Marui Group posts a record first-quarter profit as tenant reshuffling and 'oshi' events lift retail, Epos Card tops 8.4 million members

Marui Group's first quarter of its March 2027 fiscal year (April to June 2026) was a run of records, the company said in its earnings brief: group transaction value, operating profit and net profit all hit first-quarter highs, as its combined retail, tenant and card businesses grew faster than a year earlier.

Group transaction value rose 10 percent to ¥1.406 trillion, up ¥122.0bn from a year earlier — a first-quarter record that the company attributed mainly to growth in card-credit transaction value from its Epos Card fintech business. Revenue rose 7.4 percent to ¥72.4bn, a sixth straight quarter of revenue growth; operating profit rose 10.5 percent to a first-quarter-record ¥15.4bn; and ordinary profit rose a slower 3.3 percent to ¥12.8bn, as interest expense climbed to ¥2.1bn from ¥1.3bn, with both marking a fifth straight quarter of profit growth. Net profit attributable to owners rose 14.0 percent to a first-quarter-record ¥9.0bn, a sixth straight quarter of growth, and earnings per share rose to ¥50.46 from ¥44.12.

Operating profit growth would have been larger still without an accounting effect: Marui booked ¥3.4bn in gains from securitising receivables, ¥1.5bn less than a year earlier, while amortisation and related costs rose ¥0.3bn to ¥2.7bn — a combined ¥1.8bn drag. Stripping that out, the company said, underlying operating profit rose ¥3.3bn, split between a ¥0.9bn gain in retail and a ¥2.3bn gain in fintech.

Retail: fewer, better tenants

Retail-segment operating profit rose 38 percent to ¥3.4bn, the company said, as it continued reworking its Marui and Modi store tenant mix under what it calls a strategy of building 'stores that don't sell' — filling its buildings with tenants that draw customers rather than running its own retail floors. Fixed-term tenant income rose 2 percent to ¥11.9bn, and the share of that income tied to tenants' own sales performance, rather than fixed rent, rose 2 percentage points to 23 percent.

The segment's fastest-growing line is what Marui calls 'oshi' — favourite, or fandom — events: pop-ups and activations, increasingly staged outside its own stores as well as inside them, that the company said now run more than 1,000 times a year. Because they are staffed by employees skilled at signing customers up for its Epos credit card, these events generate card sign-ups at 16 times the rate of a typical event, Marui said. Event transaction value rose 109 percent to ¥4.2bn in the quarter.

FinTech: Epos sets fresh records

In the larger fintech segment, operating profit rose 3 percent to ¥14.0bn. Card-credit transaction value hit a quarterly record of ¥1.2994 trillion, up 10 percent, which the company attributed to a push to capture a bigger share of cardholders' household spending, including rent and recurring utility payments made by card. Instalment and revolving-credit transaction value rose 9 percent to ¥123.2bn, and the outstanding instalment and revolving balance, including securitised receivables, reached a record ¥506.4bn, up 6 percent.

Epos Card added 220,000 new members in the quarter, a first-quarter record, taking total membership to a record 8.41 million, up 410,000 from a year earlier. Within that base, cards built around specific fan interests — tied to anime, gaming and entertainment franchises, animal-welfare groups and similar causes — added 100,000 new members to reach 1.46 million, and now span 161 card designs. Marui said these cards skew younger and carry two to seven times the lifetime value of its standard cards, and it plans to build a donation feature into future cards in the line as standard.

Total assets rose to ¥1.209 trillion from ¥1.141 trillion at the March fiscal year-end, largely on growing card receivables, while interest-bearing debt, excluding lease liabilities, rose ¥90.0bn to ¥806.2bn and the equity ratio fell 1.9 points to 19.5 percent after share buybacks and dividend payments. The same day, Marui's board approved a new buyback of up to ¥20bn, or up to 10 million shares (5.6 percent of shares outstanding), to run from 10 August 2026 to 15 May 2027, which the company said was intended to address cases where its future profitability is not fully reflected in its share price.

Marui also nudged up its full-year forecast, first issued on 15 May, saying revenue should now reach ¥296.5bn and operating profit ¥55.5bn — both revised up slightly — while ordinary profit (¥44.0bn), net profit (¥29.5bn) and earnings-per-share guidance (¥164.0) were left unchanged. The retail segment's full-year operating-profit forecast was raised 4.3 percent to ¥12.0bn; fintech's was left at ¥51.0bn. The annual dividend is still guided at a record ¥134 per share, which would mark a 15th consecutive annual increase.

The quarter is a clean illustration of the model Marui has spent a decade building: shrink the retail business it runs directly, replace it with tenants and events that pull in shoppers and card sign-ups, then make more from financing those shoppers' spending than from selling them anything itself. At the segment level, retail supplied only about a fifth of the group's combined ¥17.4bn operating profit, with fintech providing the rest — the clearest sign of how far the shift from department-store operator to consumer-finance business has already gone. The open question is how much further retail's margin can climb, on a strategy built around smaller floors and outside events, before the balance between the two segments starts to move the other way.