The Heading That Stops at Registration

Sharp Corporation's annual securities report for the year ended 31 March 2026, filed with the Kanto Local Finance Bureau on 23 June 2026, contains a table headed 所有者別状況, holdings by category of shareholder. One line reads: foreign corporations and other entities, excluding individuals — 371 holders, 4,842,454 trading units, 74.51%. A trading unit is 100 shares. The same table carries 28 financial institutions, 54 financial instruments business operators, 799 under other corporations, 130,570 under individuals and others, and 473 foreign individuals holding 4,280 units between them, an average of nine units apiece. The government and local-government line is blank.

The table balances. The unit column sums to 6,498,987, which is the printed total. Multiply by 100, add the 515,938 shares held in odd lots, and you get 650,414,638, the issued share count on the same date. The holder counts sum to 132,295. The percentages sum to 100.00. Whatever the categories are doing, they exhaust the issued total exactly, down to the last share.

The two foreign lines together come to 74.58%: 74.51 from the corporations, 0.07 from the individuals. Both run on the same printed total of 6,498,987 units, a figure that counts the holdings in trading units and leaves the 515,938 odd-lot shares outside it. Hold on to that base. Two more of the report's own follow, and a fourth the reader has to build; what 74.51% means depends on which one is under it.

The same table a year earlier gives the line a second reading. The report for the year ended 31 March 2025 prints foreign corporations and other entities excluding individuals at 364 holders, 4,840,350 units, 74.47%, and foreign individuals at 362 holders, 3,264 units, 0.05%. Its printed total is 6,499,370 units, with 469,538 odd-lot shares and 128,138 holders. Between the two dates the corporations line gained 2,104 units and seven holders and moved four hundredths of a point, 74.47% to 74.51%; the individuals line gained 1,016 units and 111 holders; the holder total rose by 4,157 and the printed unit total fell by 383. Each year's total closes on its own issued count: 649,937,000 plus 469,538 is 650,406,538, and 649,898,700 plus 515,938 is 650,414,638, the two separated by 8,100 shares. The passengers are the same three, in the same three places: the prior year's notes put the company's 1,106,821 treasury shares as 11,068 units in 個人その他 with 21 shares in the odd-lot column, JASDEC's 800 shares as eight units under other corporations, and 306,770 units of investment and pension trusts inside financial institutions.

What the category records is two things about a name: that it belongs to a corporation, and that the corporation is foreign. What the holder is to the company is recorded elsewhere in the same document. A bank registered in Luxembourg, an entity registered in Apia, Samoa, and the name the report's related-company table files under the heading parent all answer to that description, though the ownership table does not say which of its lines any particular register name was counted in. The line that fits them carries one set of aggregates: a holder count, a unit count, a percentage.

The next table, 大株主の状況, lists the register's ten largest names on the same date. The first is HON HAI PRECISION INDUSTRY CO., LTD., of No. 66, Zhongshan Road, Tucheng Industrial Zone, Tucheng District, New Taipei City, standing proxy Mizuho Bank at 2-15-1 Konan, Minato-ku: 144,900 thousand shares, 22.32%. That percentage runs on a second base — issued shares less treasury, 650,414,638 − 1,107,975 = 649,306,663 — and 144,900,000 ÷ 649,306,663 = 22.32%. Internally consistent, and not the base used in the table before it.

For the relationship, the reader goes back to the front of the document, to 関係会社の状況, where the same name appears under the heading 親会社. Capital NT$140,286 million; business, electronics manufacturing services; the trading relationship described as the purchase and manufacture of the company's products. Voting interest held: 34.1%, of which 11.8% indirect, plus a further 20.0% in square brackets, which is the convention for shares held by persons closely related to, or in agreement with, the holder.

Three descriptions, three bases. 74.51% is of 6,498,987 units, the ownership table's printed total, inside which that table's own note places 11,079 units of the company's 1,107,975 treasury shares, in the individuals row; the remaining 75 shares the same note places in the odd-lot column, outside the total. 22.32% is of 649,306,663 shares, issued less treasury. 34.1% is of voting rights, of which the report counts 6,487,908. The bases can be joined by hand: the first two lines of the register, 144,900 and 76,655 thousand shares, are 1,449,000 and 766,550 units, and (1,449,000 + 766,550) ÷ 6,487,908 = 34.15%, against a stated 34.1%. That the sums agree does not establish which entities the related-company table has in mind. Addition is not identification.

The bracketed figure is printed as a holding outside the 34.1% and not part of it, so putting the two together is the reader's addition; put together they come to 54.1% of the votes. Restate the ownership table's foreign-corporation line on the same voting base — the treasury units sit in the individuals row, so the foreign line is all voting units — and 4,842,454 ÷ 6,487,908 = 74.64%. The first counts the votes the related-company table attributes to one holder and to persons closely related to or in agreement with it; the second counts every unit the ownership table put on its foreign-corporation line. One table is a list of relationships and the other is a count of holdings by category of holder, which the form directs the issuer to take on an actual-ownership basis; they were built to answer different questions, and they each answer theirs.

So take the line apart. It stands for 484,245,400 shares (4,842,454 × 100). The four largest register names with addresses outside Japan — New Taipei City, two in the Cayman Islands, one in Singapore, all four with Mizuho as standing proxy — hold 144,900 + 76,655 + 65,373 + 64,640 = 351,568 thousand shares, and 351,568,000 ÷ 484,245,400 = 72.60%. Add the next four foreign addresses, Luxembourg, Vaduz, Apia and London: 37,599 + 26,083 + 20,511 + 5,016 = 89,209 thousand, and eight names reach 91.02% of the line. Four approximations attach: the numerator is register shares rounded to thousands and includes any odd lots, the denominator excludes the 515,938 odd-lot shares, the two tables are drawn on different bases — the register for the ten names, by the note, and actual ownership for the categories, by the form — and the tables do not state which line of the ownership table each register name was counted in.

One of those four approximations comes off elsewhere. The corporate governance report the company files with the exchange prints the register holdings as of 31 March 2026 in whole shares rather than thousands: 鴻海精密工業股份有限公司 144,900,000 (22.32%), FOXCONN (FAR EAST) LIMITED 76,655,069 (11.81%), SIO INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LIMITED 65,373,800 (10.07%), FOXCONN TECHNOLOGY PTE. LTD. 64,640,000 (9.96%), CLEARSTREAM BANKING S.A. 37,599,534 (5.79%), LGT BANK LTD 26,083,183 (4.02%), VIGOR WEALTH GLOBAL LIMITED 20,511,045 (3.16%) and BNYM SA/NV FOR BNYM FOR BNYM GCM CLIENT ACCT E PSMPJ 5,016,000 (0.77%). The first four sum to 351,568,869 and the eight to 440,778,631, and 351,568,869 ÷ 484,245,400 = 72.60%, 440,778,631 ÷ 484,245,400 = 91.02% — the same two figures the rounded numerators produced. The rounding drops out; the other three approximations stand, the whole-share numerators still carrying whatever odd lots are inside them. The same form has a field for the foreign shareholding ratio, and what it prints there is 30%以上, 30% or more: a band rather than a figure, the exchange's way of asking the question the ordinance's table answers to two decimal places.

The line's mean holding is 4,842,454 ÷ 371 = 13,052 units. Four register names, none of them expressly assigned by the tables to any one category line, hold 3,515,680 units between them. The mean describes no one, which is the ordinary condition of a mean taken over a set whose largest member holds 22.32% of the shares outstanding.

The names moved further than the line did. A year earlier the same register table's first four were HON HAI PRECISION INDUSTRY CO., LTD. 144,900 thousand shares (22.32%), SIO INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LIMITED 85,884 (13.23%), FOXCONN (FAR EAST) LIMITED 76,655 (11.81%) and FOXCONN TECHNOLOGY PTE. LTD. 64,640 (9.96%), and the table's printed total was 496,085 thousand shares, 76.40%, on the base of issued shares excluding treasury. On the governance report's list of the later date those same four names run HON HAI 144,900,000 shares, FOXCONN (FAR EAST) 76,655,069, SIO 65,373,800 and FOXCONN TECHNOLOGY 64,640,000, in that order. Three of the four are unchanged to the thousand. SIO stands at 65,373,800 against 85,884 thousand a year earlier, some 20,510 thousand lower, and VIGOR WEALTH GLOBAL LIMITED, which is not among the earlier four, stands at 20,511,045 shares on that later list. None of the tables states any relation between one of these figures and another.

Two more things about that register list. Its ten lines are printed in thousands of shares, so they sum to 475,799 thousand against a printed total of 475,801 thousand — a difference of two thousand shares, inside the range that rounding ten figures to thousands can produce — and the printed 73.28% runs on the ex-treasury base. And the report states in a note that it cannot confirm actual holdings as of 31 March 2026 and has therefore listed the register. It then reproduces a change report filed under the large-shareholding rules: World Praise Limited, 38,453,680 shares, a holding ratio of 5.91%, as of 22 April 2025. That name is not among the ten. The date is eleven months earlier. The denominator that ratio runs on is in the change report, whose own form carries a shares-outstanding line dated to the day the reporting obligation arose; what the note reproduces here is the holder, the address, the share count and the ratio, which is what the form directs it to reproduce. Against the issued total eleven months later, 38,453,680 ÷ 650,414,638 = 5.91%, and that is as far as the two documents go together.

That note recurs, and what changes in it is the date. The prior year's report carries the same name, the same 38,453,680 shares and the same 5.91%, as a holding on 26 January 2024, from a change report made available for public inspection on 3 April 2024. The corporate governance report gives the 22 April 2025 holding a further pair of dates: public inspection on 27 May 2025, with a correction report dated 28 May 2025. Across the three documents the share count and the ratio hold and the as-of date moves. What the ratio is built on is set by the large-shareholding rules rather than by the issuer: the regulator's outline of the system states the numerator as the holder's and any joint holders' securities and potential securities net of overlaps, and the denominator as the issued total together with those potential securities, net of overlaps; a report is due within five business days of the holding passing 5%, and a change report within five business days of a movement of one point or more from the last one filed. The 22 April 2025 date is a date of that kind, not a balance-sheet date. Separately, the prior year's table of movements in issued shares records an increase of 38,453 thousand shares on 27 June 2022, on the share exchange that made Sakai Display Product a wholly-owned subsidiary and took the issued total to 650,406 thousand. That figure is printed in thousands, and no table in either report joins it to the change report.

The categories carry other passengers, in both directions. The company's own 1,107,975 treasury shares appear as 11,079 units under 個人その他, individuals and others, with the remaining 75 shares in the odd-lot column, by the table's own note. JASDEC's 800 shares sit under other corporations as eight units. Investment trusts and pension trusts account for 177,245 of the 492,293 units under financial institutions, 36.0% of that line. Net the treasury out of the individuals line and 1,010,586 units are left; the printed 15.72% is of the line as the table draws it, those 11,079 units included. During the year the company acquired 1,154 shares through odd-lot purchase requests, at a total the table records as ¥0 million (US$0.0 million), its unit being millions of yen; no acquisition was resolved by the general meeting or by the board.

The third table, 議決権の状況, is cut on a different axis: its columns are 区分, 株式数, 議決権の数 and 内容. It divides 650,414,638 shares into 648,790,800 with full voting rights, being 6,487,908 rights, 1,107,900 treasury shares with none, and 515,938 in odd lots; the three sum to the issued total. Where the ownership table sorts by who is holding, this one sorts by whether the shares vote, and the two meet in the middle: 6,487,908 voting units plus 11,079 treasury units is 6,498,987, the ownership table's total.

Control as a subject is handled in three other places in the same report. 事業の内容 states that the group comprises the company, the parent, 116 consolidated subsidiaries and 12 equity-method affiliates. 事業等のリスク describes the risk that expected synergies with the parent group are not realised as envisaged, that the parent group's strategy changes or a competitive relationship arises, and that independence and autonomy in important decisions are affected, with the stated response being to respect mutual independence while cooperating closely. The governance section states that material parent-group transactions destined for the management strategy meeting are, before decision, reviewed and approved by a board on which independent outside directors are a majority, for the stated purpose of fairness, transparency and the protection of minority shareholders. There are four outside directors, two of them on the audit committee.

The same three percentages are printed again under another statute's heading. The convocation notice for the ordinary general meeting carries the business report, whose item 重要な親会社の状況 — the Companies Act enforcement regulation's heading, not the disclosure ordinance's — states as of 31 March 2026 that 鴻海精密工業股份有限公司 holds 34.1% of the voting rights, of which 11.8% indirect, with persons closely related to it or in agreement with it holding a further 20.0%. The same report dates the parent relationship to 12 August 2016 and records its occasion as a third-party allotment of new shares. Both that report and the corporate governance report state that the parent finding is made on facts the company recognises, under Japanese law and accounting standards, and is not a finding under any other jurisdiction's law or standards — the same caveat, filed twice, on two forms. The procedure both give for transactions with the parent is the annual report's: decided before commencement by a process weighing conflicts of interest, and reviewed and approved where necessary by a board on which independent outside directors are a majority, with the governance report adding that such transactions are entered into only where necessity, reasonableness and the appropriateness of the terms are established against market prices and the company's own costing.

There is also a separate document dated the day the annual report was filed. The company's IR topics index carries, under 23 June 2026, an item titled 支配株主等に関する事項について, matters concerning the controlling shareholder; the 24 June entry is the general meeting. The same title appears under 30 June 2025 and under 28 June 2024. The index was read for this piece and the file itself was not opened, so nothing about its contents is reported here.

The counterparty files its own account of the same relationship, on a third country's form. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.'s 2025 annual report in English, filed 23 May 2026, prints its headquarters address as No. 66, Zhongshan Road, Tucheng District, New Taipei City, which is the address the Sharp register prints against the name at the top of 大株主の状況. As of 31 March 2026 that report records its chairman and president, in office since 1 July 2019, as concurrently holding the position Chairman, Sharp Corporation, and one of its other directors as concurrently holding Outside Director, Sharp Corporation; its board is nine directors, five of them independent and three of them women, fully re-elected at the general meeting of 29 May 2025. The traffic in the other direction is recorded on the Japanese side: Sharp's business report lists a director's concurrent post as head of Hon Hai's India headquarters, held since August 2025, and the corporate governance report states that the two directors concerned do not join the board's vote when Hon Hai-group transactions are reviewed. That report also records the election of 黄清苑 as Sharp's board chairman with effect from 24 June 2026, which is after the 31 March 2026 date the Taiwanese report is drawn on. Two filings, each stating the position as of its own date.

The English-language question here is a question about which rulebook. Tokyo Stock Exchange listing rule 436-4, in force from 1 April 2025, requires a prime-market domestic issuer disclosing company information under an enumerated list of articles — 402, 403, 404(1) and (2), 405, 408, 408-3 through 411, 415(3), together with voluntary disclosures made under 414 in light of their effect on investment decisions — to disclose in English at the same time. Paragraph 2 provides that the English may be a part or an outline of the Japanese. There is an exception where simultaneity would delay the Japanese. Application was deferred to 1 April 2026 for two sets of issuers that filed a prescribed form: those listed on the prime market on 14 March 2025 that filed between 6 January and 14 March 2025, and those that listed between 15 March 2025 and the day before the rule took effect and filed by their listing date, in each case only where corrected or amended forms were filed if circumstances changed. What the enumerated articles reach is company information disclosed under those articles, and voluntary disclosure under 414. The annual securities report goes to the finance bureau, and it is not named in the list. The same amendment adds article 445-8, which asks prime-market domestic issuers, as far as possible, to disclose or provide the same content in English at the same time whenever they disclose or provide company information in Japanese — including, in the article's own words, where it is made available for public inspection. Two headings, printed one under the other on the first page of the comparison tables: one obliges, on an enumerated list; the other asks, on the rest.

The exchange states the same division in its own summary rather than in a diff. Its FAQ for listed companies describes article 436-4 as the English-disclosure obligation on prime-market listed companies covering 決算情報 and 適時開示情報, earnings information and timely disclosure, and article 445-8 as the best-efforts provision for the same companies. The English translation of the convocation notice is placed separately again, as a best-efforts item under article 446 and enforcement regulation article 437, outside the 436-4 list. For prime- and standard-market companies the same page adds that where a Corporate Governance Code principle on English disclosure is not applied, the reason must be explained. The simultaneity requirement and the part-or-outline permission are not on the page read here; those two stand where the rule text and the comparison tables put them. And the governance report's own form asks the question item by item: in the block on management conscious of cost of capital and share price there is a field for whether an English version exists, and the entry is 無し, none.

The company's global site carries the principal shareholders in English on a page of its own, as of 31 March 2026: HON HAI PRECISION INDUSTRY CO.,LTD. at the top with 144,900,000 shares and 22.32%, the same ten names as the Japanese table, and a footnote that the percentages are calculated on issued shares excluding 1,107,975 treasury shares. That is the second of the three bases, in English, on the site rather than in a filing. Below the table on the same page, headed Share Distribution, is a pie chart, and it is a picture: Foreign Shareholders 484,683,973, 74.52%, then Japanese Individual Shareholders 15.61%, Japanese Financial Institutions 7.57%, Other Japanese Corporations 1.32%, Japanese Securities Companies 0.81%, Treasury Stock 0.17%. The categories and the word are there in English. They are inside a PNG, so a search of the page's text does not return them — a fourth base, on shares issued including treasury, in a form that reads but does not index. The site also carries the earnings release, dated 12 May 2026. Its contents, as read: consolidated results with financial position and cash flows, dividends, forecast, an overview of the non-consolidated results, the qualitative discussion and the segment sales inside it, then balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity and cash flow statement, then notes carrying three reportable segments, the per-share figures and a subsequent-events note on borrowings. All nineteen of its pages were read looking for a shareholder-composition table and for the term foreign shareholders; neither is in them. The seven-category table is where the ordinance puts it, in the annual securities report, and not in a results summary; the six-slice chart is on the site. Foreign currency translation adjustment is in the release, which is a different subject. The pages do carry the caption Profit attributable to owners of parent, which is an accounting statement about where income lands rather than a name. The release states on its face that it is a translation of a part of the Japanese original, for reference, and that the Japanese governs in the event of discrepancy — the document's own description of its scope, and the same shape as paragraph 2 of the rule.

The same filings offer a smaller version of the granularity problem in the numbers rather than the names. Segment revenue for Display Device is ¥423,504 million (US$2,585.5 million) on one row of the segment table and ¥419,126 million (US$2,558.8 million) on another. Both are right: the first includes inter-segment sales and transfers, the second is sales to external customers. The table totals the two definitions at ¥1,902,340 million (US$11,613.8 million) and ¥1,892,811 million (US$11,555.6 million), each a million or two above the sum of its own four columns, the release stating that yen amounts are rounded down to millions; between the two it prints a row of transactions with other segments totalling ¥9,528 million (US$58.2 million), carried into the adjustments column at the same figure, which is inter-segment. Consolidated revenue is that same ¥1,892,811 million (US$11,555.6 million), and at the rate used here the million yen of rounding is below the resolution of the conversion.

That table reconciles to a profit the way the ownership table reconciles to a share count. Smart Life ¥28,456 million (US$173.7 million), Smart Workplace ¥57,597 million (US$351.6 million), Display Device a loss of ¥18,277 million (US$111.6 million) and Other ¥692 million (US$4.2 million) are totalled in the table at ¥68,469 million (US$418.0 million), a million above the sum of the four on the same rounding; from that total the adjustment of ¥19,903 million (US$121.5 million), of which ¥19,337 million (US$118.1 million) is unallocated corporate cost, leaves the consolidated operating profit the table prints, ¥48,565 million (US$296.5 million), a million under the subtraction on the same rounding down. On external sales the mix is Smart Workplace 43.97%, Smart Life 31.57%, Display Device 22.14%, Other 2.32%. Both tables reach their printed totals, each within the million the release rounds down to. They reach them on different things.

For scale: revenue ¥1,892,811 million (US$11,555.6 million) against ¥2,160,146 million (US$13,187.7 million) the year before; operating profit ¥48,565 million (US$296.5 million), which the annual report states as 177.6% of the prior year and the earnings release as up 77.6%, the same fact counted from two starting points. Profit attributable to owners of parent ¥47,434 million (US$289.6 million), after a ¥36,111 million (US$220.5 million) gain on the sale of fixed assets, mainly property at the Sakai site, and ¥19,867 million (US$121.3 million) of business restructuring costs. The earnings release's dividend table prints a dash at the first and third quarter-ends, ¥0.00 (US$0.00) at the second quarter-end and at the fiscal year-end, ¥0.00 (US$0.00) for the year, and total dividends of ¥0 million (US$0); the annual report gives a reason for the year-end figure, a retained-earnings deficit in the non-consolidated accounts. Equity ratio 10.5% at the prior year-end to 19.6%; borrowings 30.3% of total assets; a ¥391,400 million (US$2,389.5 million) facility running to 31 March 2028.

The prior-year side of those comparisons is printed at source in the prior year's report: revenue ¥2,160,146 million (US$13,187.7 million), stated there as 93.0% of the year before it; operating profit ¥27,338 million (US$166.9 million); profit attributable to owners of parent ¥36,095 million (US$220.4 million); borrowings 35.6% of total assets. The deficit the annual report gives as its reason for the year-end figure has a number of its own on another form: the business report's non-consolidated balance sheet at 31 March 2026 prints retained earnings of −¥136,369 million (−US$832.5 million), stated to the million with the units below it cut off, and both that report and the annual report record the year as unpaid. The prior-year report also counts foreignness a second way in the same document, as the share of consolidated revenue made overseas: 66.7% for the year to March 2024 and 59.4% for the year to March 2025, a category built on where sales are made rather than on where a holder was established.

Which returns the reader to 371. The number is right, the table is right, and the heading is not the issuer's: Form 3 of the disclosure ordinance prints the columns, and its instruction for this one is to split 外国法人等 into entities established under foreign law and individuals of foreign nationality. Where the distinguishing stops is where the form stops it, at the place of registration. Everything past that — that the related-company table files a name under the heading parent, that the interest recorded there is 34.1% of the votes with a further 20.0% in brackets, that four register names with addresses outside Japan hold shares equal to 72.6% of what the line stands for, that a register is a register and not a list of beneficiaries — sits elsewhere in the document, in three other tables (the related-company table, the major-shareholders table and its note) and on three disclosed denominators: trading units, shares excluding treasury, voting rights. The 72.6% is not one of the disclosed figures; it is the reader's own division, register shares over the line's share count. The addition is the reader's.

On the conversions: yen amounts are translated at ¥163.8 = US$1, the rate retrieved from the source below on 24 July 2026, applied uniformly to every period mentioned here, including the year ended March 2025 and amounts under a loan agreement running to March 2028; no period-average or contemporaneous rate is used, so the dollar figures are a restatement of the yen and not a measure of any transaction. Dollar amounts are rounded to the nearest US$0.1 million, a coarser step than the ¥1 million the source tables print in, so ¥1,892,811 million becomes US$11,555.6 million and ¥423,504 million becomes US$2,585.5 million. Percentages, ratios, share counts, unit counts and holder counts are not converted.