Quarterly profitability, record-high EBITDA: Rakuten unveils Q3 FY2025 financial results

On Thursday, November 13, Rakuten announced its Q3 FY2025 financial results from the company’s Crimson House headquarters in Tokyo.

AI avatars for Rakuten Group Chairman and CEO Mickey Mikitani and other senior leaders presented Q3 2025 highlights from the company’s global portfolio of 70+ services, while offering updates on exciting recent developments in AI.

Strong overall performance, including growth in all three segments

Consolidated revenue for Rakuten’s Internet Services, FinTech and Mobile segments reached 628.6 billion yen, a record high for Q3, up 10.9％ YoY.

The quarter saw a marked increase in revenue, especially in FinTech and Mobile. In the Internet Services segment, a demand surge prompted by revisions to the Furusato Nozei hometown tax program’s point award rules, contributed to consolidated Non-GAAP operating income of 38.6 billion yen, a significant increase of 212.8% YoY. Consolidated EBITDA, an indicator used to assess ability to generate cash flow, also hit its highest mark for a third quarter, up 28.8% YoY to 118.7 billion yen. For the period January to September, the Group posted IFRS operating income of 1.3 billion yen, marking its first profitable Q1–Q3 period in six years.

Internet Services

The Internet Services segment recorded growth in both revenue and profit in Q3, with revenue of 349.6 billion yen, up 11.1％ YoY. Non-GAAP operating income was 24.2 billion yen, an increase of 14.5％ YoY.

Domestic e-commerce gross merchandise sales (GMS) reached 1.71 trillion yen, up 14.5％ YoY. The increase was driven by growth in services including Rakuten Ichiba, due to accelerated demand triggered by revisions to the hometown tax program’s point award rules, which came into effect in October.

Rakuten Travel also contributed significantly to growth as a result of strong domestic and inbound travel demand, particularly for the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo.

“Our deep learning investments – search, ads, recommendations and more, have generated material impact across the Rakuten Ecosystem.”

Ting Cai, Rakuten Chief AI & Data Officer

Non-GAAP operating income hit 33.9 billion yen, rising 33.6％ YoY, due to notable contributions from core businesses, including Rakuten Ichiba and Rakuten Travel, plus improved profitability due to revised logistics rates.

Beyond the financial metrics, Mikitani also highlighted the ongoing AI innovation at Rakuten Ichiba. “Since their launch last March, our AI tools for merchants have gained significant traction, with 23,000 now using them every month. Our commitment is to further expand these tools with the aim of significantly boosting merchants’ operational efficiencies.”

FinTech

In Q3 FY2025, Rakuten’s FinTech segment saw significant revenue and profit growth, recording revenue of 250.5 billion yen, up 20.3％ YoY, and Non-GAAP operating income of 55.2 billion yen, +37.9％ YoY, with customer base and transaction volume expanding across all services.

Over the quarter Rakuten Card’s shopping gross transaction value (GTV) saw an expansion of 11.7% YoY, reaching 6.7 trillion yen, driven by its growing membership base, increased spending per customer and accelerated demand from changes to the hometown tax program.

Further in the FinTech segment, Rakuten Bank brought customer accounts (non-consolidated) to 17.32 million as of the end of September 2025, up 6.9％ YoY.

Mobile Segment

Increasing Rakuten Mobile subscribers, rising Net ARPU and improved revenues from Rakuten Symphony software deliveries to major customers, resulted in revenue of 118.7 billion yen, an increase of 12.0％YoY.

The segment recorded Non-GAAP operating losses of 38.6 billion yen, a notable improvement of 10.1 billion yen YoY. 

Rakuten Mobile announced total subscribers had reached 9.33 million as of the end of September 2025, a significant expansion of 405,000 from the previous quarter. The innovative network has since surpassed 9.5 million subscriptions as of November 7, 2025.

“We’re seeing positive momentum in B2C acquisitions and are focused on increasing that pace,” commented Mikitani. “As we continue to develop our B2B pipeline, our clear objective is to target 10 million subscribers by the close of 2025.”

Further illustrating Rakuten Mobile’s increased performance – in addition to increased acquisitions and net MNP subscribers compared to the previous quarter – was the decreasing churn rate, which highlights the appeal of Rakuten’s mobile services amidst an inflationary macroeconomic environment in Japan.

AI

Presenting in AI avatar form, Rakuten Chief AI & Data Officer Ting Cai offered attendees an update on Rakuten’s effort to infuse AI into everything it does for customers, partners, and team members around the world.

“Our deep learning investments – search, ads, recommendations, and more, have generated material impact across the Rakuten Ecosystem,” explained Cai. “We’re seizing the opportunity of AI agents that can better understand user intent, capture context, plan execution, iterate and improve on their own.”

Highlighting the company’s increasing adoption of AI solutions, he noted a 17x increase in token usage on Rakuten’s internal AI platform YoY, driven by concrete applications in coding, business productivity and the release of multiple agents to production services, with 30% of the total token usage directly allocated to software development.

In July, Rakuten announced the general availability of Rakuten AI, the company’s agentic AI platform. Since then, Rakuten has sustained momentum by shipping more AI agents for Rakuten Mobile, Rakuten Ichiba and Rakuten Travel. 

“Looking forward, we envision a future where agents are everywhere throughout the Rakuten Ecosystem, not only helping users make their days more productive and making it easier to access Rakuten Group services, but also serving as proactive assistants that improve every aspect of their life.”

Finally, Cai touched on Rakuten’s newest high-impact AI announcement, a collaboration between Rakuten and HP Japan to bring the power of Rakuten AI to HP AI PCs. On November 11, the companies announced their intent to integrate Rakuten AI on-device capabilities to HP PCs across Japan, marking the first time that Rakuten AI will be available for use offline and online with an on-device Rakuten LLM.