Acquisition Lifts Honyaku Center’s Quarterly Revenue by 20% to USD 26m

Japan’s largest language service provider, Honyaku Center, published results for the first quarter of their 2019 financial year on August 8, 2018. Quarterly revenues climbed a strong 19.2% to JPY 2.88bn (USD 25.9m) and operating income rose by 28.9% to JPY 169m (USD 1.52m).

A significant part of this growth comes from Honyaku Center’s October 2017 acquisition of Media Research Inc. for JPY 551m (USD 4.8m), as Media Research was consolidated into group results for the first time.

Honyaku also provided guidance for the full financial year 2019 (which ends March 31, 2019), estimating that it will generate revenues of JPY 12bn (USD 108m) over the 12 months.

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Shares in Honyaku Center, which are listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, rose strongly after the company had announced its 2018 full-year results and are up over 40% since the beginning of May 2018, pushing the company’s market capitalization to JPY 9.7bn (USD 87.7bn) at the time of writing.

In April 2018, Honyaku appointed Shunichiro Ninomiya as its new President. Ninomiya took over from Ikuo Higashi, who was appointed Chairman of the Board. Higashi was a speaker at SlatorCon Tokyo in February 2018.

Honyaku Center divides its business into six units: translation, interpretation, language education, temporary staffing, conventions, and others. Within the translation unit, the company further breaks down results by vertical: medical, patent, industrial, and financial and legal.

In the core translation unit revenues rose 12.6% from the same period of the previous year to JPY 2.04bn, largely due to the integration of Media Research as well as a strong performance with pharmaceutical clients. The temporary staffing business increased revenue by 14.5% to JPY 310m, interpretation was down 2.5% to JPY 221m, and conventions rose to JPY 135m.