RIZAP swings to its first quarterly net profit in five years as chocoZAP expands

RIZAP Group returned to quarterly net profit for the first time in five years, even as revenue fell, according to the company's Q1 FY2027 earnings released on 14 August. The recovery came as chocoZAP, its unstaffed convenience-gym chain, kept opening new locations at a fast clip.

For the three months to June, RIZAP reported revenue of ¥36.91 billion, down 7.5% year on year, while operating profit rose 93.4% to ¥790 million, the company said. Net profit came to ¥135 million, reversing a ¥5.94 billion loss in the same quarter a year earlier — the group's first quarterly net profit in five years.

RIZAP said chocoZAP's pace of new-store openings ran at 2.6 times the previous year's rate over the quarter. The chain — 24-hour, unstaffed gyms charging a flat, low monthly fee, a format that has spread rapidly across Japan's fitness market since RIZAP launched it — has been the group's main growth engine even as its original, higher-cost personal-training business matures.

The combination of falling revenue and sharply higher profit points to a mix shift already under way — a leaner, high-volume chocoZAP format displacing costlier operations elsewhere in the group — though RIZAP did not break out which segments drove the topline decline in the release. The company kept its full-year guidance unchanged, it said, a signal that management sees the quarter as the shape of the year rather than a one-off.