Mizuho First Quarter FY3/2026 Financial Results
Mizuho Financial Group has delivered a nuanced set of results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 (ending June 30, 2025), characterized by a stark divergence between its core business segments and a surprisingly bullish revision to its full-year guidance.
While Profit Attributable to Owners of Parent posted a marginal year-over-year (YoY) increase of 0.4% to JPY 290.5 billion, this figure was flattered by non-recurring items. A more telling metric, Consolidated Net Business Profits—a proxy for core operational earnings—declined by 3.7% YoY to JPY 316.4 billion, reflecting significant headwinds in the group's market-facing activities and the adverse impact of a strengthening yen.
Despite this superficial weakness in core profitability, the quarter's defining event was management's decisive upward revision of its full-year FY2025 earnings forecast. The target for Profit Attributable to Owners of Parent was raised by a substantial 8.5%, from JPY 940 billion to JPY 1.02 trillion. This move, described by market observers as "surprising" for a first-quarter announcement, signals a powerful undercurrent of confidence from management that transcends the quarter's headline noise, and comes as competitor SMBC Group deferred any decisions on earnings revisions to the fiscal half-year point.
This report will analyze this apparent "confidence gap" between the quarter's low-quality earnings and management's optimistic forward outlook. The central thesis is that Mizuho's leadership is looking past the transient, market-driven volatility and focusing on the powerful, accelerating momentum within its core customer-facing franchises. The quarter revealed a tale of two distinct businesses: the Markets Group, which was deliberately de-risked in the face of macroeconomic uncertainty, and the Customer Groups, which delivered exceptional growth. The robust performance of the Retail, Corporate, and Global Corporate banking segments, which saw their combined Net Business Profits surge by JPY 50.8 billion YoY, provides tangible validation of the firm's long-term strategic investments in its domestic alliance with Rakuten Group and its global expansion via the Greenhill acquisition.
Management's guidance revision is, therefore, a forward-looking statement. It asserts that the structural earnings power being built in these core franchises will more than compensate for the cyclical headwinds and yen strength that impacted Q1. For investors, the key takeaway is that Mizuho is pivoting from a phase of defensive restructuring and de-risking to one of confident, strategy-led growth, with a clearer and accelerated path toward its long-term profitability and valuation targets.
