥8.93 billion ($80 million). This year, that number grew to ¥10.38 billion ($93 million) - a 16.2 percent increase.

Finally, after Rakuten had paid its taxes for the period this year, it saw profit of ¥6.98 billion ($62 million). That was a ¥900 million ($8 million) and 14.8 percent increase on last year’s profit of ¥6.08 billion ($54 million).