Sales at Uniqlo operator jump 17% to 33.6 trillion won ... forecast to rank No. 2 globally

[Financial News] Fast Retailing, the operator of Japanese fast-fashion brand Uniqlo, is expected to overtake Sweden’s H&M and rise to second place in the global apparel retail industry.
According to Fast Retailing’s results for the fiscal year ending August 2026 (September 2025 to August 2026), announced the previous day, revenue rose 16.6% year on year to ¥3.9633 trillion (about ₩33.65 trillion). Net profit came to ¥542.5 billion (about ₩4.6 trillion), with both revenue and net profit reaching record highs.
Japanese market research firms forecast that Fast Retailing may have overtaken H&M in sales, saying that H&M—which had ranked second in the global apparel industry until now—saw sales begin to decline after reporting revenue of ¥3.6 trillion (about ₩30.56 trillion) for the fiscal year ending November 2025 (December 2024 to November 2025).
They said Fast Retailing’s overseas success had driven these strong results. Revenue from its overseas Uniqlo business division rose 26.2% to ¥2.4111 trillion (about ₩20.47 trillion).
However, despite Uniqlo’s explosive growth, a substantial gap remains before it can catch up with the more than ₩60 trillion in sales at Spain’s Inditex, which operates Zara.
Fast Retailing Chairman Tadashi Yanai, who earlier set the goal of overtaking Zara to become the world’s No. 1 apparel company, also declared his ambition at a press conference on the 8th: “We will increase sales by ¥500 billion (about ₩4.24 trillion) each year going forward.”
[email protected] Kim Hyeong-gu Reporter