Nippon Telegraph & Telephone (NTT)

We will now begin NTT Inc's financial results briefing for FY2025. Thank you very much for joining us today despite your busy schedules. I am Sekine from Public Relations and will serve as the moderator. Thank you. Let me first introduce today's three speakers. Akira Shimada, President and CEO, Representative Director. Toshihiko Nakamura, SVP and Director of Finance and Accounting Department. Akitoshi Hattori, SVP and Director of Corporate Strategy Planning Department. Please note that today's materials were uploaded to the NTT official website at 1 p.m., so please check them as well. Now we would like to start. President Shimada, please. Thank you very much for your attendance today. I am Shimada, President of NTT Inc. Let me explain our FY 2025 consolidated results. and FY2026 results forecast. Following the explanation of the financial results, I will explain our initiatives for medium-term profit growth and the revision of our financial targets. For FY2025, both operating revenue and profit increased year on year on a consolidated basis. Operating revenues reached a new record high. operating revenue increased by ¥704.4 billion year-on-year, reaching ¥14,409.1 billion thanks to the expansion of enterprise business of group companies, growth in the smart life business, and increased revenue from transferring data centers into REACH. Regarding profits, EBITDA was ¥3,423.3 billion, up by ¥184 billion year-on-year to and operating profit was ¥1,706.2 billion, up by ¥56.7 billion year-on-year, thanks to increased profits from the expansion of enterprise business ad group companies, increased profits in the smart life business, and from transferring data centers into REIT. Despite costs for measures to strengthen Docomo's customer base and improve mobile network quality, profits increased by ¥37 billion year-on-year, too, 1 trillion 37 billion yen, mainly due to the increase in operating profit. Regarding revenue and profits by segment, integrated ICT business segment, although consumer communications business decreased due to a decline in mobile communications service revenue, operating revenue increased year on year thanks to the growth of smart life business centering on finance and enterprise business. While profits increased in smart life and enterprise businesses, operating profit decreased year on year due to costs associated with measures to strengthen the customer base and improve network quality. As a result of efforts to strengthen the customer base, improved from the previous year and was positive except for Q2, which was affected by the discontinuation of small data volume plans. Global solutions business segment. Despite a revenue decrease of approximately 35 billion yen due to foreign exchange, revenue and profits increased year on year thanks to business growth both in Japan and abroad and increase from transferring data centers into REIT. Regional communications business segment. Despite a decrease in legacy business revenue, both revenue and profit increased year-on-year thanks to revenue increase in enterprise and fiber optic business. Furthermore, the net addition in fiber optic service subscribers increased year-on-year due to strengthened sales of 10 gigabit plans and all apartment unit plans for the condominium market. Others, real estate and energy. Despite the expansion of the housing business in urban solutions, Revenue increased year on year, but profit decreased due to the reporting of impairment losses in anode energy in light of changes in the external environment, such as rising interest rates and construction costs. Next, I will explain FY2026 results forecast. For FY2026, operating revenue, EBITDA, and operating profit will increase year on year, and profit will decrease. We plan for increased operating revenue across all segments, primarily in our integrated ICT business and global solutions business, aiming for a record high level. EBITDA and operating profit will increase year on year, thanks to the expansion of our enterprise business and smart life business, mainly in finance, despite the continued decline in network revenue. Profit will decrease year-on-year due to increased interest payments and others. Regarding revenue and profit by segment, in integrated ICT business segments, operating revenues will increase year-on-year and operating profit will be flat thanks to the expansion of the smart life business, primarily finance, and the growth of the corporate business. despite a decrease in mobile communication service revenue. Furthermore, efforts to improve network quality will continue and be strengthened, and in sales, we plan to build a stronger customer-based center of long-term users through Docomo Max, among others. Global solutions business segment. While revenue and profits continue to increase thanks to business growth both in Japan and abroad, Operating revenues will increase and operating profit will decrease year-on-year due to transfer of data centers into REIT in FY2025. Regional communications business segment. Despite a decrease in legacy business revenue, revenue and profit will increase year-on-year thanks to increased fiber optic service revenue and reduced expenses from the rebound effect of future cost mitigation measures implemented in NTQ West in FY2025. others, real estate and energy. Operating revenues will increase year on year, thanks to increased revenue from the expansion of the data center engineering business in urban solutions, as well as the rebound effect from impairment losses in unload energy in FY 2025. Next is shareholder returns. At today's Board of Directors meeting, we resolved to set the year-end dividend for FY2025 at 2.65 yen as projected. Furthermore, we resolved annual dividend forecast of 5.4 yen for FY2026, an increase of 0.1 yen year-on-year. This will mark our 16th consecutive year of dividend increases since FY2011. In addition, To improve capital efficiency and enhance shareholder returns, we will carry out a share buyback program up to 200 billion yen. Next, I will explain our initiatives toward medium-term profit growth. The contents are as outlined. First, I will explain the review of our medium-term financial targets for medium-term profit growth. Regarding the current meeting term financial target of EBITDA of 4 trillion yen for FY27, our growth areas are steadily expanding profits through aggressive investment and achievement of results. On the other hand, profits decreased in existing areas due to responses to changes in the business environment, such as strengthening the customer base and increasing traffic. As a result, Consolidated EBITDA is below expectations, making it difficult to achieve the target for FY2027. In light of these changes in the business environment, we will change our growth areas to value-added areas focusing on AI, which is expected to further expand our business and significantly increase our profits. Furthermore, as an immediate initiative, While maintaining cash generation capabilities through profit stabilization, we will rename our existing areas to connectivity areas and promote the transformation to AI-native infrastructure. Together with the value-added areas, we aim to achieve a need of 4 trillion yen by FY 2030. In addition, we will continue strategic upfront investments in areas with promising future growth to achieve sustainable profit growth. Next, I will explain seven specific initiatives aimed at achieving an EBITDA of 4 trillion yen by FY2030 categorized into three areas, which are value-added areas, connectivity areas, and strategic upfront investment to support continued growth. First, I will explain three initiatives in the value-added areas.

The first initiative is expanding a domestic corporate business by maximizing customer value. In light of the rapid advancement in AI, it is anticipated that the business model will shift from those that rely on traditional human resources to those that are driven by customer value. By capturing this change and leveraging the human resources created by NTT data through the introduction of AI, we can extend these resources to customers of document business that have a broader customer base than entity data. This will enable us to provide high-value added integration to a wider range of customers. Furthermore, by combining entity data and entity Docomo businesses' products and services, we will expand our customer value-driven business by providing a sovereign compliance, full-stack AI businesses. Through these initiatives, we aim to achieve EBITDA of 1.2 trillion yen for our domestic corporate business by FY2030. Next, I will explain acceleration of the growth of our overseas business with a focus on AI and data centers. In our IT services business, we will create AI-native businesses utilizing entity data, AI Vista, and promote the expansion of our inorganic capabilities mainly in the AI domain. Furthermore, our data center business, in light of a robust demand, will continue to make gross investments centered on the cloud and AI inference domains, primarily targeting hyperscaler customers. Through these initiatives, we aim to achieve EBITDA of 600 billion yen for our overseas corporate business by FY2030. As our third initiative, I will explain further expansion of personal business with a focus on financial services. With NTT Docomo financial group scheduled to be established in July of this year, at its core, we will grow our financial customer base with payments and banking as a starting point and expand our revenues by promoting investment loans and other utilizations. Furthermore, by combining one of the largest membership bases in Japan, the account members' usage data and the vast amount of data generated daily on the network with AI, we will strengthen the competitiveness of our personal agents and marketing solutions. Through these initiatives, towards 2030, we aim to achieve EBITDA of 500 billion yen with our financial business driving the entire smart life business. Next, I will explain our initiatives in the connectivity areas. First of all, I will explain our vision for transition to AI-native next-generation infrastructure. In the future, AI computational processing will shift from being learning-centric to real-time inference-centric, and the primary focus of communication will expand from person-to-person to things-to-things, and further to AI-to-AI, and robot to robot, leading to an explosive increase in transactions. In response to these changes, NTT will first focus on conversion to AI-native infrastructure, AION, which optimizes various resources such as GPUs, networks, and power to realize a secure usage environment and integrate operations, including MDH, first starting in Japan. This will enable full-scale business deployment in the 2030s. Next, I will explain our efforts towards realization of AI-OWN as a next-generation AI-aided infrastructure. And to date, under the AI-OWN concept, we have been working on the social implementation of the old photonics network and photoelectric conversion devices. The AI-OWN APN will be rolled out to all prefectural capitals by FY2027 in line with equipment upgrades of the existing services. Furthermore, towards 2030, we aim to expand nationwide by creating needs in various industries. In addition, we will accelerate AI on social implementation by expanding the ecosystem of photonics and electrical devices through a collaboration with diverse partners and who possess advantages and competitiveness in each of the fields. Next slide. I will explain our new-term initiatives in the connectivity area, specifically maintaining cash generation capacity by stabilizing telecommunications business profit. In our consumer communications business, we aim to maintain profit levels by strengthening customer engagement and evolving our products to maintain the number of subscribers and improve our pool, as well as by working to improve productivity through the use of AI. regarding the migration to alternative services using fiber optic and mobile technologies for fixed-line telephones, which began a pilot program in some areas in April of this year. And we will continue to provide a capital support to ensure a smooth transition. In some of the areas where we have started the migration to alternative services is in fiber optic and mobile technologies and for fixed-line telephones. We will continue to provide careful support to ensure smooth transition. And finally, I will explain our strategic upfront investments to support continued growth. In the mobility sector, and there were space and optical sort of quantum computing. And so we will be focusing our efforts in these areas and the mobility sector. We will continue to provide services such as autonomous driving support through NTT Mobility and accelerate our efforts to realize infrastructure, collaborate in mobility air platform in collaboration with Toyota Motors. and in space for utilizing ion technology, and so we ought to establish the technology so that we ought to really have the integration of the space and ground, and to disaster prevention areas, we will really expand our facilities. And as for the optical quantum computing, we will collaborate with OptQC to develop a world-class optical quantum computer and aim for early commercialization. By continuing strategic growth investments in these areas, we will strive to achieve sustainable profit growth beyond FI 2030. Our return financial targets are as shown. As I explained earlier, we aim to achieve 4 trillion yen in EBITDA and our main indicator by FI 2030. And furthermore, excluding the financial business, we plan to set a target for ROIC and work towards improving capital efficiency. And as for the non-financial indicators, with its sustainability, there are no changes to our targets. Regarding shareholder returns, we will continue our existing policies with the basic principle being to increment steady increase in dividends, and we will also strive to improve capital efficiency by flexibly conducting share buybacks. Due to increased funding demand, interest-bearing debt has expanded recently, but our policy is to ensure a certain level of financial soundness in the mid-term. By 2030, we will work to generate cash so that we can reduce our interest-bearing debt to EBITDA ratio, excluding financial businesses, to approximately 3.5 times. And the EBITDA breakdown by business segment is as shown here. Lastly, with this revision, the NTT Group's previously stated midterm management strategy will be pursued under the name New Value Creation and Sustainability 2030, powered by AIOM. This concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Now we would like to take questions from the media, the journalists. First, we'll take questions from those present in the venue. If you have a question, please raise your hand. Our staff members will bring you a microphone, so please state your company name, media name, and your name before asking your question. Due to time constraints, please limit your questions to two per person. We will now begin taking questions. So the person behind, this gentleman, the person behind, please. Thank you for the explanation. Toma from NHK. So my question is on financial results. Regarding the results forecast, next fiscal year, profit, you expect to decline. Your medium-term financial target is also being pushed out, postponed somewhat. Ivica, 4 trillion yen for FY 2030, you revised. What is the reason? Is it Docomo financial results? Is that the main reason? That's how I see it.