Eighty-Two Percent Foreign, Fifty Percent One Name

The seven categories of MonotaRO's register add to their printed total, and the year's 0.97 point of operating margin splits cleanly in two. The three item counts are the ones that need reading twice.

Foreign corporations other than individuals held 4,100,379 units of MonotaRO at the end of December 2025, and foreign individuals held 371. The register prints those two lines as 81.8 percent and 0.01 percent, and the form has no total column, so 81.8071 percent is arithmetic the reader performs. The unit counts across the seven categories add to the printed total of 5,012,705 exactly, which is the first thing to check and the last thing usually checked. Across the 3,167 companies we measure the same way from the same XBRL tags, the median foreign holding is 7.31 percent.

Two smaller reconciliations sit underneath. Multiply 5,012,705 units by 100 shares, add the 90,500 shares in the odd-lot line, and you get 501,361,000, the issued share count. The company's own 4,446,052 treasury shares are inside the register as well, and the footnote splits them in two places: 44,460 units under individuals and others, plus a further 52 shares in the odd-lot line. So the 262,252 units in that category work out at 5.23 percent of the total, and at 4.34 percent once the company's own units come out — 217,792 ÷ 5,012,705 — both of those ours rather than the register's. Roughly one unit in six of the individual bucket belongs to the issuer.

Grainger Global Holdings appears in the major-shareholder table with 250,112,000 shares, which is 2,501,120 units, which is 49.90 percent of the register's units: our calculation, on a base the register itself never states. The table's own figure for the same stake is 50.33 percent, on issued shares less treasury — 501,361,000 less the 4,446,052 treasury shares that the equity note and the register's footnote both carry, or 496,914,948. A third percentage, 50.34, appears in the parent-company sections, for voting rights held through Grainger International and Grainger Global Holdings together. No denominator is printed beside it; that the fully-voting share count of 496,824,500 is the one intended is our inference. The distance between the second denominator and the third is 90,448 shares: the 90,500 odd lots, less the 52 of them that are themselves treasury. Three denominators, three percentages, one holding.

Take the parent's units out of the foreign lines — the register does not break its major shareholders across the seven categories, so putting Grainger inside foreign corporations other than individuals is our assumption and not the filing's — and 1,599,630 units remain, 31.91 percent of the register, so that 49.90 plus 31.91 gives the 81.81. On the voting denominator the foreign share works out at 410,075,000 ÷ 496,824,500 = 82.54 percent, our calculation, with odd lots out of both sides and treasury out of both as well: the treasury units sit under individuals rather than in the foreign numerator, and the 496,824,500 already excludes them. The other nine names in the top ten are trust banks and custodial or nominee accounts, among them a depositary bank line of 11,200,492 shares, 2.25 percent, held for holders of depositary shares.

The business under all this sells industrial indirect materials — factory consumables and repair supplies — by e-commerce, with no stores, and with receiving, purchasing, shipping and call-centre functions concentrated at a small number of sites. It reports one segment. The production-results line of the filing reads not applicable, and so does the orders-received line, and no customer reaches a tenth of sales, so that table is omitted as the form permits. Consolidated revenue for 2025 was ¥333,880 million (US$2,038 million), up 15.9 percent. The parent alone booked ¥322,814 million (US$1,971 million). The two are ¥11,066 million (US$67.6 million) apart, and the document that carries the parent figure notes that it cannot be read as a consolidated number, which is also the reason not to describe the gap as belonging to anything in particular.

Now the number the business actually runs on. The results presentation gives three counts in a single line: more than 28.85 million items in the catalogue, about 755,000 of them eligible for same-day shipping, and about 688,000 held in stock. The line carries no as-of date. The annual securities report and the earnings release each record two of the three — about 28.85 million items and about 688,000 stocked items shippable same day — and both of them also record the extension of the 5pm cut-off service to 42 prefectures. What appears only in the presentation is the 755,000. The distance between it and 688,000 is 67,000 items, and it is a distance between two labels.

The prior year's integrated report carries all three in its business-data table on a parent-company basis: 24.75 million items, 626,000 in stock, 714,000 eligible for same-day dispatch — 当日発送対象商品点数, a different word from the presentation's 当日出荷対象商品. The narrative pages of that same report round to more than 24 million items and more than 620,000 in stock. One document, one year, two granularities, and the third count living in the table rather than the prose. The same-day count exceeded the stock count by 88,000 items then and by 67,000 now; whether either count contains the other is not defined in the table's notes or anywhere else we could find in the two documents, so this is a difference between two counts and not, on the evidence available, a shelf of eligible-but-unstocked goods.

Growth then splits three ways, and the three do not move together. Catalogue: 2,885 ÷ 2,475 = plus 16.6 percent. Stock: 68.8 ÷ 62.6 = plus 9.9 percent. Same-day eligible: 75.5 ÷ 71.4 = plus 5.7 percent. Stocked items went from 2.53 percent of the catalogue to 2.38 percent of it. One caveat rides on all of that: the 2024 figures are labelled parent-company business data, while the 2025 counts arrive with no consolidated-or-parent designation and no as-of date, so the comparison is between one figure whose scope is stated and one whose scope is not.

Registered accounts closed 2025 at 11,262 thousand, with 1,114 thousand added during the year. Add 10,147 and 1,114 and you get 11,261 against the 11,262 printed, which is what rounding does to two thousands-scale figures. The 2026 plan is tidier: 11,262 plus 1,085 is exactly the 12,347 planned closing count, with new accounts planned below the 1,114 achieved. Revenue per registered account is our construction, not the company's: ¥333,880 million ÷ 11,262 thousand = ¥29,647 (US$181) on consolidated revenue, against the consolidated ¥288,119 million ÷ 10,147 thousand = ¥28,395 (US$173) a year earlier, up 4.4 percent. The parent-only version, ¥322,814 million ÷ 11,262 thousand = ¥28,664 (US$175), divides a parent income statement by a consolidated account count, and is offered as that and nothing more.

What that 4.4 percent is made of stays where it is. The management discussion attributes the year to search advertising and SEO, to new-customer acquisition, to email, mailed flyers, special pricing and television, to assortment and private-brand development, to the enterprise business and to the subsidiaries. Purchase frequency, average ticket, volume separated from unit price, and private-brand share are not among the figures it records. A movement in revenue per account therefore cannot be divided into more orders and larger orders from the filing. It can be measured and it cannot be decomposed, and saying so is more useful than guessing.

The margin arithmetic is more tractable. Revenue of ¥333,880 million (US$2,038 million) less cost of sales of ¥234,243 million (US$1,430 million) leaves ¥99,637 million (US$608 million), or 29.84 percent; the earnings release prints the subtotal as ¥99,636 million (US$608 million), which is what stating figures truncated below one million yen does to a subtraction. The 2024 equivalent was 29.30 percent. Selling, general and administrative expenses were ¥53,443 million (US$326 million), 16.01 percent of revenue, against 16.44 percent. Operating margin therefore moved from 12.86 to 13.83 percent, and the 0.54 point from gross margin plus the 0.43 point from the expense ratio adds to 0.97, which is the sort of check that either closes or tells you something. It closes.

Freight is why the gross margin is not a product margin. Delivery charges of ¥18,493 million (US$113 million) and other selling charges of ¥3,256 million (US$19.9 million) sit inside cost of sales. The purchasing-results table carries selling charges of ¥21,750 million (US$133 million), noted as mainly delivery, against the ¥21,749 million (US$133 million) the two cost-of-sales lines add to — one million yen apart (about US$6,100), on two tables that are nowhere stated to be the same aggregation, purchases and cost of sales being different concepts before they are different numbers. Strip the two cost lines out — (¥234,243 million minus ¥21,749 million) ÷ ¥333,880 million — and the product cost ratio was 63.64 percent against 64.12 percent. So of the 0.97 point: 0.48 from product cost, 0.06 from delivery and other charges, 0.43 from operating expenses.

The presentation groups costs a second way. Logistics-related cost was ¥20,021 million (US$122 million), which the slide puts at 6.2 percent of sales on a parent basis; ¥20,021 million ÷ the parent's ¥322,814 million (US$1,971 million) gives 6.20 percent, so the denominator is the one it says it is. The build is depreciation ¥3,528 million (US$21.5 million), personnel and outsourcing ¥9,003 million (US$55.0 million), rent ¥3,700 million (US$22.6 million) and other ¥3,788 million (US$23.1 million). Those four add to ¥20,019 million (US$122 million), ¥2 million (about US$12,200) under the stated total, which is four rounded lines behaving as four rounded lines do. The same kinds of cost appear in the consolidated statements under separate captions — delivery inside cost of sales, depreciation, rent and outsourcing inside operating expenses — and on the group basis rather than the parent's.

The enterprise business, renamed from the purchasing-management-system (large-enterprise linkage) business, was ¥106,310 million (US$649 million) of parent revenue, 32.9 percent of it, up 23.5 percent and 1.3 percent under plan. Connected companies were 673 small, 3,473 mid and 1,842 large, 5,988 in total against 5,296, up 13.1 percent. The metric counts delivery-destination companies connected to either linkage service with five or more end users registered; the basis moved inside that comparison, from contracts through 2024 to end-user companies from here. ¥106,310 million ÷ 5,988 = ¥17.75 million (US$108,400) per connected company, on a numerator that is parent-level, a denominator whose consolidated-or-parent basis is not stated anywhere on the slide, and a denominator that was redefined.

Capital expenditure was ¥23,928 million (US$146 million) — 23,928 ÷ 333,880 = 7.17 percent of consolidated revenue, our ratio, not the filing's — against cash paid of ¥11,938 million (US$72.9 million) for tangible and ¥4,131 million (US$25.2 million) for intangible assets, one accrual figure and two cash figures on ranges the report says differ. The filing describes the spending as centred on three things at once: the new Mito distribution centre, reinforcement of the existing centres, and software development for the core system and site usability. It does not split them. Construction in progress rose ¥18,481 million (US$113 million) and accrued payables ¥9,987 million (US$61.0 million). Mito itself is about 74,000 square metres, 500,000 SKUs, 300,000 lines a day, at ¥50.4 billion (US$308 million) in the presentation and about ¥50 billion (US$305 million) in the integrated report — a whole-project figure spanning several years, not a 2025 line item — ground broken May 2025, completion May 2027, operation May 2028.

For scale: the integrated report's end-2024 figures put three domestic distribution centres at maximum shipping capacity of about 310,000 lines a day and stocking capacity of about 900,000 items. Mito alone, on the presentation plan quoted above, is 300,000 lines a day and 500,000 SKUs — 97 percent of the one and 56 percent of the other. Stocked items at end-2024 were 626,000, or 69.6 percent of the 900,000. Separately, and as of the filing date rather than the year end, the risk section of the annual securities report says three named sites — Kasama, Inagawa and the Ibaraki Central satellite — handle more than 70 percent of the flow; that these are the same three the capacity figures describe is not stated in either document. The president's message sets a target of three times the productivity of the Kasama centre.

The funding side turned over in a single year. Operating cash flow was ¥33,726 million (US$206 million) and investing cash flow minus ¥17,093 million (US$104 million), a difference of ¥16,633 million (US$102 million) against dividends declared for the year of ¥16,398 million (US$100 million) — ¥235 million (US$1.43 million) apart. Long-term borrowings rose ¥13,000 million (US$79.4 million), and financing cash flow came to plus ¥27 million (US$165,000) after four years at minus ¥5,766, ¥5,514, ¥11,705 and ¥13,339 million (US$35.2 million, US$33.7 million, US$71.5 million and US$81.4 million). The equity ratio went from 71.5 to 63.4 percent and cash ended at ¥46,995 million (US$287 million).

Two payout ratios are printed for the same year, 50.2 percent in the parent-company table of the securities report and 50.6 percent in the consolidated line of the earnings release, and the difference is the denominator: ¥16,398 million (US$100 million) over the parent's net income of ¥32,659 million (US$199 million) gives 50.21 percent, and over consolidated net income of ¥32,434 million (US$198 million) gives 50.56 percent. The two halves are printed as totals too — ¥7,453 million (US$45.5 million) declared at the interim, ¥8,944 million (US$54.6 million) proposed for the year-end — and they add to ¥16,397 million (US$100 million), one million yen (about US$6,100) under the total the release carries. The February 2026 buyback authorisation runs to 8,000,000 shares and ¥10,000 million (US$61.1 million), 1.61 percent of shares outstanding, with 1,490,800 shares and ¥3,110,727,750 (US$18,991,000) taken through the end of February 2026; the disclosed window stops there and does not extend to the filing date. The two 2025 authorisations were 32,700 and 17,500 shares.

The stated targets are revenue growth above 15 percent over the medium to long term, profit growth above that, and return on equity of 30 percent or more. 2025 came in at 15.9 percent and 28.7 percent. The 2026 plan is ¥381,379 million (US$2,328 million) of consolidated revenue, up 14.2 percent, with operating profit of ¥53,069 million (US$324 million) at a 13.9 percent margin, and 14.7 percent for the parent alone. That operating-profit line is also the bonus metric: ¥46,192 million (US$282 million) against an opening forecast of ¥43,000 million (US$263 million), 107.4 percent. The integrated report runs the same metric at ¥37,066 million (US$226 million) against ¥35,820 million (US$219 million), 103.5 percent, for a year it does not name; growing ¥46,192 million back at the 24.6 percent the release reports gives about ¥37.1 billion (US$226 million) for the prior year, which is consistent with reading it as 2024, and the reading is ours.

Two numbers hold this together, and only one of them is printed. The printed one is 90,500 shares, the odd-lot line, which is exactly the distance between the 496,824,500 shares carrying full voting rights and the 496,915,000 that remain when the 4,446,000 treasury shares in the voting-rights table come out of the 501,361,000 issued; count the 52 odd lots that are themselves treasury, as the equity note does, and the second denominator becomes 496,914,948 and the distance becomes 90,448. The unprinted one is 67,000 items, the gap between the same-day count and the stock count on a line that carries no date. The register's seven categories tie to its total. The percentages differ by their denominators, and the denominators sit in four documents at four roundings, each correct where it was put.

The English side of this is a list of document types. MonotaRO's English IR site carries an IR Library naming Summary of Financial Results, Presentation Material, Integrated Report and Other Materials; an IR Events area naming Presentation Material and Shareholders' Meeting; an IR News item; and a Corporate Governance area whose entries read Basic Policy, Corresondence to Code — spelled as the page spells it — Internal Control Systems, Corporate Governance Report and Commitment to Corporate Ethics. Three of those names line up with three of the four MonotaRO documents this piece reads: the earnings release, the results presentation and the integrated report. The fourth, the annual securities report — where the register's seven categories, the voting-rights table, the parent-company sections and the 70 percent flow concentration all come from — does not appear by name in what the page lists, and that is a statement about the page's list and not about whether an English version exists elsewhere, which the page does not settle. An English annual securities report also sits outside what the disclosure rules ask of a listed issuer. Whether the Shareholders' Meeting entry under IR Events is the notice of the general meeting is not stated there either. The Corporate Governance entries are navigation headings; what stands behind each of them we did not open.

What the listing settles ends about there. The page carries no as-of date of its own, so this is the listing as we found it. We did not open the individual PDFs, so whether each one opens, and what period the most recent Summary of Financial Results covers, are outside what we checked. No publication dates appear beside either language, so the distance between the Japanese earnings release of 3 February 2026 and an English Summary of Financial Results — same day, or some number of days — is not measurable from it. Nothing in the listing names controlling shareholder or related party, the two headings under which a 50.33 percent holder and the parent-company sections would sit, so whether the parent relationship this whole piece turns on is set out in English is not determinable from the page. The IR News item shows no articles, no frequency and no most-recent date in what we read. So: 81.8 percent of the units are held from outside Japan on the register's own two lines; four document types, one events area, one governance area and one news item are named in English on the page we read; and the questions a holder of those units would ask next came back, one after another, as not determinable from it.

Conversion note: yen amounts are converted throughout at ¥163.8 = US$1, the rate for 24 July 2026 as carried by TradingEconomics and listed in the sources below, applied uniformly to every period rather than at the rate of each period, so the dollar figures are a restatement of the yen and not a measure of what anything cost in dollars at the time. Dollar figures carry the significant digits of the yen figures they come from. Ratios, percentages, point changes, multiples, item counts, account counts, company counts and share counts are not converted.