CyberAgent, Inc.

We would like to begin CyberAgent's FY2024 full-year results briefing. This session is being streamed. With respect to the content we will be sharing today, please refer to the disclaimer in the briefings material. Our president, Fujita, will explain about our brief earnings. I'm President Fujita. I will explain about our performance for the full year FY2024. So overall, this fiscal year, we ended on a great note. Overall, we have done well, first starting with the media business. Abema's sales have grown and the losses have shrunk. Therefore, we see a significant increase in sales and profits. With the ad business, it's been doing well. But this year as well, we have outpaced the market growth. So we've seen an increase in sales and profitability here as well. In terms of games, Uma Musume, There was a period where the response from Mumusume was supposed to be a hard period, but we have released a couple of new titles and the game business has recovered as well. We have done well in the game business. And in terms of the consolidated sales for the 27th consecutive year since our founding, we've seen an increase. in sales and of course in FY 2021 we grew ourselves significantly due to Umamusume and after that we saw a decline in the game business for a certain period but it's been great that we have increased sales and profitability since then and in terms of the operating profit FY 2021 Umamusume became a great hit And we have been preparing for the response afterwards. And usually when we have a great hit game, and if it's a super hit, of course, we see it peak like Mount Fuji. The graph looks like Mount Fuji. So it rises significantly. And it drops equally. And, of course, we try to offset that, but because the peak is so high, it usually is difficult, but we prepared quite far in advance. And we are increasing profits once again because of our preparations. With respect to SG&A, as you can see here, this year, Or we did make upward revisions last quarter and afterwards time me went public and we saw revenues from that. So. Most of that has been paid out as a year and bonuses. This is a number of employees were nearly reaching 8000 employees. This is the PL and the balance sheet, no major changes here. With respect to the dividends, as you can see from ABEMA, We have started big businesses, even though we are a public company. So for our shareholders that have hold our shares for a long time, of course, we want to make sure that we're giving benefits regardless of the short-term fluctuations in the share prices. But we wanted to make sure that the DOE ROE is higher than the TSE average. In terms of the FY 2025 forecast, as you can see here, this is our forecast for the next fiscal year. OP is going to be quite flat for now. But as you can see, we made upper revisions last quarter and we wanted to have more of a clean staircase, but we did see a rise in OP. in FY24, so it seems flat, but basically we will be increasing our profits. This is quite straightforward in terms of the net income, net profits. Of course, it's easier to actually book profits than before. And I would like to talk about the different sectors, business sectors now. So first starting with internet advertising, for a long time, it has grown stably, has painted a very nice upward trajectory. And of course, advertising business is impacted by seasonal factors, some external factors as well. But it's our strength that we've seen such a stable growth. This is the OP. OP margin. was declining for a while. And we did receive questions of whether it will continue, but we are investing significant in technology. And I did explain that the technology investments will pay off. And so we are seeing that pay off. Now we're starting to see our investments pay off. And this is the sales by quarter. As I mentioned before, volatility is there's, Little volatility, that's our strength of our advertising business because we focus on advertising effectiveness. So that's why it doesn't fluctuate as much. With respect to the OP, these are the trends. So we've seen double digit growth for the fourth consecutive quarter. So we're focusing our operations on advertising effectiveness. And I also mentioned investing in technology, but right now we're investing mainly in AI and this has enabled us to maximize AI effectiveness. So we are moving ahead with our AI applications and moving on to the game sector. As I mentioned before, Uma Musume became a super hit. And afterwards, we've seen game declines rapidly. And this is because we were launching new services, but oftentimes it's like pouring cold water on hot stones. You don't see a lot of effect, but we have able to escape this period, make a departure from this period in FY 2024. So we've seen increases in sales as well as profits. And this is by quarter. And we have grown year and year as well. And this is the OP by quarter as well. For Uma Musume, we collaborated with Kentucky this fiscal year. And we launched a console game. And we also released a very high quality movie. So as an IP, it has... we are making or implementing necessary initiative to help nurture it as an IP. And Chikawa game is going to be, we already announced that we will be releasing this game and there's a lot of Chikawa fans, core fans. So this is something that we have high expectations for as our next release. In FY2024, we release five titles, including three consoles. FY25 onwards, in the future as well, we are going to be investing in different games so that we can stably release new games. Moving on to the media business. If you look at the full year, it has grown very strongly. The sales has grown strongly. And even in terms of OP, over the long period, we have made investments and we're seeing great improvements in this area. So 2025 onwards, we will be starting to make book revenue, operating profits. So it's a turning point, and this is by quarter. And this is operating loss. This quarter, we saw one time losses. But as I mentioned before, media business overall, FY 2025 onwards, we will be making booking operating profits. These are the Abema-related cells. As you can see, this is growing very powerfully as well. Abema WAU. we have in the beginning aspired to reach 10 million FWAU in 2020 but now we're and we achieved that in 2022 but now it's three times that World Cup You see a peak during the World Cup, but we're reaching those levels now, closest to the same levels, and we're not relying on one content. We have news, anime, and sports as well. A wide variety of content is growing, so we're seeing growth in many different areas. Within Abema, this is a significant development, but in October and November, We have the premium plan with ads and the premium plan as well. We made price revisions, but these are on track. So if it all goes well, this should be improving our profitability. We wanted to improve the quality significantly, so we didn't release a lot of dramas in the recent period, but we are going to be releasing e-forma and mogura, different titles. So with respect to dramas as well, we want us to be known for dramas. Also, lastly, the mid- to long-term strategy, this hasn't FY 2025 as well, we will continue to focus on increasing sales and profitability. This has not changed. On the other hand, we want to continue to put a lot of effort into creating IPs. Umami Summit is our own IP, and it was a great success story in terms of games and as content. So we have the power to replicate that success story. So NitroPlus joined us this fiscal year and also Manga Apartment has launched as well to make sure that we have manga content. So we are undertaking a wide range of initiatives in this area. Abema, half of our Abema users are watching anime actually. So ability to nurture IP and expand the IP. We believe that we have that capability and a wide range of our group companies, so we want to use our collective power and continue to develop games as well. These are the animes and films that are being planned. A425, Apocalypse Hotel is an anime that will be released, and Project Sekai. We have the game, but the movie will be released next year. That concludes my explanation. Thank you very much. This concludes our FY 2020 for four year earnings briefing. If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the IR team. Thank you for watching today.