2,198 of Japan's 3,672 listed companies close their books in March
2,198 of 3,672 Japanese listed filers have a March fiscal year-end. Those companies are also three times the size of the rest by median revenue, and report losses at half the rate.
AI-assisted, human-reviewed sourcing. Figures are pulled programmatically from the official sources listed at the end of this article and checked by an editor before publication.
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Most markets spread their reporting across the calendar. Japan does not.
Of the 3,672 Japanese listed companies whose annual securities reports we hold, 2,198 — 59.9% — close their financial year on 31 March. Another 549 close in December. Those two months carry three quarters of the entire listed market between them.
| Fiscal year-end | Companies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| March | 2,198 | 59.9% |
| December | 549 | 15.0% |
| February | 209 | 5.7% |
| September | 198 | 5.4% |
| August | 101 | 2.8% |
| All seven other months | 417 | 11.4% |
For anyone reading Japanese accounts from outside, this is the first practical fact about the market, ahead of any individual company: the reporting calendar is not a calendar, it is a single date with a long tail.
The March cohort is not a random half of the market
Two measures separate the March closers from everyone else, and both point the same way.
Size. Median revenue among March closers is JPY 42.1bn. Among companies closing in any other month it is JPY 14.1bn — roughly a third. The March group is where the large filers sit.
Loss rate. 192 of the 2,198 March closers with a readable net-profit line reported a loss, 8.7%. Among the other months it is 238 of 1,473, 16.2% — close to double.
We are not explaining either gap. Company age, industry mix and listing venue would all be reasonable candidates, and our tape carries none of them. A fiscal year-end does not make a company profitable; what the two figures say is that the March cohort and the rest are different populations, and that a statistic computed over “Japanese listed companies” without splitting them is averaging across two quite different groups.
What this means for reading the data
A single year-end shared by six companies in ten has one consequence that shows up immediately in any dataset built from filings: the accounts arrive together. Comparisons across Japanese companies are unusually clean, because most of them are measuring the same twelve months. But comparisons into Japan are not — a Japanese March-2026 filing covers April 2025 to March 2026, which overlaps a Korean or US fiscal 2025 without matching it.
That is the reason our own Japan-Korea comparison carries the caveat in the first paragraph rather than the footnote.
Per-company pages, including the period-end date on each filing, are at /japan/companies.
Data & Verification Notes
- Data as of
- Sources
- Financial Services Agency (Japan) / EDINET — Annual securities reports (有価証券報告書) — most recent filing on file per company, including the period-end date on each filing
- SeoulMarkets — Japan filed-accounts tape (build-japan-financials-tape.mjs), 3,672 companies
- Cross-checks
- Month counted from the period-end date carried on each filing, not inferred from the filing date. All 3,672 companies carry one
- March 2,198 (59.9%) · December 549 (15.0%) · February 209 (5.7%) · September 198 (5.4%) · August 101 (2.8%). The remaining seven months hold 417 companies between them
- Loss rate, March closers: 192 of 2,198 filers with a net-profit line reported a loss (8.7%). All other months: 238 of 1,473 (16.2%)
- Median revenue, March closers: JPY 42.1bn. All other months: JPY 14.1bn
- Excluded figures
- Why the March closers are larger. Company age, industry mix and listing venue would all be candidates, and our tape carries none of them — we did not test any explanation and are not offering one
- A Korean comparison. Our Korean tape records the fiscal year but not the period-end date, so we cannot count the same way on that side and will not estimate it
- Companies with no annual securities report on file, which are absent from the 3,672 entirely
- Any suggestion that a fiscal year-end causes profitability. The two figures are measured on the same companies; nothing here establishes a direction
The full dataset behind these figures — every listed company, every row — is available to license. SeoulMarkets data for licence →
Not investment advice. SMarkets publishes data journalism for general information only. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security — any investment you make is at your own risk and responsibility. Figures are derived from official public data sources and may be revised by the issuing agency. Verify independently before acting.
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