One Row for 880,000 Items

The table is on page 33 of a 124-page document, under a heading that translates as production, orders and sales. It has one row. The row is called Automatic Control Equipment and it is the whole company: production of 843,896 million yen (US$5,151.99 million), stated at selling prices rather than cost; orders up 13.2%; an order backlog up 33.6%; sales of 842,541 million yen (US$5,143.72 million) for the twelve months to 31 March 2026. There are no unit counts. No cylinders, no valves, no fittings. Only yen.

Twenty-four pages earlier the same filing describes what feeds that row: 880,000 catalogue items, 700,000 customer accounts, more than 500 locations across over 80 countries, about 7,000 field sales staff, roughly 2,000 technical staff in five countries, 71 subsidiaries. They sit in the business-overview section as the company's own descriptive figures, not audited amounts; the filing does not define an item. Twenty-two new product series are listed for the year. None carries a sales figure.

The mechanics are ordinary. The notes at pages 97 and 98 state that the group is a single segment, so segment information is omitted; the product-and-service breakdown is omitted as identical to that segment; and because no customer reaches 10% of consolidated sales, the major-customer note is omitted as well. Three standard disaggregations produce no detail, but not by the same route: two are omitted as identical to the single segment, the third because no customer crosses the 10% threshold. Two are folded into the row; the third never arises. The revenue note records rebates deducted from consideration through sales distributors; their share of sales is not among the figures given.

The year: sales 842,541 million yen (US$5,143.72 million), up 6.4%; operating profit 190,558 million yen (US$1,163.36 million), up 0.2%; ordinary profit 235,591 million yen (US$1,438.28 million), up 12.2%; net profit attributable to owners 167,302 million yen (US$1,021.38 million), up 7.0%. Return on equity 8.3%, equity ratio 91.5%. The report was submitted on 26 June 2026.

Where the flat operating line comes from is arithmetic the filing supports. Gross margin 45.3%, down 0.6 points; selling, general and administrative expenses 22.7% of sales, up 0.8 points; 45.3 less 22.7 is 22.6, and the operating margin fell 1.4 points to 22.6%. In yen, gross profit of 381,452 million yen (US$2,328.77 million) less SG&A of 190,893 million yen (US$1,165.40 million) is 190,559 million yen, one million more than the reported operating profit, a residue consistent with rounding to millions. Management gives three reasons: cost ratio, personnel, depreciation. No amounts attach to them.

What those three cannot be resolved into is volume, price and mix. A search of the 124 pages returns no occurrence of the words for volume, unit selling price, price revision, price increase, yen weakness or currency effect; the word for exchange rates appears in the risk factors, in non-operating currency gains and losses, and in the translation adjustment account. There is no yen amount for the currency effect on sales or on operating profit. The 6.4% cannot be split from this document. That is a fact about the document's granularity, not the business.

The 12.2% is a different machine. Ordinary profit exceeded operating profit by 45,033 million yen (US$274.93 million), against 19,677 million yen (US$120.13 million) a year earlier, so of the 25,670 million yen (US$156.72 million) increase in ordinary profit, 314 million yen (US$1.92 million) came from the operating line and 25,356 million yen (US$154.80 million) from below it. Currency went from a loss of 4,468 million yen (US$27.28 million) to a gain of 19,693 million yen (US$120.23 million). Interest income was 20,463 million yen (US$124.93 million), 10.7% of operating profit, earned on cash and deposits of 663,870 million yen (US$4,052.93 million) against short-term borrowings of 5,092 million yen (US$31.09 million).

Guidance for the year to March 2027: sales 1,000,000 million yen (US$6,105.01 million), up 18.7%; operating profit 219,000 million yen (US$1,337.00 million), up 14.9%; ordinary profit 239,000 million yen (US$1,459.10 million), up 1.4%; net profit 170,000 million yen (US$1,037.85 million), up 1.6%. Forecast ordinary less forecast operating is 20,000 million yen (US$122.10 million); the same subtraction on this year's actuals gives 45,033 million yen. The release does not break out forecast non-operating items, so the 25,033 million yen (US$152.83 million) difference is ours, not the company's. Assumed rate 155.00 yen to the dollar, against 150.64 realised on average this year.

The cost side of that plan is disclosed in yen. Capital expenditure was 150,254 million yen (US$917.30 million), up 39.4%, or 17.8% of sales on our division; the coming year is planned at 100,000 million yen (US$610.50 million), which the presentation says includes about 30,000 million yen (US$183.15 million) carried over from work that slipped. Depreciation was 44,846 million yen (US$273.79 million), planned at 62,300 million yen (US$380.34 million). Research and development was 39,986 million yen (US$244.11 million), 4.75% of sales, again ours, planned at 47,000 million yen (US$286.94 million). Neither ratio is printed in the report. Of the three stated reasons for the flat operating line, only depreciation carries a disclosed plan, and it is scheduled to rise 38.9%; research and development, which is not among the three, is planned up 17.5% as well.

By customer location the year splits: Japan 158,823 million yen (US$969.62 million); the United States 83,708 million yen (US$511.04 million); China including Hong Kong 234,939 million yen (US$1,434.30 million); Asia excluding China 158,955 million yen (US$970.42 million); Europe 162,250 million yen (US$990.54 million); other 43,864 million yen (US$267.79 million). The six add to 842,539 million yen, two million below the stated total, identically in both documents, which truncate to millions. Shares of the stated total, ours: 18.9, 9.9, 27.9, 18.9, 19.3 and 5.2 per cent, rounding to 100.1.

The results release puts a second table on the same page, cut by the locations of the company and its subsidiaries rather than of customers: Japan 162,956 million yen (US$994.85 million); North America 106,331 million yen (US$649.15 million); Greater China 255,690 million yen (US$1,560.99 million); rest of Asia 133,251 million yen (US$813.50 million); Europe 159,689 million yen (US$974.90 million); other 24,621 million yen (US$150.31 million), summing to 842,538 million yen, three million below the total. The notes define North America as the United States, Canada and Mexico, and Greater China as China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. An overseas ratio therefore has two values: 842,541 less 158,823 over 842,541 is 81.1%, and 842,541 less 162,956 over 842,541 is 80.7%. Half a point, entirely definitional. The results release, which alone carries the location-based table, states neither figure.

Regional profit is not a concept these documents contain: with one segment there is no segment profit, and the geographic notes give sales and property, plant and equipment only. The latter: Japan 330,322 million yen (US$2,016.62 million), China 73,555 million yen (US$449.05 million), Asia excluding China 114,424 million yen (US$698.56 million), other 99,708 million yen (US$608.72 million), total 618,009 million yen (US$3,772.95 million), which adds exactly. The asset regions are not the sales regions; the United States and Europe are inside other. A regional asset turn would be one map divided by another.

The presentation of 14 May 2026 cuts finer than the filing, in percentages and without yen. Sales mix by end industry, consolidated: semiconductors 20%, electronics 12%, automotive 17%, machinery 10%, food 7%, medical 6%, other 28%. By region, semiconductors are 35% in other Asia and 23% in Greater China, where electronics add 24%; in Europe the largest of the seven is other, at 40%. The categories are not defined, and the order-trend table on page 28 combines semiconductors with electronics while running machine tools as its own line, so the two pages cannot be read against each other.

The deck also prices currency, which the filing does not: a 1% move is 3,330 million yen (US$20.33 million) of operating profit, of which four currencies are itemised and sum to 2,590 million yen (US$15.81 million), the renminbi largest at 1,190 million yen (US$7.26 million). The balance of 740 million yen (US$4.52 million) is not attributed in the deck. And one product line carries revenue: temperature control equipment, 60,900 million yen (US$371.79 million) of sales, about 7%, planned at 73,000 million yen (US$445.67 million) and 100,000 million yen (US$610.50 million) over the next two years. A full-text extraction of the 31-page deck, figure text included, finds no other product category with a number.

The ownership table is on page 39. Foreign corporations and others hold 370,192 units through non-individuals and 131 through individuals: 370,323 of 638,059 units, or 58.039%, which the filing prints as 58.02% and 0.02% and never totals. A unit is 100 shares, so 638,059 units is 63,805,900 shares, and adding the 63,459 shares held below unit size gives 63,869,359, the shares issued. The rest: financial institutions 28.14%, other corporations 8.01%, individuals and others 3.81%, securities firms 2.00%, government 0.00%. There are 4,548 shareholders, 878 of them foreign. The classification is the register's, and a register records names.

Which is visible in the names. The table prints ten holders and a total of 50.25%: a master trust bank at 15.27%, a custody bank at 6.43%, a domestic limited liability company at 6.00%, a Netherlands company at 5.45%, another trust bank at 1.96%, and five accounts run by JPMorgan Chase Bank, BNY Mellon and State Street, one of them the depositary for ADR holders. The ten printed percentages add to 50.21%; the governance report, which lists the same ten, states that the ratios are taken on 63,150,259 shares, the shares issued less 719,100 held in treasury, and truncated at the third decimal, a rounding that runs one way. The notes then list six large-shareholding reports on file, BlackRock Japan and others at 6.12%, First Eagle at 5.12%, Nomura Asset Management at 5.04%, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management at 4.74%, Capital Research at 4.56%, Baillie Gifford at 4.06%, all excluded from the table because beneficial holdings at 31 March 2026 could not be confirmed.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange settled the language question in February 2024, and the answer has edges. For disclosures made on or after 1 April 2025, Prime-listed companies must publish earnings information and timely disclosure in English at the same time as in Japanese, with a one-year deferral available and all companies covered from 1 April 2026. A part or a summary suffices. The exchange positions the English as a reference translation whose accuracy is outside the scope of measures for rule breaches. Convocation notices and governance reports it addresses directly: "English disclosure is not required (it is optional)." The annual securities report is outside the scope, with expansion of the covered documents described as under continued consideration.

SMC's governance report, updated 27 July 2026, sets out where each document sits. In both languages: convocation notices in full and resolution notices, earnings releases, presentation materials and their transcripts, disclosures filed through TDnet, the integrated report. In Japanese only: the annual securities report, the semi-annual report, extraordinary reports including voting results, and the governance report itself. In English only: the annual report. The same form asks for foreign ownership as a band and its highest band is 30% or more, so 58.04% is recorded there as 30% or more.

That English annual report is 12 pages. The latest is ANNUAL REPORT 2025, for the year to 31 March 2025, published 28 August 2025; the 2022 edition ran 37 pages. Notes to the consolidated statements were in the 2022 edition and are in none of the three since. The English text of the audit report was in the 2023 edition; the 2025 edition carries a one-line note that the Japanese report was obtained from EY ShinNihon, dated 27 June 2025. The shareholder distribution table last appeared in 2022, showing foreign investors at 56.0% as of 31 March 2022. The Japanese IR page serves the identical file, byte for byte, so the annual report exists in English only; the English library lists four items and the Japanese five, and the securities-report address under the English tree returns 404.

The governance report also holds the year's most specific numbers about capital. Cost of equity is estimated annually with outside specialists, mainly by CAPM, at 9.5% to 12.0% for the year to March 2026; the board works to a benchmark of return on equity at 10% or above; realised return on equity was 8.3%. The stated route is to hold shareholder returns at present levels — the dividend was 1,000 yen per share (US$6.11) for the year to March 2026, a payout of 37.9%, with the same amount forecast for the year to March 2027 — and to raise the top line. The terms PBR and ROIC appear nowhere in the report's text. A balance sheet and cash allocation policy had been set for disclosure at the May 2026 results and was not published then, for two stated reasons: semiconductor-led demand moving faster than the cash flow assumptions behind it, and the change in board composition on 26 June 2026. No new date is given. The report that says so is one of the four the company lists as Japanese only.

Conversion: yen amounts are converted at 163.8 yen to the US dollar, the rate on 24 July 2026, applied to every period regardless of when the amount arose, so 842,541 million yen becomes US$5,143.72 million. Converted figures keep the significant figures of the yen originals. Ratios, percentages, multiples and counts are not converted, and where a ratio or a difference is described as ours, the arithmetic is shown in the text.