Rakuten hits operating income milestone in record-breaking Q1 2026 results
For the first time since entering the mobile network operator business in 2019, Rakuten Group recorded Q1 operating income on both a consolidated Non-GAAP and IFRS basis, marking meaningful progress towards full-year profitability for 2026.
Such was a key takeaway from Rakuten Group’s Q1 2026 financial results presentation held May 14 at the company’s global headquarters in Tokyo. The presentation, headlined by Rakuten Group Chairman and CEO Mickey Mikitani, Group Co-CFO Eiichi Kaga and Group Chief AI & Data Officer Ting Cai, offered a detailed look at the company’s quarterly financial performance, which highlighted strength across segments and unveiled Rakuten’s bold, AI-powered vision for future growth.
Overall performance
The Rakuten Group registered year-on-year (YoY) revenue growth for all segments in the first quarter of 2026 – Internet Services, FinTech and Mobile – with consolidated revenue reaching a record high for Q1 of 643.6 billion yen, up 14.4% YoY. This marks the first time the company has exceeded 600 billion yen in revenue in the first quarter.
“We possess a unique and powerful advantage: A vast, integrated ecosystem of online and offline data. This global data asset is the engine behind our innovation, allowing us to deliver personalized services and expand our customer base through the strategic application of AI,” noted Mikitani.
In another landmark achievement, for the first time since entering the mobile network operator business, Rakuten Group recorded Q1 operating income on both a consolidated Non-GAAP and IFRS basis.
These results were driven not only by strong revenue growth across all segments but also by significant improvements in Rakuten Mobile’s profitability, with the company recording its first-ever EBITDA profit in the first quarter, even when accounting for the impact of annual property tax.
“AI is accelerating our strategy on two fronts. We are using it to lower operational costs, providing a defensive advantage, while also scaling customer acquisition and cross-service engagement to fuel our offensive efforts.”
Mickey Mikitani, Chairman and CEO, Rakuten Group
Strong gains in e-commerce and digital services
Rakuten Group’s Internet Services segment, which includes a variety of Japan and global-focused businesses across e-commerce, travel, digital content and more, delivered both revenue and profit growth in the quarter, reporting revenue of 317.6 billion yen, up 4.0% YoY, and Non-GAAP operating income of 21.2 billion yen, a substantial increase of 65.6％ YoY.
The Rakuten International business unit achieved revenue of USD 459.2 million, up 6.9％ YoY, driven by revenue growth in Rakuten Kobo, Rakuten Viber, and successful subscription pricing revisions and improvements to Rakuten Viki’s product lineup.
Finally, the advertising business achieved significant growth with revenue hitting 61.9 billion yen, an improvement of 13.0% YoY, due to AI-powered automatic ad optimization through the Rakuten Promotion Platform for ads on Rakuten Ichiba and other initiatives.
FinTech scales to new heights
Rakuten Group’s FinTech segment continued its growth streak in Q1 2026. Revenue reached 275.3 billion yen, an increase of 23.1% YoY, and Non-GAAP operating income of 58.5 billion yen, up an impressive 33.8% YoY.
Helping drive this growth was significant customer base and transaction value expansion across businesses.
Highlights from the segment include Rakuten Card recording 6.8 trillion yen in gross transaction value in the quarter (+8.5％ YoY) thanks to an expanded membership base and higher spending per customer; Rakuten Bank reaching 18.07 million customer accounts (non-consolidated) as of the end of March 2026 (+7.3％ YoY); and Rakuten Securities’ total number of general securities accounts exceeding 13.87 million in the same period (+12.4％ YoY).
Rakuten Mobile reaches Q1 profitability milestone
Rakuten Mobile continued to strengthen its financial position in Q1 2026, supported by steady subscriber growth and improving operating efficiency.
The Mobile segment recorded revenue of 131.2 billion yen, up 18.5% YoY. Non-GAAP operating losses also narrowed to 38.0 billion yen, an improvement of 13.3 billion yen YoY.
Total Rakuten Mobile subscriptions reached 10.36 million as of the end of March 2026, a net increase of 1.74 million YoY.
Rakuten Mobile recorded revenue of 108.0 billion yen, an increase of 23.9% YoY, driven by subscription growth, with non-GAAP operating losses of 36.4 billion yen, an improvement of 12.7 billion yen YoY. EBITDA for the quarter reached 1.0 billion yen, an improvement of 7.5 billion yen YoY, with Rakuten Mobile recording its first-ever profitable first quarter, even when accounting for the impact of property taxes.
Rakuten AI: Scaling profitable growth through ecosystem integration
Following a performance overview of the company’s three core segments, Ting Cai offered an update on the state of Rakuten Group’s ambitious AI-nization initiative. The Rakuten Ecosystem, he noted, enjoys a durable competitive advantage with over 3 trillion annual interactions across 70+ businesses and 45.9 million monthly active users in Japan alone. By connecting Rakuten IDs, payment gateways and the company’s robust points loyalty program, it can offer agents that support end-to-end transactions with unmatched seamlessness. Rakuten Group’s unique growth flywheel is a closed-loop system where data drives personalization and personalization drives ecosystem-wide revenue.
“We are building a Super Agent where users can share a vague idea, and the agent can figure out the intent through memory or dialogue.” noted Cai. “It then plans, executes, and iterates towards goals—and most importantly, helps the user to complete tasks through actions and transactions across multiple ecosystem services. We are establishing Rakuten AI as the go-to destination for general inquiries.”
Rakuten ensures this efficiency through a hybrid model strategy. “We build the best, and partner with the best,” said Cai. “We’ve been collaborating with the best AI companies, both startups and larger companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. We also want to understand the technology fundamentals. So we build from the ground up, creating our own embedding for commerce and tokenizer for Japanese. We also innovate on top of the best open source models, train with our unique and diverse data set, and optimize for domain-specific tasks.”
By distilling Rakuten AI and open Large Language Models into domain and task-specific Small Language Models, Rakuten is optimizing for both performance and cost-efficiency.
Group-wide, execution is scaling rapidly. AI agents are live in 11 services, with 8 in the pipeline and a roadmap to reach 50+ services. These agents are the ecosystem’s “front door,” capturing user intent early to deliver personalized recommendations and complex task completion like end-to-end hotel booking. This seamless user experience increases conversion rates while strengthening long-term ecosystem loyalty.
For more business-by-business breakdowns of Rakuten’s Q1 FY2026 performance, see the full announcement here.
