Rakuten Group’s return to profitability is a milestone for our mission to democratize mobile connectivity
For the first time since Q2 2020 – also the full-scale launch of Rakuten’s MNO business – the Rakuten Group has achieved positive net income, with more than 27 billion yen for the second quarter of 2026.
Six years ago, many people questioned our decision to build Japan’s fourth mobile network – a decision underpinned by our desire to lower the price of connectivity for Japanese consumers and add a new dimension to the Rakuten Ecosystem.
Rakuten Mobile has continued to grow its revenue and subscriber base – 10.75 million total subscribers as of the end of June 2026, 1.78 million more subscribers than a year ago – while AI personalization and revenue growth across our Internet Services, FinTech and Mobile segments have shown that we are in a very strong position.
FinTech customer rise spurs Group growth
The FinTech segment drove our strong Q2 performance, while our Internet Services segment delivered healthy revenue and profit growth.
This growth is no coincidence and is in no small part due to new users coming in via Rakuten Mobile.
The numbers paint a clear picture. When a customer joins Rakuten Mobile, they spend roughly 30% more on Rakuten Card, their Rakuten Ichiba shopping increases 50%, and their Rakuten Travel usage rises 20%.
Rakuten Mobile plays a major role in customer acquisition through our use of data. It improves our understanding of customers across services – raising this granularity by just a few percent produces large, compounding effects.
Last quarter, we shared that the average annual revenue per customer using two of our segments is 5.4x the value of a customer using just one. A user of all three segments brings in 13.5x the revenue of a single-segment user. A Rakuten Mobile customer uses 2.43x more services across our ecosystem than a non-Mobile customer.
One thing makes me especially proud: we have brought down the cost of mobile plans to Japanese consumers. Japan’s June 2026 Consumer Price Index shows a 13.6% increase in overall prices, but the cost of mobile plans has fallen by 21% compared to 2020. In parallel, our ARPU is up 60 yen year-over-year, to 2,921 Yen. This is the definition of a win-win situation.
We will keep improving our mobile service – 200 billion yen in CAPEX is planned in 2026 to improve network coverage. This includes plans that are already underway for capacity upgrades across Tokyo’s train and subway systems using 5G for the JR Yamanote Line and MIMO technology for the Tokyo Metro subway system.
Rakuten AI continues to evolve: AI store managers and our Super Agent
I am very excited about our AI store manager that will help shoppers around the clock, coming to Rakuten Ichiba later this year. This new avatar will learn from data held by individual merchants on our platform, providing highly personalised experiences for customers.
Our users will also soon see a Rakuten Group Super Agent that will coordinate with Rakuten’s agentic ecosystem to handle complex, multi-service tasks and interact with third-party services and tools that are outside of our ecosystem, expanding our ability to manage the entire customer journey from discovery to post-purchase delivery.
