CyberAgent, Inc.

It is time, so we would like to begin cyber agents FY 2022 first quarter earnings briefing. This session is being live streamed. Please refer to the disclaimer included in the briefings document with respect to the content shared today. Now I would like to hand the microphone over to President and CEO Fujita. This is the president and CEO of Fujita. FY 2022, first quarter, I would like to take you through the performance. FY 2022, sorry, this is for the first quarter starting from October to and lasting until December 2021 first starting with the sales it was it went up by 30.6% year-on-year and the OP went up by 2.8 times so within our the budget that we had internally We have not disclosed the forecast for this fiscal year yet. So this is not disclosed yet, but it is far more than the budget that we had internally defined. And in terms of the media business, it went up by 22.4% year-on-year, so it's doing well. And the ad business as well. has grown by 14.7% year-on-year, and the game business increased by 94.7% year-on-year. So we have significantly increased both sales and OP. This is the quarterly results. This is the sales. I know that those of you who have been keeping an eye on us for a couple years are aware, but The first quarter tends to be a difficult quarter for us, but year on year, we have grown the OP by 2.8 times, so we have significantly increased our profit, or revenue. Sorry. Sorry, we were talking about sales. So the sales has increased significantly, At the end of last year, when we didn't provide a forecast for this fiscal year, we told you that the game business is volatile and it's hard to predict. And we wanted to make the UMA movement a little bit more stable, and it is becoming more stable. We have seen signs of stability. And sorry, we've gone back and forth a little bit, but the OP has increased by 2.8 times, so we significantly increased profits as well. In terms of SG&A, the game business and win ticket, we have launched a marketing campaign, so the ad spend has increased slightly. And we have 6,171 employees to date as of the end of December. And this is the P.L., And this is the balance sheet. There's no major changes to the balance sheet either. In terms of the forecast for this fiscal year, we have not provided a fiscal year forecast yet. As we mentioned, for the first quarter, we have far surpassed our internal budget. And we wanted to make sure that the business was a little bit more stable, and we're starting to see signs of stability. So in April, when we announce the second quarter performance, we hope to give you, provide you with a business forecast. Moving on to the individual businesses. The internet advertising business, as you can see, for the six consecutive quarters, we have increased sales. So it is growing steadily, especially The internet app business, our strength is technology, so we're using AI and also DX as well. We are seeing great many opportunities. So even within the internet advertising business, we have continued to make upfront investments. And one area is digital transformation. We're working with large companies large companies as well as local governments as well. So in various areas, we are working together with various entities. And with respect to the internet and business, within the last quarter, first quarter, we've established three companies. One is CyberAgentDX. So we're working with large companies to create new revenue streams. So this is one company, and another company will support the unmanned, staff-free stores, as well as another company will plan, produce, and operate online events. So we are planting the seeds for new businesses. Moving on to the game business. Last year, Umamusume Pretty Derby became a huge hit. And it was very scary. We didn't want it to just become a temporary hit, but it has continued to generate a high level of sales and it's becoming more stable as well. And we're going to be having an anniversary in February, but we want to continue to operate this game so that it will be loved for a long time to come. And the operating profit was $17.1 billion for this quarter. Uma Musume Pretty Derby has surpassed 12 million downloads, and as I mentioned before, next month is going to be its first anniversary. Also, we are going to release G-Crest next month, and we are also working on Jesus Christ and Final Fantasy, as well as Tokyo Revengers. So these are major titles that we will be releasing, which we will be releasing one by one going forward. Moving on to the media business. As you can see from the graph, the business is performing well. ABEMA is growing, and also the media-related business is also doing very well. This is the number of downloads. It's reached, exceeded 76 million downloads. And the WAU, we had a major league when Otani was very popular, doing great. So we benefited from that as well, but the WAU has been, remained stable at a high level. And currently, We have shogi and mahjong. So we have exclusive unique contents as well as high quality dramas and variety shows as well. We release them one after another. But going forward, we want to continue to improve on the quality and develop more original content as well. So we want to add to the portfolio. And we also have musician lives as well. LDH, Keisuke Kota, Hikaru Utada. We have live events and also combat sports as well. Naoya Inoue as well as pro wrestling. So we have released big content on pay-per-view one after another. And Abema has been established as one genre. And Abema is now compatible with Nintendo Switch as well, so you can watch our content on the gaming console. And this is the sales for Abema. As you can see here, advertising business grew significantly, and we're no longer disclosing these figures, but the subscription is also increasing as well. Related business also has grown significantly, mainly around Winticket. Winticket has grown significantly. It's only been about two years since we launched, but it has continued to grow significantly rapidly. And we also have Midnight Karen. We have our own program as well. And Winticket is a service. We issue Wintickets in addition to the original program, but... The online betting market has grown from 142 billion yen to 185 billion yen. So the market has grown by 1.3 times. And we've also expanded our share from zero to this level. It says 13%, but we started from zero and it went to 13 and then to 27. So it is a dramatic increase. Oh, so the other day we announced that we have welcomed Bevel Label, a content studio, into our group. It's a subsidiary now, and their production quality is on the world-class level. So we are... trying to gather top creators to this company and to continue to create world-class content from the studio. And this is the document that we share every time, but with respect to Abema, advertising and subscription will be the foundation and then grow related businesses for Abema. And this was the plan and we're on track. We're progressing for this strategy. And over the mid to long term, this has not changed either. Ad and game, while it's still stable, we want to launch a new media business and grow the business, expand the business and monetize the business. And it's been fire since we launched Abema. And we talked about how we're going to spend 10 years to grow this business and we're halfway there. And in the past, we invested in blogs as well as the smartphone businesses as well, so we forewent the profits right in front of us to invest. And we've invested, so that's why we are where we are now, but we're also at a stage where we need to invest again. So we will continue to keep mid- to long-term investments in mind to operate our company. So we hope that likewise, you will support us over the mid to long term. That's it from me. Thank you very much. This concludes cyber agents fi 2020 to first quarter earnings briefing. Should you have any questions, please reach out to the IR counterpart. Thank you very much for joining us today.