SoftBank Stock

Thank you very much for your patience. We will now begin SoftBank Corp's Investor Briefing for the first quarter of fiscal year ending March 31, 2027. I would like to introduce today's speakers. Senior Vice President and CFO, Akiyama; Head of Corporate Planning, Yuki; Head of FP&A Corporate Planning, Sasaki; Head of Accounting and Finance, Onoguchi; General Manager, Strategic Finance and IR, Kawamura.

Today's briefing is also being streamed live over the Internet. Now CFO, Akiyama, will present an overview of SoftBank Corp's consolidated financial results.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. I would like to brief on our results, and we would like to take questions from you later on. First, there are 4 points as summary. Revenue and profit increased, building strong momentum toward full year forecast. At the beginning of fiscal year, the first quarter and the second quarter were expected to go -- be under the target. However, as a result, first quarter, we landed both revenue and profit increase. And we are now in a position to be able to exceed our full year forecast as well.

The second is about cloud and AI. This business drove revenue growth in enterprise and enterprise operating income grew by 28%. The third, as CEO Miyakawa presented earlier, we actively executed strategic growth investments under the financial disciplines, and we would like to continue our strategic growth investments. The fourth, for our first time, we issued euro-denominated senior unsecured notes to diversify our funding base.

This slide shows the results for the first quarter of FY 2026, building a strong momentum toward full year forecast, and we have 27.5% of operating income increase. This is the -- by segment, the changes in segment, I would like to brief on this. So as AI businesses started in the monetization phase, so until FY '25, AI business was under Other. However, this will be -- this has been under Enterprise business from this fiscal year. I would like to go to the revenue, so increased in all segments and hitting a record high. Enterprise, Distribution, Financial, these 3 segments reached 2 digital -- the double-digit revenue growth.

Next, adjusted EBITDA increased in all segments, hitting a record high. Next, operating income. Steady progress toward full year forecast in all segments. Last year, Media & EC segment experienced a onetime factor. So excluding this, we have 18.7% increase. And Media & EC segment has JPY 4 billion revenue with onetime factor. Excluding this, we have the operating income in Media & EC increased 18.7%. This excludes onetime factors. Please refer to the right bottom of chart as the forecast by segment.

Next, net income. Net income increased due to increase in operating income progressing steadily toward full year forecast, JPY 4.8 billion up at 3.3% increase. Net income increased 6.6%, excluding onetime factors, no major changes. But due to the -- according to financial income and loss, there was the increase in interest expense and so on in SB. So as for the business, we would like to place an importance in increasing net income in all business segments.

From here, I would like to explain the results by segment. First, Enterprise business. As I touched upon earlier, AI business is now under the Enterprise business segment. So we changed subsegment. The right side is the present Enterprise subsegment. There are 3 subsegments. The revenue of Enterprise segment. So the revenue from AI computing infrastructure and related businesses drove growth in cloud and AI. Cloud and AI revenue is expected to grow at CAGR of 30% in FY '26 to FY '27. At the time of announcing our midterm business management plan, CAGR of 15% was announced. However, right now, we can see that we can exceed that target. So now we expect to grow at CAGR of 30%. So on top of cloud and AI, also security grew and cloud services, also solutions and as for telecommunications, increased in mobile revenue driven by subscriber growth.

Segment income of Enterprise segment. So the segment income, we would like to explain in details to make you understand better. I would like to explain from the left side of this chart -- third graph and so telecommunications and solutions, cloud and AI had a positive growth in revenue. And telecommunications and solutions, cloud and AI, we separate in these 2. So as for the cost, cost of telecommunications has decreased slightly.

As for solutions and cloud and AI, cost increased because of the increase in revenue, and there was some impact in the cost of solutions, cloud and AI as well. And depreciation and disposals, this is mainly due to depreciation of AI infrastructure and this was accounted in the Other and now it's under Enterprise. Other expenses, the major one is the increase due to personnel expenses. So Enterprise business segment is expanding now. Therefore, we are also enhancing the personnel as well.

Next, Consumer segment revenue. Both service revenue, including mobile and sales of goods and others increased. So looking at the graph from the top item. First, as for the sales of goods and others, the volume increased, but revenue growth due to increase in unit price of mobile devices, electricity revenue growth due to increase in trading transactions. The third one is the broadband. Revenue growth mainly due to Open Fiber Japan Corp. commencing operations in June. Open Fiber Japan Corp. is a joint venture between SoftBank Corp. and Sony Network Communications, Inc.

So this is under our consolidated, and it will be accounted under our business segment. And the fourth one is the mobile. Revenue increased by JPY 3 billion, driven by improvements in ARPU. Now mobile revenue. So we focus on increasing the revenue of mobile. And here is the Consumer segment income. So not only mobile revenue, but improvement gross profit from sales of goods were offset and also some incentives and that amortization exists. So therefore, due to the impact of that, as a total, it shows minus JPY 0.9 billion. However, this has improved from what we had expected at the beginning of the fiscal year.

And right side shows some comments for each one. And -- so the gross margin from sales of goods and others is JPY 5.5 billion increase. And electricity income increased due to improved procurement costs. Please also pay attention to the notes within the chart. And sales commissions and sales promotion expenses, this increased mainly due to amortization of capitalized sales commissions and expenses for device purchase support program. So total minus JPY 0.9 billion.

This is the result of Consumer segment. So up to here was about Enterprise and Consumer segment. From here, using 3 slides, I would like to talk about KPI. First, ARPU. So ARPU increased by JPY 60 billion (sic) [ JPY 60 ], driven by penetration of Pay-toku. So this is as we expected at the beginning of the fiscal year. So we expect that will be increased by JPY 200. So full year, it will be JPY 160, which is the same line as the beginning of the fiscal year.

Smartphone cumulative subscribers and net additions, smartphone cumulative subscribers declined year-on-year following a shift in acquisition strategy to focus on long-term users. And churn rate reduction and acquisition cost reductions are something that we want to do to make sure that we turn around smartphone subscriber numbers. In churn, as for the first quarter, due to impact of early churn, we saw a slight increase; however, broadly flat. In fact, in June, we saw improvement compared to the same month last year. So we are beginning to see the good trend. So for the second quarter and third quarter, we want to accelerate such improvement.

By segment, Media & EC. LY and Yahoo! announced the financial results yesterday. They are progressing well and Commerce and Media both saw growth in revenue. Excluding onetime factors, profit increased due to growth of account advertising led by media, steady growth toward full year forecast. So again, we are in good shape.

Now Financial segment. PayPay announced earnings results last week. And in Financial segment, they are progressing well, and this segment saw huge growth, thanks to PayPay's growth. Distribution segment and other. Distribution revenue and profit increased with steady growth in ICT products for enterprise customers. On the right-hand side, Other segment, R&D and upfront investment expanded, but that includes something onetime. So going forward, such onetime investment should not continue. In the meantime, we continue to invest in R&D so long as we believe that, that should contribute to future business. So whenever we saw an opportunity, we want to be open to investment.

Next, investment and our financial position. First, CapEx. Telecommunications CapEx are progressing in line with the full year plan, which is at the bottom of the graph. IFRS 16 impact increased due to the commencement of operations by Open Fiber Japan, which I touched upon earlier in Consumer segment. This joint venture, leased dark fibers and as a noncash transaction, it was recorded and it has IFRS 16 impact. And for AI-related CapEx, in the first quarter, numbers were small. But for the full year, we want to execute as planned. So we are on track in terms of AI-related capital expenditures.

Free cash flow. Since we are actively invest strategically, we saw a negative cash flow compared to last year, more in detail. Operating cash flow JPY 65 billion decrease year-on-year due to impact from the working capital. Adjusted EBITDA is shown at the top of the graph and EBITDA show steady growth. So temporary working capital impact was reflected in operating cash flow, but again, it was onetime. Investment cash flow include investment in telecom equipment, which is in line with last year. And as Miyakawa-san mentioned earlier, in the first quarter, in order to launch a new cloud business, we invested in SB Energy of $1 billion or about JPY 160 billion. Then we established SB Neo and we have a new framework in place. So we decided to sell the investment and the purchase price is USD 1.5 billion. So the gain on sale should be expected in the next quarter.

Net interest-bearing debt compared to same term last year, we saw increase by about JPY 290 million -- sorry, JPY 0.2 billion. In June, there was a timing to pay dividend. So at one time, net interest -- sorry, net leverage ratio increased, but we do exit investment in SB Energy, and we expect increasing free cash flow. So this net leverage ratio should be improved going forward.

And the topics of our financial activity -- or financing activity, we issued U.S. dollar-denominated notes in July 2025. And now we issued euro-denominated senior unsecured notes. Coupon rate in Japanese yen after currency swap were equivalent to domestic notes. Going forward, we want to diversify financing instruments to support our business activities. So again, we want to continue working to strengthen our financial position.

And this slide shows the balance sheet. Total assets increased due to financial business expansion. And shareholders' equity increased year-on-year. As of end of June last year, shareholders' equity ratio was 18%, excluding financial businesses.

Last but not the least, to summarize, we recorded growth both in revenue and profit and our growth driver, cloud AI delivered good results as expected and enterprise increased in operating profit by 28%. We executed strategic growth investment, and we issued euro-denominated foreign bond.

That's all from myself, and we'd like to start taking questions if you have. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions]

I'm Tokunaga from Daiwa Securities. I have 2 questions. One is about the progress of the first quarter. So this quarter is very strong, and you said that it could be upward even further upward in the first half? And how much is that? So how is the distribution? Is it all segments or enterprise? And so what about LY contribution and so on?

So our view, actually, this is the same as what we disclosed at the beginning of the fiscal year. So it will be the improvement in the mid hundreds of -- tens of billion yen improvement. And so LY and PayPay already had earnings results presentations, and they also announced positive results. So as for the Consumer business, so the second handset sales was stronger than we had expected. So the secondhand handsets are mainly sold overseas. Even though there was the impact by the war in Iran, considering such circumstance, we were able to sell well in terms of this -- our secondhand device handset. And also our efforts in the cost improvement and the cost reduction, I mean, contributed to this positive results.

Looking at the segment, basically, all segments had a better result than that what we had expected in the beginning of the first fiscal year.

Even though you said that secondhand handset sales did well, but do you think it's a temporary impact?

So regarding the secondhand handset sales, your understanding is correct. So the price of handset will increase onwards. So depending on how it goes, and we will also have to adjust ourselves how to deal with that, the price increase and other factors. So there is a onetime impact of the advanced investment in our R&D, which is about JPY 10 billion or so.

The second question is about the enterprise business. I was looking at the data sheet on the Page 5. So it shows cloud and AI is increasing in revenue. But depreciation, the first quarter decreased. That's where we are. And so what about the margin? And is it going to go down? And also, the depreciation is getting lighter because the -- some investments that you made has almost ended. So what about the next fiscal years and onwards? Please make comments on the margin.

As for cloud and AI, the revenue increase is due to the government-related project has started. So that's one factor. And so this -- the profit margin of cloud and AI, as CEO, Miyakawa explained earlier, minimum 30% or even more. So as for the finance perspective, we also have the same view, 30% or 40% margin is what we are targeting. And declining in depreciation.

This is Sasaki. Compared to the previous fourth quarter and this first quarter, you mentioned that depreciation got worse, but this is going to improve onwards. So the government-led projects without government-led projects do not -- even without that, I think it would get better. So well, the government-led projects will be reflected in the second quarter onwards. So in the first quarter, providing the revenue from the -- and the income from the AI computing infrastructure is the major factor. Thank you.

Any other question from the venue? Then take questions on Zoom. Kikuchi-san from SMBC Nikko Securities.

I have 2 questions. First, about sales and marketing expenses at the previous earnings announcement, increased amortization of customer acquisition costs you mentioned and also purchasing on devices, I think each JPY 20 billion, JPY 30 billion should be increased in -- recorded in the first half of this year, I think you mentioned. You didn't clarify how much, but that level, was that changed since? And also, you talked about increased price of secondhand devices, which was around JPY 16 billion or JPY 15 billion or something. So in the first quarter, expected numbers recorded and the sales from secondhand devices offset? And what would happen in the second quarter? That's the first question.

Sales and marketing expenses or incentive and Tokusuru Support, I think you are talking about that. So amortization of our sales incentive or marketing sales expenses, schedule-wise, we did execute amortization as scheduled. So nothing was changed since the beginning of the year. About expenses or costs for Tokusuru Support, that reflected the impact from the sales of secondhand devices. So in the first quarter, better than what we expected at the beginning of the year. Going forward, about amortization of sales incentives, as I mentioned earlier, we already had a schedule, so no change is expected.

And for Tokusuru Support, we need to see how the global market goes in terms of secondhand device sales. And also competitive landscape is something that we need to keep watching on. So at the moment, we have not changed any expectation in the second quarter, but we will keep watching how it goes.

About secondhand devices and sales of secondhand devices, I'm not familiar with. So for my understanding, I think if you have not sold devices as much as you expected, maybe because of ForEx impact and also price of secondhand devices go up as new devices price go up. If that's the case, the sales price of secondhand devices is something equivalent to new devices?

Well, of course, ForEx should have an impact on the sales of secondhand devices. And how the market goes is something also we need to keep watching on. It's hard to project how the market goes due to some geopolitical dynamics. We expect improvement. But again, it's too early for us to be too optimistic.

If I may clarify, in May, when we announced the previous quarter's earnings, the volume of sales was very small, but it's been improving. So compared to last year, we see improvement in terms of volume of sales of secondhand devices.

Next question is SB Energy's sale on -- sorry, gain on sales should be expected in the second quarter. Is my understanding correct? You invested in July -- sorry, in the first quarter, and you decided to sell SB Energy in July. It's very short term of holding. Do you still expect gain on sales and the gain will be booked on your balance sheet?

Well, gain on sale is expected, and we consider revising the forecast in the second quarter upwards, it's something to be considered. So whenever we have a gain on sales, it should be incorporated in our consolidated financial results. Thank you.

Next, Tanaka-san from BofA Securities.

Two questions. One is related to what Kikuchi-san asked earlier. So as of now JPY 160 billion, or USD 1.5 billion is the purchase price. So I believe there will be some coordination onwards, but should we understand that there will be a big upward. How much impact this sale would be?

So initially, we invested USD 1 billion. So basically, it will be purchased by USD 1.5. So that means that we will have the income of USD 0.5 billion. So this purchase price we are still assessing, and we are still under the process of assessing the purchase price to finalize that would make a difference in terms of a capital gain.

The second question is about 180,000 decrease in subscribers and so I believe that you had mentioned in the previous briefing that serial switchers measurement was a bit severe. And how is the impact after taking the measurements against serial switchers and so how about the churn after you have taken the measurement against the serial switches?

So this net decrease in the subscribers has been -- will be improved. So there is -- we don't say that there is zero impact, but basically, we were able to make our customers well understood of the price increase. So I could say that there is no major impact.

Next, Masuno-san from Nomura Securities.

First, on Page 15, Consumer expenses, compared to the first quarter last year. For acquisition, billion increase compared to last year. Advertisement, JPY 7.5 billion increase total JPY 50 billion. So cost of goods and gross margin of device assets grew. You talked about amortization of sales incentives and Tohoku support provisioning increase.

So compared to last year, where do are they included compared to last year -- compared to the first quarter last year, if I want to see which is up, which is down, amortization of Tohoku support or sales of secondhand devices and amortization of sales incentives where we tag and how much would it be?

So this slide shows compared to the first quarter of last year. So that's exactly what you're talking about. Of sales-related expenses, minus JPY 89 shown, mostly sales incentives or customer acquisition cost. For Tohoku support is included a minus 69. I think over half of 69 is Tohoku support related expenses.

So secondhand device prices were better -- that's why the 69 was there. You thought it would be bigger, but it ended at 69. In the second quarter last year, well, sorry, in the second quarter compared to last year, should we expect more expenses Well, this -- sorry, second quarter, both should increase, compared to the same term last year, or sales incentive, I think the same level as the first quarter. In Tohoku support, since a long time factor was last year. So maybe various might be bigger than the various in first quarter.

So when should we expect those will stop increasing?

For sales incentives, I think they should keep increasing compared to last year until the end of this fiscal year or maybe beyond that. But Tohoku support should stop increasing by the end of this fiscal year. And in June and July, while mobile and SoftBank price increased, the impact was included in June as a second -- sorry, first quarter.

So how much impact should we expect in the second quarter impact from the price hike of SoftBank and Y!mobile?

So for the new price plan, impact from the new price plan was not that big in the first quarter. In the second quarter and onwards, new price plans impact should be visible -- in terms of ARPU, we expect plus JPY 200 in the second quarter onwards. So third quarter, fourth quarter, JPY 200 should be expected, ARPU-wise.

Well, we changed the price plan, including existing subscribers. So ARPU would go up quickly and then flat. So plus JPY 200 in the third quarter and the fourth quarter, if you compare to the same term last year, yes.

On Page 23, IFRS impact. So what's the size of Open Fiber Japan's business in terms of the customer numbers or areas?

Currently, our primary market is city centers -- so it depends on how long the lease on should be, and lease term is relatively long. That's why the numbers on the balance sheet is rather big. Did I answered your question? Well -- so commencement of Open Fiber Japan is the impact of IFRS 16, mainly because you make a long-term commitment, because you want a long-term lease term.

So if it's a dark fiber, maybe 15 years of lease contract?

Yes, I think your assumption is fair.

And my last question is AI data center, 140 megawatts of Sakai or lease to Neotra. Should you expect income, but you also mentioned that the 30% minimum margin. Again, 140-megawatt Sakai, do you expect 30% profit margin?

Yes. We cannot disclose each and every transaction or customer but we want to contribute to the projects overall and we expect profit margin from our cloud business. But the selling of GPU computing -- if the sales is JPY 10 billion and profit should be 100% margin is 100%. So GPUs profit margin is higher, but Sakai, the profit margin is lower. So each other, you could still expect 30%-ish profit margin. Yes, in general, profit margin from GPU delivery is much higher whereas just the leasing data centers profit margin is lower.

About Neo Cloud in the States, why SoftBank KK has a majority stake in the state, SBG is a bigger presence. So why SoftBank has a majority of stake? What do you think about the presence in the United States?

We took a lead because we, as an operating company, I want to launch a new cloud business. That's why we have a majority stake. And as you know, we have been working on beyond the Japan initiative. And this was a great opportunity to go beyond Japan literally. And as you rightly mentioned, in the states, our presence is still small. We don't have expertise. We don't have much assets in the state yet. Then SoftBank Group has an asset, which we can leverage. We could, again, take advantage of SoftBank Group presence and especially assets to expand our new cloud business in the States.

We would like to take questions from Zoom in English. [Operator Instructions]. Gibson from MST Financial.

It's David Gibson from MST Financial. I have two questions. The first one is, could you explain what sort of consumer buying data can be shared between the 7-Eleven Group, PayPay and SoftBank as part of this new investment agreement and the collaboration agreement given the privacy laws in Japan.

The second question is on -- regarding Kakaku.com and LY Corp. LINE synergies post acquisition took longer or less than planned. Why will the acquisition of Kakaku.com by LY Corp, do you think be more successful in this regard?

So the first question is about the investment in the Seven & i Holdings and its business overview. So as CEO Miyakawa explained in the larger presentation earlier. So retail industry as a whole, including Seven & i Holdings to enhance AI transformation and digital transformation further in Japan, and we came to an agreement that we would like to also participate in that enhancement related to those transformation and also for convenience stores, AX and DX are to enhance then there will be some return to us in the future. So therefore, we have decided to invest in Seven & i Holdings. And so Seven & i Holdings customer points and our customer points, if we can integrate, then it will be it should be a great contribution to our consumer business segment as well. This is our expectation as well.

The second question regarding the Kakaku.com acquired by LY. So that circumstance or the status is still ongoing situation. So we are not in the position to make any comments.

We want to take the last question before closing Fuji Hirosawa from Mizuho Securities.

I have two questions. First, about R&D expenses. Miyakawa-san mentioned he wanted to deploy the team of Sarashina to Neotra . Then -- not once Neotra is up and running, the R&D expenses should be smaller than before.

Well, the team developing Sarashina and expertise developing , will be involved in Neotra to work on physical AI. That's actually key -- one of the key of the initiative. On the other hand, Sarashina is our unique model, and we want to continue developing Sarashina further. So for that end, development cost of such effort should be reflected in other segments.

Okay. And the second question is about the dividend outlook. You mentioned that you can expect gain on sales in the second quarter like JPY 500 million, which should be a onetime gain. If you can reach JPY 600 billion of income in the quarter, how would it have an impact on dividend payout?

Dividend and dividend policy are something that we need to discuss further internally. Gain on sale, if or when it's expected, of course, they should have a contribution to the bottom line. We have a lot of growth opportunities in general and such gain on sale is onetime. So while we are looking at financial discipline, we will make a final decision about the dividend.

This concludes Q&A session. We would like to conclude SoftBank Corp's investor briefing for the first quarter of fiscal year ending March 31, 2027. A recording of today's briefing will be available on demand on our corporate website at a later time. Thank you very much once again for taking the time to attend SoftBank Corp.'s investor briefing for the first quarter of fiscal year ending March 31, 2027.

Thank you very much for your patience. We will now begin SoftBank Corporation's financial results briefing for the first quarter of fiscal year ending March 31, 2027. First, let me introduce today's speakers. President and CEO Miyakawa; Senior Vice President and CFO, Head Finance Unit, Akiyama. Today's briefing is also being streamed live over the Internet.

I would now like to invite President and CEO, Miyakawa, to present an overview of SoftBank Corp.'s consolidated financial results and business performance.

Thank you very much for joining. Before I begin, I would like to express my heartfelt sympathies to everyone affected by the Kumamoto earthquake. We sincerely hope that those impacted will be able to return to their normal lives as soon as possible, and we are committed to providing whatever support we can.

Today marks our first earnings presentation under our new midterm management plan. Today, myself and Akiyama, [ new pair ] will be presenting. I would like to show you how SoftBank is steadily evolving from a telecommunications company into a provider of next-generation social infrastructure.

Now let me begin with our consolidated results for the first quarter of FY 2026. Revenue reached JPY 1,814.7 billion, representing 9% year-on-year growth. Looking at revenue by segment. All business segments -- business segments achieved revenue growth. In particular, the Enterprise, Distribution and Financial businesses all delivered double-digit revenue growth. Now operating income came to JPY 302.3 billion, up 4% year-on-year. Progress towards our full year forecast reached 27%.

Last year's first quarter included a onetime remeasurement gain related to LINE Bank Taiwan I mentioned that achieving profit growth in the first quarter might be challenging when we announced our medium-term management plan in May. However, our company-wide cost improvement initiatives proved highly effective enabling us to overcome that onetime impact and still deliver year-on-year profit growth. The second quarter will also face a difficult comparison as last year's results included another remeasurement gain of more than JPY 40 billion, even so we determined to overcome that hurdle.

Turning to operating income by segment, Enterprise, Distribution and Financial businesses, all 3 achieved profit growth. As for the consumer business, we had a expected a more challenging first half due to the amortization of customer acquisition costs incurred in prior periods. However, the actual performance has been significantly better than our initial expectations. Net income totaled JPY 150.1 billion, representing 3% year-on-year growth. Progress toward full year forecast reached 27%. So as you can see, all progressing steadily against our full year targets. The progress by business segment is shown on this slide. And overall, we are encouraged by the steady progress across the portfolio.

Now I would like to begin with our Enterprise business. Revenue reached JPY 260.4 billion representing 11% year-on-year growth. Within the enterprise business, the cloud and AI segment, which we highlighted in our midterm management plan delivered particularly strong performance with revenue increasing 31% year-on-year, AI computing infrastructure and related services drove this growth. We expect this business to continue growing at an annual rate of approximately 30% through FY 2027, over the past years, we have made significant investments in AI, beginning this fiscal year, we are entering the monetization phase of those investments. Operating income for the first quarter reached JPY 62.2 billion with 28% year-on-year growth.

On July 14, we officially launched Patching as a Service or PaaS. As I explained at SoftBank World last month, this service provides end-to-end support from vulnerability assessment through remediation patch deployment. Some parts of the process still require manual intervention today. However, we are continuing the development towards full automation. We have also completed the establishment of our service delivery framework. Together with SB OAI Japan, we have built a team of approximately 1,000 professionals, leveraging the expertise gained from our own deployments, we plan to provide these services to approximately 3,000 enterprise customers.

Next, let me move on to the Consumer business. Revenue reached JPY 749.7 billion, representing 4% year-on-year growth. Mobile service revenue increased by JPY 3 billion compared with the same period last year. Operating income totaled JPY 152.9 billion, down 1% year-on-year. Progress toward our full year forecast, however, reached 27% and overall performance remains on track to achieve year-on-year operating income growth for the full fiscal year. Entering this fiscal year, we expect the first half to be particularly challenging because of the continued amortization of customer acquisition costs incurred in prior periods. However, we have made a solid start with performance exceeding our initial expectations.

This slide shows the year-on-year change in mobile ARPU. ARPU has already increased by approximately JPY 60 in the first quarter. From the second quarter onwards, we expect the increase to reach approximately JPY 200. While our cost base continues to rise, we will continue strengthening our network and enhancing our services while appropriately reflecting changes in our cost structure.

Next, let me turn to Media & EC business. Revenue reached JPY 446.8 billion, representing 10% year-on-year growth. The Media business also achieved a 3% revenue growth. Operating income totaled JPY 66.7 billion. Excluding last year's onetime factor, operating income increased 19% year-on-year.

Next, let me move on to the Financial business. Revenue reached JPY 115.9 billion, representing 27% year-on-year growth. Growth continued to be driven primarily by PayPay. Operating income reached JPY 31.8 billion, 76% year-on-year growth. On June 4, PayPay announced its acquisition of T&D Financial Life Insurance Company, making it a subsidiary. Currently, T&D Holdings owns 100% of the company. Upon completion of the transaction, PayPay will acquire approximately 70% of the shares and the company will become a consolidated subsidiary of PayPay. With this acquisition, PayPay will further strengthen its insurance business in addition to its existing banking and securities businesses.

Another important Financial businesses. I would like to touch upon SP.LINKS. So yesterday, SB Payment Service announced the acquisition of SP.LINKS Inc., formerly Sony Payment Service, which is one of the key companies within our Financial businesses. Currently, Blackstone owns 80% of the holding company, while Sony Bank owns the remaining 20% SB Payment Service will invest approximately JPY 72.7 billion to acquire the holding company, making SP.LINKS a wholly owned subsidiary.

The first objective is to expand online payment transaction volume. Following the acquisition, the combined online payment transaction volume of SB Payment Service and SP.LINKS will reach approximately JPY 13 trillion, placing us among Japan's largest online payment service providers. SB Payment Service has continued to grow steadily over the past 5 years. By combining the strengths of both companies, we are now within reach of becoming the #1 provider in online payment transaction volume. If we include PayPay's payment transaction volume, the combined total reaches approximately JPY 34 trillion. PayPay has also continued expanding rapidly, particularly in e-commerce. Together, these businesses are creating the foundation of what we believe is the ideal Financial business for SoftBank.

The second objective is to strengthen our payment capabilities. That is credit card payment network. The network is connected to 16 major credit card companies in Japan. In Japan, JCN and NTT DATA and SP.LINKS, only 3 companies provide this capability externally. We believe this acquisition significantly strengthens our competitiveness and creates an important platform for future growth. Looking ahead, we expect synergies from 3 areas: first, economies of scale through integration; second, the reduction of overlapping cost; third, ability to offer a full lineup of payment services. Over the medium to long term, we expect annual synergies of approximately JPY 10 billion. We believe this is an outstanding strategic investment.

Next, let me explain our capital and business alliance with Seven & i Holdings, which we announced on July 31. Under this alliance, SoftBank, PayPay and Sumitomo Mitsui Card will each invest JPY 100 billion. For a total investment of JPY 300 billion, these funds will support AI transformation and digital transformation investments aimed at realizing next-generation lifestyle infrastructure. Our role is to help Seven & i transform its convenience stores into next-generation social infrastructure through advanced technologies. Convenience stores play an essential role in people's daily lives. The industry is facing significant challenges. In order to address these challenges, providing advanced technologies powered by AI.

Together, what we are aiming at, we prepared a video. Please note that the concepts present in the video are still under discussion. We will continue working closely with all stakeholders to turn this vision into reality.

[Presentation]

As shown in the video, humanoid -- AI-powered humanoid robots and intelligent devices will support back-of-house operations, allowing employees to focus on tasks where human interaction creates the greatest value. Japan is a country frequently affected by natural disasters, most recently earthquake in Kumamoto.

Convenience stores play an essential role as community lifelines during emergencies. Through the deployment of large-scale battery systems and AI energy management systems, we aim to optimize energy usage during normal operations while also helping ensure stable power supplies during disasters. In addition, we intend to build next-generation supply chains, improving logistics efficiency. As for the next supply chains, leveraging AI and data, we would like to become a business partner to ensure a stable supply of products. Today, 7-Eleven operates approximately 22,000 stores in Japan and 87,000 stores worldwide. Together with Seven & i, we hope to take this next-generation convenience store model developed in Japan and expand it around the world.

Now let me talk about our Beyond Japan initiative. On July 2, we announced the establishment of SB Neo, a new operating company that will drive the expansion of our neocloud business in the United States. SB Neo is a consolidated subsidiary in which SoftBank Corp. holds a 51% stake by leveraging the expertise we have developed in GPU cloud services and AI data centers, SB Neo will lead the deployment of AI infrastructure in the U.S. market.

Using Infrinia OS, we will provide AI cloud services to the U.S. enterprises. Beginning in FY '27, we plan to roll out the business in phases, expanding capacity in line with customer demand. This is expected business model. Let me explain. First, SB Neo will establish a special purpose company in phases based on demand. The SPC will raise funds through non-recourse financing. The infrastructure will then utilize 10 gigawatts of power generation capacity developed by SB Energy. Leveraging this energy infrastructure, we will provide AI cloud services to hyperscalers, a key differentiator of our business models Infrinia. Unlike conventional GPU cloud services, where computing resources are typically dedicated to a single customer, Infrinia enables GPU resources to be shared efficiently across multiple offtakers.

Initially, we thought about this scheme to enter into the U.S. market. Therefore, we invested $1 billion in SB Energy in the first quarter. As we finalize the business model for SB Neo, our collaboration framework with SB Energy also became clear. With each company's role clearly defined within a new framework, the strategic need for SoftBank to maintain direct equity investment became less significant. As a result, we decided to sell our stake. The sale agreement was signed on July 10.

Since this transaction occurred after the end of the first quarter, it is disclosed as a subsequent event in our financial statement. The expected purchase price is approximately $1.5 billion, and we, therefore, expect to record a gain on the sale.

Looking ahead to our second quarter earnings announcement, we will carefully assess whether an upward revision to our full year earnings forecast is appropriate, taking into account both the gain on the sale and the stronger-than-expected performance of the underlying business. Let me briefly comment on adjusted free cash flow. Adjusted free cash flow for the first quarter was negative JPY 128.5 billion, mainly due to investment in SB Energy. However, like I said, we expect gain on sales in the second quarter.

This slide summarizes the capital allocation framework presented in our midterm management plan. While we continue making disciplined investments in further growth, including investments such as SP.LINKS and our strategic alliance with Seven & i Holdings. We will also continue actively recycling capital through asset sales where appropriate. By maintaining disciplined capital allocation, we will continue balancing growth investment, financial discipline and shareholder returns.

Finally, let me summarize today's presentation. We achieved both revenue and earnings growth in the first quarter with revenue increasing across all business segments. Our cloud and AI business continued to drive growth, contributing to 28% year-on-year operating income growth in the Enterprise business. Today, we also presented our growth outlook for the cloud and AI business through FY '27. I discussed the acquisition of SP.LINKS by SB Payment Service as well as our strategic capital and business alliance with Seven & i Holdings.

Finally, I introduced our Beyond Japan strategy, including the launch of SB Neo and our plans to expand neocloud business into the United States. As I mentioned at the beginning of today's presentation, SoftBank is steadily evolving beyond the traditional role of a telecommunications company. We are becoming a provider of next-generation social infrastructure, one that supports AI era and contributes to social through -- technology. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] When called upon, please begin by stating your company name and your name. Please raise your hand.

I'm [ Yagi ] from [ Nihon Keizai Newspaper ].

First, regarding the investment in Seven & i Holdings. So since when you had considered about this investment and from who approached about this? And also about SP.LINKS specific synergy effect, if you have any specific target, please let us know.

Well, since when and from who I would like to refrain from answering to that specific question. But more than 1 year ago, we had different kinds of discussions around that. So it's not a short-term discussion regarding the synergy effect.

From the SBKK perspective, we invest JPY 100 billion. And PayPay and Mitsui Sumitomo altogether, 3 of us invest JPY 300 billion. So this is for a future convenience stores. And enhancing AI-related technologies. So as a partner, we are to corporate -- so the investment amount is JPY 100 billion, but the budget -- total budget is JPY 300 billion. So with that amount, therefore, we have a high expectation to this business.

The second question. About Patching as a Service. How many customers do you have right now? And what is the difference between this and the Cristal?

So regarding demand, when we had the official announcement, we have inquiries and hundreds of inquiries and we already have completed 100 of them. And then from August 1, this service is a paid service. So as I described using the slide we already have started discussions with the prospective customers and actual number of contract exceeded 3 digits, so more than 100.

So we are convinced that this area has a high attention by a lot of enterprise companies. So regarding the difference from the Cristal, so this is a part of Cristal Intelligence and technology wise, it's the base -- it's the same. So there are a lot of things we would like to provide through Cristal Intelligence. So now we are quite occupied fully with Patching as a Service. So especially with this PaaS end-to-end from the risk assessment to the patching. So like [ Kimi 3 ] or Qwen3.8-Max. That's the latest model. So this model is a very high performance model. So Japan has to accelerate in terms of security area. So we would like to provide our service.

Next question, please.

[ Miyajima ] from [ Factor Monthly Magazine ].

The alliance between SoftBank and Seven, the vision of that -- I think, this is significant because you partner with the biggest convenience store business in Japan. And the JPY 300 billion investment, and you are committed to partnering with Seven.

And my honest question is how committed you are? Presentation was great and press release was great. You're talking about the robotics. And other things in details. So it's like a social implementation of AI and robotics and the convenience stores. So I wonder -- I'm actually disappointed, why you talked about this in financial results announcement as opposed to some individual presentation opportunity. And I think, SoftBank way is to invest more. So again, if you could elaborate on that, please, just to make me feel better.

Well, on 31st of July, we had plan to have a press conference, Seven's headquarters, Seven's convenience store business head, myself, Nakayama-san from PayPay and Idezawa-san from LINE and the [ Nakanishi-san ] from Mitsubishi.

So we plan to have a press conference on July 31 but as you all know, the Kumamoto earthquakes took place on 28th of Japan -- sorry, July and a lot of convenience stores over there were affected significantly. And from SoftBank's perspective, we suffered damages over there in our telecom networks. So that's why we canceled the press conference and we are wondering if we reschedule or not, we have not made a final decision yet. But rather, what we could do is to take an opportunity of any presentation opportunity like this financial announcement.

Well, again, we -- please understand we had a plan of press conference, but timing was not right.

And Seven & i is a very important customer to us, but Aeon is another important customer to us. And Aeon also suffered a great loss in Kumamoto. So I was not feeling comfortable making such a press conference back then. Please understand.

About share price, we don't intend to run convenience store business. Rather, we want to help convenience store business to transform the business powered by AI. We want to support a convenience store business rather than operating them. As you may have noticed in the video, there are things that people should do and other things that robots should do.

So I think it's still early to make everything done by robots. In terms of what we want to do, again, we don't want to run the convenience stores. We want to support convenience stores and retailers. In fact, 2% of investment, I feel a little bit vague because we don't want to intervene the operations. So please understand our intention behind the investment.

Masa Son at the Softbank World was talking about robotics. Look, AI robots implementation that kind of experiment is something that you could do at the convenience store like 7-Eleven. So I wonder if you have any discussion with Mr. Son about huge experiment that you could do with this initiative?

I have not shared with this presentation with Masa. And at the last minute, Masa came to know our alliance over the Seven & i, I took an initiative to go through the process. So again, intention or the investment size, may have been different if Masa was involved much heavily, but I was the lead of taking this deal. Again, we are a business partner. We don't plan to experiment anything. So anything Seven needs, we will support. Anything Seven doesn't need, we won't do anything. So not only Seven but also a lot of retailers need to be transformed because obviously, we suffer a lack of human resources in Japan. So that's our intention.

My name is Kimura from NHK.

Regarding the earthquake in Kumamoto this time. So in 30 hours or so SoftBank's network was recovered. So how do you see the response to this time of earthquake and what learnings you had? And so how -- regarding also the HAPS, how you're going to utilize in case of emergencies?

SoftBank base stations, a fewer base stations were damaged or in a rather shorter period of time, they were recovered. So it's just -- it's not that SoftBank's was barrier. It's not that it's by chance that the location -- because of the locations of the affected area.

So the major stations we had to -- and so when the battery was getting lower and the blackout start to happen. And our team is working there for recovery learnings from this time. Well, this time, earthquake was a bit different from the previous occasions that is Japan roaming -- because of the Japan roaming. So we first started lending out on our roaming or battery, and now we are actually getting -- we are borrowing from the other carriers.

So -- of course, we don't want to see this natural disasters in the future, but -- so these 4 carriers had their own area. So we divided -- we allocate area in charge. So towards Japanese towards disasters in Japan and the network -- communication network is getting stronger and stronger, and we would like to make it even stronger onwards.

What about to satellite? Are you planning to enhance moving forward?

Yes, HAPS if we had launched 2 weeks earlier, we could have used this, but this week launched in the U.S. It takes 1 week to reach Japan. If we had, well environment in terms of preparation, and if we had based in Japan, we could have send our HAPS to the affected area. So we would like to establish that environment onwards. So Starlink is being very useful in this kind of circumstances. And once HAPS will be available, then the video transferring will be much easier. So we would like to accelerate our readiness for HAPS.

Next question, please.

[ Ishikawa ] a [ freelance journalist ]. About smartphone subscribers, which seems declining. So do you expect the trend continues? That's the first question. Or related question is, in July, Y!mobile price plan was changed? And in August, ahamo increased from 30 to 40 giga. So what's your view on price competitions in the industry?

First, I think 180,000 reduction in the first quarter, but Q2, we don't expect such a subscriber reduction. In fact, we expect subscriber turns around to positive. Since the year-end last year, we have been trying to stop what we call hopping users. We probably got too serious and unfortunately, we were not able to acquire subscribers as much as we wished.

But I think our churn rate was beginning to stop declining. And in fact, in June, we saw a positive trend in churn rate. So August and September, we expect a steady growth of subscriber numbers. So please rest assured.

And about ahamo you mentioned, we thought about that, but at the moment, we don't intend to compete against them directly. So in a mid-volume zone, if you will, is very highly competitive market. So it may not make a big difference. If you compete in mid-volume zone, we are still competitive enough. So at the moment, we don't intend to do something directly competitive to ahamo.

I'm [ Sano ], [ freelancer ]. Two questions. One is about the alliance with Seven & i Holdings. Today, KDDI launched Happy Lawson. And so they are focusing on stores -- convenience stores, promotion. So you mentioned that you to your -- you do not intend to participate in management but how you're going to participate?

So regarding the management of Seven & i Holdings or 7-Eleven is not our area to participate in, but we would like to propose, for example, like in back of house operations, if leveraging one humanoid robot can reduce the labor cost and also integrating Seven ID and PayPay ID that was announced.

So what -- so there are areas that PayPay can do has been also proposed. And the major -- so the running convenience store is Seven & i Holdings expertise, and that's their area of business. So we would like to clearly differentiate our own roles. I believe that we elaborated in the video, but SoftBank has started manufacturing batteries.

Why SoftBank is manufacturing batteries is that without supporting the power areas so we cannot expect to highly -- of the Japan's future. So the power area has to be further advanced. So therefore, the batteries need to be set in the center of -- in the cities and towns. So the convenience stores are located in the center of the cities or the towns. And so working with them, in case of natural disasters or emergencies, those areas with battery will be a great help to in case of emergencies, as lifeline infrastructure. So we would like to make our best effort to support.

The second is about the Consumer business. So the lack of memories recently and also the memory price hike and the high-end models of handsets are pretty high.

As for SoftBank, how you're going to make sales of handsets moving forward? And regarding the serial switchers measurement -- and also, there is no major change in the smartphones or handset prices it is getting more and more difficult to purchase a handset. So what you're going to measures.

So from the second half of the models of iPhones, and we will have some impact of the price hike of the devices. So for this fiscal year, we will not have much impact on the low-end models. But as for the high-end model, there may be some burden on our customers.

Regarding the serial switches, if the price goes up and there is a certain limit that we can support to reduce the burden on the customers, we need to be able to provide as much support as possible. And also, there should be some rules set and we need to set certain rules for those who are completely opposite side of the serial switches. That's what we need to do.

Next.

Yamamoto from [indiscernible]. Two questions. First, about the PaaS, you mentioned starting charging in August. How would you expect that business to contribute to revenue and profitability? That's the first question.

Yes, since August 1, we have started charging the customers, and we are beginning to record sales. But for the time being, we don't want to disclose in detail because it's unfair to disclose OpenAI based price as we get ready, we will try to disclose as much as possible. But at the moment, our agreement is with customers are based on specific tools in terms and conditions.

Can we expect the revenue or profit next year or the year after?

We expect revenue contribution. In the second half of this fiscal year, but we have not taken into account into our business plan or forecast. But going forward, this business should be all upside to us.

And second question, cloud AI. I think you shared with us the revenue expectation until or for next few years, I think double by FY '30, but -- have you advanced to much earlier year when you expect revenue from cloud AI.

Yes, 2030 number was disclosed when we announced the midterm business plan. And that number was the comfortable level of CFO Akiyama, but me personally, I think that we can do more. But conservatively speaking, we are comfortable with the number as of FY '30. But pace-wise, we can expect accelerating pace of recording revenue.

As we start operating data centers with Infrinia, we can expect the numbers, but together with service offerings like PaaS and together with data center business built with Oracle. So after patching patches are applied, we should help customers to start utilizing cloud and -- that should be handled by Oracle supported data center. So again, we are talking about AI industry, and that's something unique and fast and very expensive, and it's getting started. So I'm confident with future opportunities with the AI business.

I'm [ Suruga ] from [ Nikkei Asia ]. I have a question regarding physical AI initiatives. So the other day, the government also mentioned that this is going to be the core initiatives by the government as well. So from your perspective, how do you evaluate this initiative nationwide and in order to expand this area, what kind of measures should be taken moving forward?

Well, finally started, that's my first impression. Initially regarding the physical AI, well, simply said what sovereign AI is needed, and that's how we started our initiatives. And under such initiatives, combining with the data centers, and that's what Japan is really needed, I thought.

So NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen mentioned exactly the same. So how Japan can succeed in the future? What is the key is that Japan has to manufacture and make things within Japan, not relying on outside of Japan. So manufacturing industry was actually the strongest industry of Japan in the past. So the knowledge accumulated over the years and should not be trained by the overseas AI. So that's my intention from the beginning. And so that's how we started this initiative.

So as Japan as mentioned -- overseas players like OpenAI, Anthropic and so we are often asked whether we can win over them or not. So whether we should do or not, the answer is simple. Yes, we should try, and even though our technology is a year behind or years behind, you never know what will happen in the future. So this is like a backup solution that we have for the future advancement.

So AI -- where AI stands in Japan in the future has a great route in the future. And also, it's a matter of time horizon. If you think about its short period of time, and we can align with those who look at this in 5 or 10 years perspective, so this is like once in generation opportunity for us. So the team that created Sarashina was sent in the front line and to come up with this, the members who created Cotomi of NEC and PLaMo of Preferred and Sarashina of SB Intuitions, the shareholders such as Hitachi, Fujitsu, Sakana AI and Matsuo research institutions. All these brains participated in this initiative. So this is once-in-generation opportunity for us. I strongly believe that, therefore, I would like to make our utmost effort to realize this.

And next, we'd like to take questions from Zoom participants.

[Operator Instructions] First, Masuno-san from Nomura Securities.

I have 2 questions. First, about AI data centers in Japan. The revenue growth that you disclosed today, JPY 174 billion in 2 years, looking more in detail, I think [ Saka's colocation ] could deliver JPY 160 billion or so sales. And sales of GPU could deliver JPY 10 billion, JPY 20 billion. So is that sales from infrastructure rather than sovereign cloud or AI securities?

Masuno-san, you are correct. The disclosed numbers were based upon the contractual basis and contract of the infrastructure business. So PaaS, sovereign AI or software development. We should have a customer first and it's not something that we expect a long-term commitment. So those are upside not included in these numbers.

Second, cloud business in the States. So how are you going to get computing resources? Is it GPU enough? Or the accelerators are needed? How do you acquire those computing resources. And you need hyperscalers to get a nonrecourse of financing by big banks.

So I wonder [indiscernible], [indiscernible]. [indiscernible] has a very sound financial base, but [indiscernible] are skeptical. So again, do you have confidence to get an agreement or contract with the hyperscalers?

While contract with the hyperscalers is something that we need to try to be honest, we have discussed with them a lot. But in [indiscernible] should be able to get computing resources. That's for sure, especially we have a good relationship with NVIDIA in Japan, but also in the States. I think mainly from NVIDIA, we will secure resources and Arm, we could definitely utilize Arm and Google's TPU definitely, that's worth considering.

Again, we are confident that we can get computing resources, but finance, it depends on contracts with offtakers. But difference here, however, is our Infrinia, which is software, specifically for GPU cloud, that means we could utilize one Infrinia resource to multiple customers. In other words, one GPU cloud can be delivered to multiple clients that's different from bare metal base transaction. So I think off-takers can feel comfortable with more light resources. So again, we are working out details. But as far as financing is concerned, nonrecourse should be must. So unless we can put this scheme in place, maybe we should first focus on Japan.

But from hyperscaler perspective, leasing data centers and leasing computing resources are too risk off, but the data center and computing resources as a package, that should be easier for you to get a deal with them. So would that be a separate contracts or same packaged deal?

Well, something unique is we have energies. That's something that we are unique. And GPU and memory, which is in short in general, I think that's true to any operator, but I think we are in advantageous position because we have an Arm in our group whose share in CPU market is relatively high. So we definitely have to work close with Arm.

And if we get long-term commitment, definitely, it will be better to prioritize the customers from a financing perspective. But if the size is small, like 10 mega, 50 mega. If that's the start, SoftBank K.K. can take a risk and start our cloud service business on our own. So I think it's case by case, depending on demand.

Tokunaga-san from Daiwa Securities.

Two questions. First one is to financial discipline. In this quarter, SP.LINKS and Seven & i Holdings and you invested and a big number of month. So I believe that it's quite a high pace in terms of investment. So onwards, data centers and the payment and others. So you have many other areas to investment onwards. So considering the opportunities of investment right now. So do you think you are investing upward?

We are under our discipline in terms of investment and Seven & i Holdings and SP.LINK happen to be at the same time. And with the big amount, by chance, however, the SB Energy return also appeared around the same time. So now it we can say that it's about to scratch. So we had a plan to invest [ JPY 100 billion ]

And the second is about GPU. [ Noetra ] is a nationwide initiative and procuring GPUs. So for now, Sakai is mostly for Noetra or -- so how you're going to allocate GPUs that you're going to procure? Is it only for Noetra or others especially for Sakai?

So as for Noetra project, the GPU that we are going to utilize is the Vera Rubin from NVIDIA, there is about 27,000 and more GPU will be purchased from NVIDIA but these are not owned by SoftBank nor Noetra. This will be owned by the government.

So if we maintain this business model always is not an ideal one. So we would like to rather focus on the situation that Japan is lacking power. And if we are providing the powers only within Japan is going to restrain our business expansion. So we cannot only rely on colocation business. And even though we have secured enough for ourselves. So in the second quarter and onwards, so we are -- we have two other big large data centers in line.

So your own service means -- Patching as a Service that listing like a cloud not training, it's for inference service?

So for inference service includes security service, or customers, companies on AI support or the industry dedicated support. So those models, the ones that we are also getting inquired. So inquiries. So we are thinking about allocating our data center in such use.

Next should be the last question. Kikuchi-san from SMBC Nikko Securities.

I have a question about the cloud AI. You show exciting number like a very high expected revenue, I think like Masuno-san of Nomura Securities questioned earlier, not only infrastructure, but PaaS and Sarashina, you are utilizing a lot of things to deliver services.

So what's your view on the growth of those businesses going forward? And the second question is enterprise income in the midterm business plan, you expect the growth of enterprise business, operating income. So as sales goes up, obviously, income should go up. And AI and cloud when and where you can expect accelerating revenue growth in cloud and AI, is it something like the next fiscal year or later? So again, when do you expect accelerating income growth of AI business?

I don't know if I'll answer to your questions, but just let me share with you what I think. Of the data center that we built, we have data centers for training, which we have been used for development of Sarashina, for example. But now we have confidence in Sarashina we are ready to lease Sarashina to customers that they want to create AI on their own. And we can also provide facility for physical AI in Japan.

And we can also deploy our engineers to support clients. So we can expect revenue from those business and so in 2 years or so, based upon the committed contracts, we expect the numbers that we shared earlier in the midterm business plan. And talking about AI related services, I kept saying that it takes 10 years to create because we want to due end-to-end from infrastructure to service delivery. So that's why I thought it would take 10 years to make it work.

Again in mid long term, I thought that we should have infrastructure to monetize. So again, optical fibers, our data centers, getting our energies we have spent last 5 years to get ready. And the next 5 years, we want to get return from such previous effort. So we have been developing software in the last 5 years. So we start selling software. And we start charging customers that use Software as a Service. So we charge subscription fees to those customers like Patching as a Service.

And we can help modernization of enterprise customers. And we could provide subscription services to those enterprise customers. So revenue, profit, size-wise. I don't think it -- we are ready to share with you. You could imagine from what Google is doing, for example. About the profitability of AI cloud, I think 30% at the minimum. Otherwise, we wouldn't lease.

So if you put a 30% margin, still, I think we can sell it out immediately or in short term. Going forward, we don't know. But -- this is an AI business. And once it's up and running it's not going to be like CapEx heavy -- CapEx intensive industry. So I think I would say, stay tuned. Thank you.

Thank you. We would like to conclude the Q&A session. This concludes SoftBank Corp.'s financial results briefing for the first quarter of fiscal year ending March 31, 2027. A recording of today's briefing will be available on demand on our corporate website at a later time. We hope you will find it useful.

Thank you very much once again for taking the time to attend SoftBank Corp.'s financial results briefing for the first quarter of fiscal year ending March 31, 2027. Thank you.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Thank you very much for waiting. We will now begin SoftBank Corporation's Investor Briefing for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026.

First, I would like to introduce today's participants. Mr. Akiyama, Senior Vice President and CFO, Head of Finance Unit; Mr. Yuki, Head of Corporate Planning; Mr. Sasaki, Head of FP&A, Corporate Planning; Mr. Onoguchi, Head of Accounting and Finance; Mr. Kawamura, Head of Financial Strategy. Today's session is also being broadcast live via the Internet.

Now I would like to invite Mr. Akiyama to present SoftBank's consolidated financial results.

Thank you very much for your coming today. From this time, I will be the main speaker. And some participants on the stage also have changed from the previous session. I would like to introduce myself since this is my very first time.

In 1995, I joined Japan Telecom, was responsible for launching new businesses and related initiatives. And when the SoftBank purchased to Nippon Telecom, and I've been working since 2004. So I've been in this industry for 30 years and for SoftBank, almost 20 years. As you can see, it's my career. My major area is in finance, and since 2023, I've been in the Strategic Finance division. So as my life work, moving forward, I would like to pursue this career. Thank you.

Now I would like to explain. So there are 4 points as executive summaries. First, FY 2025 consolidated results. We were able to achieve full year forecast by balancing growth investments in the AI areas with revenue and profit growth. Second, we announced medium-term management plan. Driven by AI businesses, we aim record profits and continuous dividend increases.

Third, capital allocation policy. We would like to strengthen operating cash flow generation while maintaining disciplined growth investments and strengthening shareholder returns. The fourth, consolidated forecast for FY 2026. So we would like to target profit growth across all segments with Enterprise and Financial segments as core drivers.

So first topic, FY 2025 consolidated results. This is the overall view. Revenue and profit increased, exceeded all forecasts. I will explain the breakdown after this first revenue. We increased in all segments, hitting a record high of JPY 7 trillion. Especially Financial and Distribution recorded 2-digit result growth. In the Media & EC, due to the ASKUL incident, even though excluding this revenue decreased, adjusted EBITDA achieved a full year forecast with record high.

By segment, I will touch upon when I talk about operating income. So here is the operating income. As you can see, Media & EC segment other than these, 4 segments increased and achieved full year forecast. Financial segment doubled. Media & EC decreased, excluding ASKUL. So we maintained the profit.

So now I would like to touch upon by segment. First, revenue. Mobile revenue, which is our core, continued to grow and sales of goods and others recorded double-digit increase.

Next is the Consumer segment mobile revenue trend. As you can see, since FY 2023 third quarter, mobile revenue continued to grow year-on-year on an underlying basis. So there are 2 main factors. One is that customer acquisition measures were taken due to that impact. And next is the access charge was implemented. So JPY 5.7 billion was excluded. So with excluding these 2 factors, so as you can see here on the right side, in the colored chart, over the past 2.5 years, maintained year-on-year growth.

Next, the segment income for Consumer segment. We had profit increase, achieving full year forecast, especially mobile revenue increase contributed to its growth. So sales of goods and others, so JPY 47.7 billion was recorded due to the unit price improvement and electricity decrease in sales, improvement in procurement cost, profit declined due to onetime downturn in Q4.

So due to this onetime factor, so full year, it's about -- so we achieved the gross profit. So sales commissions and sales promotion expenses increased mainly due to expenses for device purchase support program and amortization expenses to capitalize sales commissions. Others due to the inflation increase and network maintenance costs. So this is a onetime factor.

We had this impact in the segment income. In the presentation by President earlier, so the forecast, so the top line will increase due to the price increase. But due to this -- as for the segment forecast, so we would like to -- we expect the stable growth.

Next is Enterprise segment. Revenue and profit both increased and achieved the full year forecast. Revenue exceeded JPY 1 trillion, especially business solutions and others revenue rose 13.2% year-on-year. Here is the business solution and others revenue, especially recurring revenue is where we focus on, and this achieved double-digit growth, rose by 10% year-on-year.

Next, Media & EC segment. Due to the ransomware attack on ASKUL, so we overcame this and all segment revenue increased. On the right side shows segment income. So this time, we have 2 factors. One is the onetime factors. The second left, so some remeasurement gain on step acquisition. The other one is impacted by ransom attack on ASKUL. These 2 factors are very unique. Therefore, we highlighted and also, we can see other business income.

Next, Financial segment. Revenue expanded steadily and segment income doubled, driven by contribution from PayPay consolidated. As you know, PayPay was listed on NASDAQ, March 2026. PayPay continues to be a consolidated subsidiary of the company after the IPO.

On Distribution segment and Others. Distribution revenue and profit increased and revenue exceeded JPY 1 trillion with a steady growth in ICT products and enterprises. And others on the right-hand side show impact from R&D investment.

Now net income. We hit record high achieved full year forecast and grew by 4.7% year-on-year and operating income growth drives this net income, and tax effect of PayPay was reflected here. And capital expenditure, what we'd like you to pay attention to is Consumer and Enterprise, which is at the bottom of the bar.

The full year forecast was JPY 340 billion and we hit in line with the forecast. And others in the bar, most of them is investment in AI. So let me touch upon that more in detail on the next slide.

Status of investment in AI computing infrastructure and AI data centers. For the last 3 years, we invested about JPY 200 billion investment. After FY '26 and onwards, we continue that investment. But also we want to enter into monetization of AI.

This slide shows primary free cash flow. We steadily generated a high level of primary free cash flow. Since we announced end-of-the-year result, we created this waterfall chart. Even after paying dividend, we generated JPY 98.1 billion of free cash flow. Using this capacity, we will invest for financial improvement and the future growth.

And net interest-bearing debt and net leverage ratio is here. Net interest-bearing debt decreased by JPY 60 billion year-on-year. Net leverage ratio declined to 2.2%. That means we have more capacity to finance.

Then balance sheet. Total assets grew by JPY 2.4 trillion, JPY 18.5 trillion of total equity. And we accumulated JPY 214 billion of total equity, and equity ratio was 16% or 1% lower than the previous year, not only having a total equity increase, we have a bigger pie, if you will, to calculate the balance sheet.

So Financial has more impact on balance sheet. So we created a balance sheet, excluding financial business, as you can see on the right-hand side. Excluding Financial domain, shareholder equity ratio was 19.0%. We will continue disclosing this balance sheet, excluding Financial domain as well.

And let me move on to operating data or KPI. The smartphone mobile subscribers grew year-on-year, hitting 32 million at the end of this fiscal year. Short-term churn, we feel impact from that. So smartphone churn rate increased by 0.16% year-on-year, reflecting continued impact of higher early churn, and we are looking at the churn rate around 1.70% or 1.71%.

Next, I want to talk about net additions. So it declined year-on-year following a shift in our acquisition strategy towards focusing on long-term users. So we would like to focus on smartphone churn rate reduction and control over acquisition costs.

Next, I want to talk about ARPU. So excluding retrospective adjustment of access charges, ARPU increased by JPY 20 (sic) [ JPY 30 ]. So consumer ARPU continued to increase. So we recently announced the price -- new price plan as for ARPU for 2026. So we expect that it will increase by [ JPY 30 ].

And next is broadband and electricity and both subscribers continue to increase.

Next, Media & EC, both EC transaction value and group total advertising revenue expanded. So since fourth quarter ASKUL also recovered. So therefore, EC transaction value increased to -- returned to positive.

Next is PayPay. PayPay standalone users increased steadily. So number of payments significantly outpaced the user growth. So it rose in payments per person.

So this is also PayPay. PayPay consolidated, the left side, as you can see, its GMV continued to outpace 20% growth. On the right side, PayPay banks deposits and loan balance sheet showed a steady growth. This is SB Payment Service. So payment service exceeded previous midterm plans business target of JPY 10 trillion in GMV, and it continued as you can see on the right side, especially driven by non-telecom double-digit growth was achieved.

This is ESG-related topics I would like to take some time later on to go through. So in fiscal year 2025, the previous midterm management plans continued are completed. So here is the review. So we revised upward twice and ultimately exceeded.

Here is the business target and its results, especially in blue, we were able to achieve 1 year ahead of schedule. So as you can see, number one, in the consumer, revenue increased for 3 consecutive years as primary cash flow, we were able to have good control over it and we achieved midterm plan targets and delivered high level of dividends for 3 years.

So this is the TSR for the past 3 years. So 50 -- nearly 55% increase during the midterm plan period.

Now let me talk about new midterm management plan. We continue to focus on both mid-term to long-term growth and shareholder returns. This shows financial targets. We aim to achieve record high operating income and net income continuously. For operating income, we want to hit JPY 1.7 trillion. And for net income, we want to hit JPY 700 billion in the 5 years' time.

With regards to shareholder returns, we aim for continuous dividend increases in line with profit growth. For the fiscal year, we want to provide JPY 8.8 per share dividend.

And going forward, as you can see on the right-hand side, in line with the profit growth, we want to return back to shareholders accordingly.

In summary, our financial targets, revenue, operating income, net income, we want to hit record high in all areas. And new midterm management plan, Enterprise segment should be a leader, a growth driver, and AI is entering into monetization phase. Enterprise segment is going to include AI.

And in the Enterprise segment, we restructured sub-segments, especially cloud and AI is the growth driver, and we want to make sure that you can pay more close attention to cloud and AI.

Midterm plan business targets are shown here. For Enterprise, we want to double cloud and AI revenue by FY '30 versus FY '25. And also, we want to double segment income by FY '30 versus FY '25 and other business targets for respective segments are shown on this slide.

Now let me talk about the capital allocation policy. Again, we want to deliver both growth and returns, and we disclosed this capital allocation idea to let you know how we want to achieve both.

First, we want to generate operating cash flow exceeding telecom-related CapEx and enhanced shareholder returns. And also, we want to execute strategic investments while balancing financial soundness and capital efficiency.

Net leverage ratio is one of the index to see the financial soundness and mid-2x range of net leverage ratio is assumption here. With that, we have a capacity of about JPY 1 trillion for investment. With this investment, we want to achieve further growth.

Let me talk more about assumptions of capital allocation. About operating income and dividend, as you can see on the left hand of the slide, we want to achieve record high performance to return back to shareholders and also maintain adjusted net leverage ratio in the mid-2x range is for our financial soundness. And also, we want to maintain consolidated adjusted ROE at around 20%.

Average ROE of Japanese companies are lower in general. But again, we want to deliver a high equity spread as much as possible. You can see comparison between FY '23 to '25 total and FY '26 to '28 total. By monetizing AI, we want to invest more, and we should be able to invest more, and we should be able to return back to shareholders.

And last but not the least, consolidated forecast for FY '26. We want to aim to achieve record high earnings and increase dividends in line with earnings growth. We want to balance growth in existing businesses and monetization of AI with businesses with the continued growth investment in new businesses, including AI, aiming to achieve revenue and profit growth. Our dividend per share is JPY 8.8, like I said earlier.

By segment, we forecast operating income like this. Consumer, while we see increase of sales related cost, but we can expect increase of income by revised price. In the Enterprise segment, again, AI and cloud should be a driver for growth.

In Financial segment, we want to expand payment function. So again, Enterprise and Financial should be a growth driver. But other segments, we also want to increase growth and income. Like Miyakawa-san explained earlier today, for the first half of this fiscal year, we expect growth in revenue, but loss of or decline of profit. But for the last part of this year, we should expect both revenue and profit growth.

Again, in the first half, absence of one-time gains and increase of sales commissions have an impact on profit in the first half, but for the last half of the year, price revisions effect should be stronger, and there should be no onetime factors and impact of sales commission and sales promotion expenses. Those are the key factors for profit growth that we expect in latter half of FY '26.

Again, in the first half of FY '26, we may be a little bit worried about performance. But for the full year, we should be able to hit both revenue and profit growth. That's all myself. And I'd like to take your questions going forward.

[Operator Instructions] Tokunaga from Daiwa Securities.

Mr. Akiyama, thank you so much for your presentation and also continued increased profit and dividend. First question, So JPY 1.7 trillion and increased by JPY 600 billion in profit. So Enterprise doubled, so JPY 200 billion. So the remaining will be covered by Consumer, Financial and Others.

So the Consumer, due to the price increase, will also contribute and the Media & EC if they achieve JPY 100 billion, it should be able to achieve that profit target though. So would you be able to explain your plan for other segments?

So as for the midterm management plan, the breakdown of the segment. So as for the Enterprise segment will be our main driver and profit margin would be higher due to the AI-related businesses.

As for the Consumer segment, due to the new price plan and ARPU also will increase, as I explained earlier, due to the cost increase, so there will be some impact on the cost increase. So consumers growth will be a bit stable.

And Media & EC will continue stable growth and the Financial segment, the payment is doing well. And finance area is highly expected for further growth. The PayPay and LY, they are both listed companies. Therefore, I cannot make solid comments here.

Appreciate your understanding. So per fiscal year, so this fiscal year, so a 6% increase, it could be a little bit lower. What is the reason for this rather lower increase? So the guidance is just conservative, you think?

As for the Enterprise segment, especially AI-related business would be the major driver for growth. So this will actually reflect on the actual profit in the next couple of years. That's why.

The second question is about the Enterprise business. One, so the 20% increase in income. So I think this guidance is very aggressive, I think. What is the reason for that? Second is about the GPU pricing. GPU price change is fluctuating.

So due to the AI-related business. So now AI is under the Enterprise segment. So that would lead to the positive impact to the profit.

So is it going to account for like 50% of the entire Enterprise business?

So I cannot give you the detailed breakdown.

So what about FY 2027 onwards? Is it because of the Crystal intelligence or what is other factors?

Well, GPUs actual operation will start and also Crystal Intelligence will be also more actively sold. So that would be the major factors as well.

Any other question from the venue? If not, let me take questions from Kikuchi-san, SMBC Nikko Securities on the Zoom.

I have 2 questions. First, growth rate of operating income and net income, difference between them. In midterm management plan, operating income increased by JPY 660 billion or so, but net income increased only by JPY 150 billion. For the fiscal year FY '26, do you expect increase of operating income or net income growth rate is smaller than operating income? Miyakawa-san earlier said that you took a conservative view, but I wonder something like increase of financial costs or maybe off balance in midterm, I wonder if you expect more income attributable to third parties as opposed to operating a parent company. So I wonder if there are any other reasons why you are very conservative and cautious about net income.

You questioned about the difference between operating income growth and net income growth. So I believe that you understand some factor is related to our structure like PayPay, which is listed, and we don't expect a huge contribution from them in terms of a consolidated bottom line.

SB OAI, for example, we don't own 100%. So income from SB OAI should be attributable to third parties and also impact from our interest rate can be expected as well. And for FY '25 and FY '26. In FY '25, we had some positive impact from tax effects, which is not there in FY '26.

So there are some uncertainties, but if you hit operating income, you usually expect a substantial net income as well. Don't you think so?

Well, we have set some assumption for calculation. And obviously, increase in bottom line is very important. So we try to increase that income as well as operating income as well.

And next question is about first half of this year and second half of this year. So one-time profit that took place last year is not going to be there, you said, and also increase of sales and general expenses like DOCOMO and KDDI, they did impairment loss of JPY 50 billion of acquisition cost. I think we already did our impairment loss in last year or some years ago. So how much impairment loss you expected to recognize if you do?

Talking about onetime impact, the revaluation gain of LY was onetime factor. If you take a look at Slide 13, we disclosed that on that slide.

LY alone?

Yes. So revaluation of LY was in the last year, but not expected this year. And talking about sales and general expenses, acquisition cost -- capitalized acquisition cost that is, has to be amortized and also support program, provision for support program of device purchase support program is also the impact.

Talking about amortization of the capitalized acquisition cost. Since last half of last year, we revised or changed our acquisition policy or acquisition strategy. So we need to recognize amortization in the last year, but going forward, we should expect lower amortization cost. So in the last -- excuse me, first half, we may need to suffer from amortization cost impairment.

But last half, we should expect lower amortization cost of acquisition costs last -- in the last years. So device purchase support program you mentioned, in the first half year, bigger than last year and smaller than last year in the last half of this fiscal year. And going forward, FY '27 and further away, of course, it depending on upgrade of users.

So should we expect lower cost to support device purchase? Is it going to be ahead this year, but next year and onwards, it's going to go down?

Yes, you're correct. We should expect some improvement next year and onwards.

And the impact from the acquisition cost. So rather than impairment loss recognition like competitors did, is it an issue of balance between impairment loss which we didn't do? Every year we perform impairment test. And for this fiscal year, we didn't see any reason why we needed to do impairment loss. So impact that I'm talking about is amortization. So how much will it be?

In terms of acquisition cost and support program, we refrain from disclosing concrete numbers. I think maybe JPY 20 billion, JPY 30 billion. Well, JPY 20 billion, JPY 30 billion, respectively, for our support program and acquisition cost.

Next, we would like to take a question also from Zoom. Masuno-san from Nomura Securities.

I have asked two questions. One is about the consumer business. ARPU will be up by JPY 160, which is the same as I expected for over 12 months, [ 41 million times ], then the major line will be about JPY 80 billion increase in revenue, then the JPY 9 billion up in profit. So are you going to spend JPY 70 billion? So just before you mentioned like JPY 20 billion to JPY 30 billion for each. So what you are planning to spend the remaining of the JPY 70 billion?

And so I believe that each will increase by JPY 12 billion -- JPY 10 billion, sorry. So next fiscal year. And there will be some impact of the price increases. So I -- if my understanding correct, that the next fiscal year, so the consumer income will increase. As for the incentives, so in FY '24 and '25, when the acquisition measurements were focused on. So therefore, that impact will be reflected and also stable in fiscal year '27 onwards.

And as for Tokusapo, so the impact by Tokusapo will be also stable in '27 and onwards. So there are some factors due to the cost increase. As for the overall segment, we can still expect to have steady growth. So as you said, it will be stable. It means that in the next fiscal year onwards. Now, it's a little too high. Therefore, it will be a little bit lower, the provision of the cost and so on.

You're talking about the fiscal '27?

Yes, slightly decreased.

The second question, the Others segment. So the recent fiscal year was in negative figure, but -- so why the negative figure expand even further? Is that because of AI-related businesses? But -- so I don't see any other businesses which will face bigger negative figures than the AI businesses. So I think AI business is the one to offset the negative figure business areas. So even you have some buffer -- so you always mention like JPY 100 billion. Last year, you also mentioned JPY 100 billion as buffer.

So regarding the others until last fiscal year, so some areas that we invested for development will shift to monetization phase. So other than AI, such as HAPS-related research and development cost is also included here. Having said that, it's not all ready for commercialization.

So even though we still have some buffer as we move forward with our businesses, there may be some we will be using, but some will not be used. So about JPY 100 billion buffer is something that we can use for the future. So we would like to maintain this much as buffer for the future development.

So regarding the storage battery, so you are collaborating with others. That's why this business is not going to face the big negative figure. Is that correct?

Yes.

Next question is Mr. Okumura from Okasan Securities.

A question -- or two questions about the midterm management plan. First, enterprise and revenue of the cloud AI should be doubled, you said. And as a service, AI data center, sovereign cloud and in Crystal Intelligence, I think depending on the services, when you can expect our revenue or profit is different. So again, which of the sub-segments that you expect revenue earlier than others, for example, to hit JPY 200 billion?

I think your question about the growth and -- or growth speed of cloud AI. As you said, we want to leverage GPUs that we have been building up, and Crystal Intelligence are expected the growth driver. And FY '27, somebody asked about the gap of income between FY '26 and '27. We will begin monetization phase in FY '26, but it will be up and running in full scale in FY '27. So that's our assumption.

Crystal Intelligence, for example, I think usage fee is JPY 30 billion or something. So I wonder if that's an assumption or, again, how much contribution expect from different subsegments?

Well, for Crystal Intelligence, in midterm management plan, we see crystal intelligence conservatively. So you don't expect a huge contribution from Crystal Intelligence in the midterm business plan.

And next is about the dividend. So it's great that you increase -- you plan to increase dividend in the long run. But EPS, how did you calculate EPS in terms of relation to net income?

Dividend ratio is -- it looks downward trend, but I don't know how you calculated earnings per share.

As you can see, payout ratio is a little bit going down, but as we mentioned in the capital allocation section, we want to achieve both growth and return. So that's the balance that we look at in calculating and expecting earnings per share.

Payout ratio. What would be the ideal payout ratio is something that we still have discussion internally. But in FY '30, I think this kind of balance should be good as you see on the slide.

So balance between EPS and net income, depending on cash flow, is it possible that you paid dividend more than shown here?

So your question is if we have more cash, are we prepared to pay more dividend?

Yes. For example, even though net income was JPY 700 billion, you may pay dividend as much as JPY 10, or those numbers you've shown on the slide are fixed?

Well, in theory, if there's nothing to invest, we should return to shareholders. But as you can see, we continue -- we want to continue investment for future growth. So I don't think that we have a huge bandwidth to increase our dividend if we don't have enough net income.

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] This concludes the Q&A session. That concludes today's investor briefing for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026. A recording of today's session will be made available on demand on our website at a later time. Thank you very much for joining us today for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026 Investor Briefing.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Thank you very much for your patience. We will now begin SoftBank Corp's earnings results presentation for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026. First, I'd like to introduce today's participants. Mr. Shimba, Chairman of the Board; Mr. Miyakawa, President and CEO; Mr. Takashima, Senior Executive Vice President and COO, Consumer Business Head; Mr. Sakurai, Senior Executive Vice President and COO, Enterprise Business Head; Mr. Akiyama, Senior Vice President and CFO.

Today's presentation is being broadcast live via the Internet. Now I'd like to invite Mr. Miyakawa to present the overview of SoftBank's consolidated results and business operations.

My name is Miyakawa. Thank you very much for joining us today. Today, I'd like to cover not only our FY '25 financial results, but also a review of our previous midterm management plan and an explanation of our new medium-term management plan. So the presentation will be slightly longer than usual, but I would appreciate your attention through to the end. First, I will explain our FY '25 consolidated results. Revenue increased 8% year-on-year to JPY 7,038.7 billion, reaching a record high. We thought that exceeding JPY 7 trillion might be pushed back to next fiscal year, but we were able to achieve to reach JPY 7 trillion.

Revenue increased in all segments. Both Enterprise segment and Distribution segment exceeded JPY 1 trillion for the first time. This means we now have 4 businesses within the group with revenue on the scale of JPY 1 trillion. Operating income increased 5% year-on-year to JPY 1,042.6 billion. Looking at operating income by segment, Media & EC recorded a decline due to the impact of the ransomware attack at ASCO, which had an impact of more than JPY 30 billion. However, all other segments posted a profit growth. Enterprise and Distribution achieved double-digit growth, while Financial more than doubled. Net income increased 5% year-on-year to JPY 550.8 billion, reaching a record high. Primary free cash flow reached a record high of JPY 633.6 billion. We continued to generate a high level of primary free cash flow.

This is a summary of our consolidated results. As you can see, we achieved both revenue and profit growth. Regarding dividends, we plan to pay JPY 8.6 per share, in line with our forecast at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Next, let me look back, our previous medium-term management plan, which we announced in May 2023. First, operating income during the previous medium-term management plan. As you can see, we exceeded our initial forecast for 3 consecutive fiscal years. The same was true for net income. We exceeded our initial forecast for 3 consecutive fiscal years. FY '25 was the target year to hit the financial goals under the previous medium-term management plan, and we were able to exceed those targets. As shown here, we also achieved all our business targets by segments.

CapEx was affected by the weaker yen and inflation. Even so, on a 3-year average basis, we were able to keep CapEx below JPY 330 billion per year level. For primary free cash flow as well, we consistently generated more than JPY 600 billion annually. Regarding dividends, we maintained JPY 8.6 per share and continued to provide a high level of shareholder returns. For our nonfinancial target, the effective renewable energy ratio, we achieved our FY '25 target 1 year ahead of schedule. The FY 2030 target will be replaced with the nonfinancial targets under the new medium-term management plan. I will explain this later.

To summarize the previous medium-term management plan, we achieved all our financial and nonfinancial targets. During this plan, the business environment changed dramatically, including price reductions, war, weaker yen and inflation. However, we managed to overcome these challenges and deliver results. Looking at this from a 10-year cycle perspective, because this 3-year period included price reductions, we honestly expected management conditions to be extremely difficult. However, we were able to avoid any deterioration, achieve a V-shaped recovery and deliver record high profit. This has given us great confidence. In the second half of the cycle, we intend to take a more proactive approach and move forward aggressively.

From here, I will explain our next medium-term management plan. First, let me start with changes in the business environment. Looking back over the past 5 years with the emergence of ChatGPT and Gemini, it has been a period of training where AI models. In other words, AI brains were developed around the world. We expect this development competition to continue going forward. At the same time, over the next 5 years, we believe the key will be how to implement AI in society and actually make use of it. In other words, inference will become increasingly important.

If we look ahead in the future, autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots will become widely adopted as services. These systems will operate by making real-time inferences such as avoiding obstacles, predicting risks and understanding their surroundings and making decisions accordingly. We also expect that when these robots are not in use, such as during charging, they will be connected to AI data centers and will continue to learn and improve automatically on a daily basis. In other words, AI will be used everywhere in daily life, and we are entering an era in which inference becomes central to AI.

With this future in mind, over the past 5 years we have been building next-generation social infrastructure from both hardware and software perspectives. Under the next medium-term management plan, we will move into the phase of implementing AI in society on top of this infrastructure. Until now, we have been making upfront investments in the AI domain, and we are now entering the phase of monetization.

From here, I will explain the specific details of the medium-term management plan. This is the 10-year plan we presented 5 years ago. The current medium-term management plan represents Phase 3 of the road map toward realizing our long-term vision. We have been promoting our Beyond Carrier strategy as our growth strategy. With the announcement of the new medium-term management plan, we've revised this framework.

Telecommunications will continue to serve as the foundational infrastructure. On top of that, AI infrastructure and AI services will be added. Furthermore, the Financial and Media & EC layers will be built on top of this structure. In addition to these existing businesses, we will also challenge new business areas under the keywords, AX and GX. Going forward, we will provide detailed explanations of each business as preparations are completed. On this structure, all businesses will evolve through integration with AI.

We will activate the potential of AI across all businesses and promote its implementation in society. We call this strategy Activate AI for Society, and we will drive it forward. The positioning of this medium-term management plan is to realize our long-term vision through the promotion of Activate AI and to enhance corporate value. In addition, we've revised our materiality to enhance corporate value and contribute to the realization of a sustainable society. Under this new medium-term management plan, we aim to achieve consolidated operating income of JPY 1.7 trillion in FY 2030. We'll target a compound annual growth rate of 10% and continue to aim for record high profits.

Our target for net income is JPY 700 billion in FY 2030. We'll also aim to continuously achieve record high net income. It could be a little bit lower in gross worth, but this is related to dividend. So we make it as a conservative target. We will aim to continuously achieve record high net income.

Regarding dividends, over the past 5 years we prioritized investment for growth and therefore kept dividends flat. Starting in FY 2026, we plan to increase the dividend to JPY 8.8 per share and aim to continue increasing dividends over the following 5 years. As a reference, we are considering JPY 9 per share when net income reaches JPY 600 billion and JPY 10 per share when net income reaches JPY 700 billion. If profits exceed expectations, we'll also consider additional shareholder returns.

The key driver of performance under this medium-term management plan will be the Enterprise segment. So I will begin by explaining our strategy for this segment. To make our Enterprise growth strategy easier for investors to understand, we have decided to revise our segment structure. Previously, the following businesses were included in others as they were in the investment phase, AI-related software development in cloud, AI computing infrastructure and AI data centers. Now that these businesses are entering into the commercialization phase, we have integrated them into the Enterprise segment. We have also revised our subsegment disclosure.

We will newly disclose the cloud and AI domain, which we would like investors to focus on going forward. This includes key growth areas such as AI computing infrastructure, AI data centers, sovereign cloud and Cristal intelligence and security. We aim to significantly expand enterprise revenue with cloud and AI as the main growth driver. Currently, revenue stands at approximately JPY 245.5 billion, mainly from cloud services provided by Microsoft and Google. We plan to double this driven by AI data centers and our own cloud business.

As for operating income, we have achieved a compound annual growth rate of around 10% over the past 5 years. Going forward, we plan to increase this to 15% and aim to double operating income compared to FY '25. As shown here, our enterprise growth strategy is to expand solutions business while maintaining stable growth in telecommunications and significantly grow cloud and AI.

From here, I will explain how we plan to expand this cloud and AI business. First, the AI computing infrastructure we have been investing in with more than 10,000 GPUs will enter into monetization phase starting this fiscal year. Next, the Tomakomai AI data center is scheduled to begin operations in FY '26. It will adopt a modular container-based structure, allowing us to expand capacity in line with demand. We will start with a scale of 50 megawatts and aim to expand to 300 megawatts. The Sakai AI data center is scheduled to begin operations in FY '27. Due to its larger scale, the time line has been slightly extended and it will start at approximately 140 megawatts.

By combining these AI data centers with our cloud services, including Infrinia, we will provide AI services to approximately 3,000 enterprise customers with whom we already have relationships across 15 critical infrastructure sectors. In addition, we will drive monetization by leveraging our in-house LLM Sarashina, training it with industry-specific and company-specific data and providing tailored models. In addition, Cristal intelligence is now ready to launch. As previously announced, preparations for the service rollout are progressing steadily.

Finally, let me clarify the positioning of our cloud AI services. This chart shows company size on the vertical axis and the data sensitivity on the horizontal axis. For customers handling highly sensitive data, we will propose sovereign cloud solutions regardless of company size, providing a secure environment for data utilization. For larger enterprises, we will offer Cristal intelligence to support their business transformation. In addition, under our multi-AI, multi-cloud approach, we will provide a wide range of cloud and AI services tailored to customer needs. We will deliver these services in an end-to-end manner based on company size and data sensitivity to meet all customer requirements.

Next, I will explain the Consumer segment. The business target for the Consumer segment in FY 2030 is to achieve continued growth in telecommunication service revenue. We also aim to achieve steady growth in operating income. To support this continued growth, we will focus on expanding adoption of the new pricing plans announced last month, leveraging our group ecosystems and strengthening engagement with long-term users. Looking ahead to 2030, we will further evolve our consumer services. Currently, our services are centered on smartphone apps. Going forward, however, AI with lifelong memory will stay close to users and support all aspects of their daily lives.

Customer touch point will also evolve. Today, customer interactions mainly focus on smartphones, broadband, electricity services and the group ecosystem. By utilizing AI to improve efficiency, we will create more time to propose new AI-driven lifestyles to our customers. Our network will also continue to evolve towards 2030. Originally, networks were designed to connect voice communications. With the spread of the Internet, they evolved into infrastructure for transporting data, in other words, bits.

In the coming era of coexistence with AI, infrastructure capable of transporting tokens will become essential. Over the next 5 years, we will complete the evolution toward a next-generation infrastructure. Specifically, as shown on the left, we will build an end-to-end network from the brain data center to devices where AI autonomously optimizes the entire system, enabling us to provide the optimal service to all user segments.

This is a summary slide. The Consumer segment will further evolve beyond its traditional smartphone-centric model. Building on the business foundations we have established, we will transform into an AI platform that supports every aspect of people's daily lives and aim for further growth.

Next, I will explain the financial segment. The goal of the Financial segment is to achieve continued growth in both the payments domain and financial services. We were listed on the NASDAQ market on March 12. Taking this as an opportunity, we'll pursue global business expansion. At the same time, we'll continue to launch new services in Japan. As part of our initiatives for further growth in the payments domain, we aim to strengthen online payments and expand credit-based payments to grow interest income.

In financial services, we'll focus on growing interest income, particularly through lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises. In addition, we'll further enhance collaboration within the group, including initiatives such as Pay-toku and the joint rollout of payment terminals. In February, we entered into a strategic partnership agreement with Visa centered on the payments business. Through this partnership, we will strengthen collaboration in Japan and also take on the challenge of expanding globally.

Next, I'll explain the Media & EC segment. In the Media & EC segment, there was an impact of JPY 32.6 billion from the ransomware incident at ASCO, resulting in a 7% decline in profit. However, excluding this impact, profit increased by 6%. As this impact will no longer continue into this fiscal year, we expect profit growth of around 10%. Going forward, our business objective is to drive both enhancement of customer experience and business growth through AI agents. So last Friday, Idezawa, CEO of LY Corporation explained, "We expect to leverage our advantageous position of having over 100 million users in Japan to drive further growth."

From here, I will discuss our initiatives for the mid- to long-term growth. We are building AI infrastructure that will be essential in a society where humans and AI coexist. To achieve this, we are working backward from the components required. At the core of this initiative is the AI data center in Sakai, Osaka. This slide shows the overall concept on a site of approximately 450,000 square meters equivalent to about 10 Tokyo domes. We plan to build an AX factory and the GX factory centered around an AI data center.

First, the AX factory will promote projects as shown here. Investment in the 4-story AI data center is already included in the medium-term management plan. This AI data center is planned to have a computing capacity of 110 exaflops, equivalent to approximately 100,000 H200 GPUs of NVIDIA with a receiving power capacity of around 140 megawatts. We are proceeding with the construction, targeting completion in FY '27.

As for the GX factory, in addition to manufacturing next generation batteries, we also plan to manufacture next generation solar cells. First, I will explain the innovative batteries, which are already included in the medium-term management plan. We issued a press release earlier today. The technology we are developing is the zinc-halogen battery, which integrates advanced technologies derived from both liquid and solid battery systems. This is the first technology of its kind in the world to reach a commercial level. This zinc-halogen battery uses pure water as its electrolyte, making it a nonflammable structure.

Compared with lithium batteries, it offers significantly higher safety. In addition, its energy efficiency is more than 10% higher than that of the latest lithium batteries projected for 2027, making it a highly performing product. We will not only develop and manufacture battery cells, but also handle packaging it energy storage systems and domestic production. Furthermore, we will provide an energy management system to control these storage systems. This system visualizes power supply and demand and uses AI developed in-house based on approximately 10 years of experience in the power business to perform highly accurate demand forecasting. We will promote the entire value chain of the domestic battery business on an end-to-end basis from development to domestic manufacturing.

In terms of product lineup, in addition to residential use to the left, we are preparing products for commercial and grid scale applications. Regarding our production schedule, we will begin construction of a mega factory for battery cell production this fiscal year and start production of 100-megawatt hour in FY '27. We will also begin construction of a gigafactory in FY '27 with plans to expand capacity to 1 gigawatt hour in FY '28 and 2 gigawatt hour in FY '29. The batteries we manufacture will be deployed sequentially at our own AI data centers and mobile base stations to address our internal demand before expanding to customers.

We will also expand into the grid scale market where demand is strong. In addition, leveraging our own sales channels, we will provide these solutions to both residential and corporate customers. Over the long term, we aim to monetize this business globally, targeting revenue on the scale of several hundred billion yen. Until now, our growth has been primarily driven by domestic demand. But going forward, we aim to become a company that generates foreign currency earnings and evolve into an indispensable company for Japan.

Next, I'll explain our ESG management. In addition to the business growth driven by AI that I have described so far, we'll continue to promote initiatives that contribute to the realization of a sustainable society. In this midterm management plan, even as we expand AI data centers and related businesses, we are committed to maintaining our target of achieving carbon neutrality by FY 2030. Since May 2021, we've set a target of achieving carbon neutrality by FY 2030 and have been working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, as I mentioned earlier, with the full-scale expansion of AI data centers going forward, greenhouse gas emissions will inevitably increase as we aim to achieve both enhancement of corporate value and sustainable society. We will combine initiatives such as our next-generation batteries and our in-house energy management system to offset this increase and continue to uphold our carbon neutrality target.

Next, I'll explain our approach to capital allocation. With the announcement of this new midterm management plan, we have clarified our approach to capital allocation. This chart shows the cumulative figures for the 3 years from FY 2026 to FY 2028. First, operating cash flow generated from the Consumer and Enterprise segments, operating cash flow, I mean, is expected, supported by stable revenue from telecommunications as well as monetization of AI data centers. That is expected to total of JPY 3.4 trillion. Using this cash as a source, we will invest approximately JPY 500 billion annually in capital expenditures while also continuing to increase dividends.

To further enhance corporate value, we'll pursue both financial soundness and capital efficiency while executing JPY 1 trillion in strategic investments. At this stage, JPY 0.3 trillion has already been committed, including, as you can see on the right top, the Sakai data center and the initial 50-megawatt phase of the Tomakomai data center and innovative battery production lines. For the remaining JPY 0.7 trillion, we will make investment decisions carefully based on returns.

Even after executing these investments, we expect to maintain our financial discipline, keeping our leverage ratio in the mid-2x range. In addition, from a capital efficiency perspective, we will manage the business with an awareness of achieving an ROE of around 20%. We will continue to focus on both growth and shareholder returns as we aim to maximize corporate value.

Next, I will explain our forecast for FY 2026. Our FY 2026 forecast is as shown here. We are planning for both revenue and profit growth again this fiscal year. Operating income by segment is as shown here. The Enterprise and Financial segments are expected to grow by around 20% and will drive overall performance. We've also allocated approximately JPY 100 billion for others and growth investments, which we will utilize effectively to enhance corporate value.

Let me briefly comment on our quarterly outlook for consolidated operating income. In the previous fiscal year on LINE Yahoo!, there was gains from revaluation associated with the consolidation of LINE MAN and Bank Taiwan. These gains will not recur this fiscal year. In addition, in the Consumer segment, there will be an impact from deferred acquisition costs, which is noncash, but will act as a downward pressure on profit. As a result, we expect a year-on-year decline in profit in the first half. From the second half however, as these factors subside, we expect steady profit growth, leading to full year profit growth overall.

Finally, let me summarize today's presentation. We will promote our growth strategy, Activate AI for Society, and aim to maximize corporate value. Our financial targets for FY 2030 are operating income of JPY 1.7 trillion and net income of JPY 700 billion, and we will continue striving to achieve record high results. As for nonfinancial targets, we will maintain our commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by FY 2030. Regarding shareholder returns, over the next 5 years we aim to continue increasing dividends.

This concludes my presentation. Thank you very much for your attention.

[Operator Instructions]

[ Yamamoto ] from [ Nikkei Paper ]. I have 2 questions. First, about the new midterm management plan, top line of Consumer business and the target of acquisition are not presented. I wonder why. And still, how much growth you can expect in the Consumer business, which is currently facing challenge? And I think for the next 5 years will be the term of active investment. So how do you maintain financial discipline while making the proactive investment in the next 5 years or so?

Thank you for your question. About Consumer business, showing the top line you said, in the past we talked about the net additions and the revenue, those were the way we presented for the top line of the Consumer business. But as you said, Consumer business is facing challenges while we are looking at the reduction of population and so-called hopping users. So looking ahead 5 years, it's very difficult to predict what will happen in the Consumer business market. But we have a pride to continuously grow revenue and profit, which is true to all segments. So all we need to do is to deliver results every year.

Along with the line we presented today to talk about our thoughts we have Mr. Takashima, Head of Consumer Business. So let me introduce a new COO and Head of Consumer Business.

Thank you, Miyakawa-san, for the introduction. My name is Takashima, very nice to meet you. Like Mr. Miyakawa said, again, we are facing a very challenging market, but I believe that we are taking a proactive approach to deal with so-called hopping users. But we make sure that we will hit both revenue and profit growth. So that's for Consumer business question. And next, investment in AI and going forward and financial discipline. There is a strong demand for data centers. And I mentioned that we invested in over 100,000 GPUs, and these capacities have been already sold out. About 100,000 in Sakai and more capacity in Tomakomai will be available.

From global standard, it's not huge in terms of capacity. But since the can is slow, we have been carefully thinking when we will start taking acceleration. Now we are looking at offtakers. So we are now planning the next investment plan. So we are currently looking at so-called neoCloud. There are a lot of companies doing neoCloud. Some buy land and build data centers and others offer just hardware or buildings, so hyperscalers can bring in their computing infrastructure in there. But the margin is very small in those businesses. So chip and system is going to be built in our own data centers and to be offered as a cloud service. That's something that we are beginning to roll out. So that approach, we will continue to look ahead.

In terms of 1 gig, if you invest in chip and system, it will cost JPY 6 trillion, JPY 7 trillion of capital expenditure. If it's 3 gig, it will cost us about JPY 20 trillion in terms of investment. We know that it's going to be necessary in Japan, but doing by own ourselves will be very challenging. So we are open to either on balance or off balance. As our financial strategy, again, regardless of on balance or off balance, we will build whatever is needed. So I hope that I answered your question.

Next question.

I'm [ Rai ] from [ Diamond ]. Two questions. First, about AI-related investment. In the presentation, [ just before 26 to 30 ], you will be investing [ JPY 1 trillion ] and then JPY 300 billion will be invested for Tomakomai and Sakai. What about the remaining of the investment? Can you break down a bit? Would you add investment in Sakai more? Would you be able to share more information on that?

And so JPY 1 trillion for AI-related investment, I personally feel it's a little too small. So you -- it will be around JPY 6 trillion to JPY 7 trillion fully invested in the data centers you mentioned, but you will be watching off balance and on balance, so which I understand, but how much do you really think that will be actually needed will be JPY 6 trillion or JPY 7 trillion, but you are planning to invest around JPY 1 trillion. What is the scale of the investment related to AI? That's my first question.

So let me explain slowly. So JPY 700 billion at Sakai, AX factory and GX factory will be constructed, as I mentioned. The technologies are in line. So next is the production level. We are now doing some verification. When it is feasible in the business-wise, then we will be discussing in the executive level, but there will be a couple of hundred billion or so. So so far, we were spending JPY 300 billion or so for the telecommunications operations areas. And so I recently calculate and realize that so this is more efficient.

So looking at Sakai, the maximum CapEx investment, we expect another JPY 100 billion or so would be sufficient to cover. But the data center is the largest one. So in Osaka case, even though we prepared the structure, I mentioned that we'll be using 100,000 GPUs in Sakai, so the bottleneck is the power supply. So therefore, considering the limitation of the power supply, and so we need to invest in the power supply related for another JPY 200 billion or JPY 300 billion or so. And after 2030, extra power supply will not be provided.

So another breakdown is that we are also thinking about M&A in the future. Therefore, we expect some buffer in our investment budget as well. So regarding on balance and off balance, so when there is land and structure, that is a conventional data center, which is not a big business to do. So for 1 gigawatt, I said JPY 6 trillion to JPY 7 trillion of investment may need it. And under that JPY 2 trillion will be for land and structure. The remaining -- the biggest one is for the chips. And recently, the price of memories is getting higher and now tripled recently. So this price would go increase further. So just to procure chips and memories, we may face the shortage of the budget.

But these things will be most likely to be prepared by customers. And we are not going to have the exclusivity with a certain customer for our data centers. So when we -- so we also provide cloud services. And also Infrinia that we developed. So probably among JPY 700 billion, what we have to bear will be a couple of JPY 10 billion or so. So we also include some buffer in this figure. We may do some M&A in the future, but we are now -- we can now say that we have like JPY 300 billion or so.

Just to confirm what you said, GPUs and memory I had thought that you would be investing in those areas as well. So you are not going after the [ Gaffer ] model. Is that correct?

Two ways to think about that. One is that in order for us to realize next-generation infrastructure, so the features needed will be covered under our investment. So that's why we had invested in those. But moving forward for cloud business, even though we deal with the customers directly, GPUs will be owned by our customers themselves. Then we were just providing space for them to set their GPUs. So there are many different ways. So among JPY 500 billion of CapEx annually, we will be doing investment as needed. But as for cloud business, we believe there will be case by case. So I think there will be more cases for off balance.

That being said, so JPY 1.5 trillion, as you mentioned in the bottom, so this -- under this memory and chips are included?

So this is just a case by case. It could be included in case.

And the second question is that the participating in the business in the cells manufacturing. So Japanese companies are less investing in the lithium batteries these days. So what is the reason why you made a decision to manufacture the cells? I think it's better off to procure from others. It could be a risk, I believe. So what is the reason for participating in the cell industry?

So what we would like to do is to visualize power demand and supply in Japan. To realize this, we have been making software and then started operating with AI. So now we have foundation. So in the Tomakomai data center, and so the first generation of the system is going to be implemented. So whether we could control to visualize power supply and demand, we would like to conduct testing. So we would like to make the power -- domestic power supply and demand visualize.

So looking at the cost of the cells because Japan is mostly relying on importing. So globally, not many countries have realized the importance of this. So we would like to take initiative to verify this. And when we look at -- looking at the lithium batteries, the most raw materials are imported from China. If something happens to this international relationship or environment, we will not be able to achieve our aim. So we are able to procure all the necessary materials for this new innovative battery. So in the next 10 or 20 years ahead, the domestic batteries made from domestic materials and domestically manufactured batteries will be one of the models for the future in Japan.

So this is what I want to achieve ultimately, if we can improve our capacity where we can even export those overseas. So for now, our company is relying on our domestic demand. So such company, if we try to keep growing further, it will be much burden on our customers. So it will be a new challenge for us. So within our capacity, we would like to keep challenging.

Going back to my previous question about AI server manufacturing, are you considering that as well?

Well, it's been announced, but we have been thinking about that. However, nothing has been materialized yet. Therefore, I want to refrain from making any solid comment here. Our group company, Arm is challenging chips manufacturing, also Rapidus, where we invest in, also trying to manufacture chips. So only manufacturing chips doesn't call any demand. So someone has to play a role to roll out those products to the market. So we have relationships with those partner companies. We may have opportunities. Therefore, we have started considering that as well, but nothing has been decided.

Any other questions from the audience in the venue?

[ Onno ] from [ Yomiri Newspaper ]. I also have a question about battery. What's the significant of doing in Sakai? You mentioned that you wanted AI factory in Sakai. Are you building a manufacturing line based on assumption that AI factory will be the facility over there? In the context of manufacturing sector in Japan, are you going to create a manufacturing business based on an assumption that AI factory is going to be used?

I mentioned before that industrial complex, that's the concept I mentioned. And industries benefit from AI can grow in the next generation. That's the concept that I mentioned before and that's the concept that I want to materialize in Sakai. On the whole floor, we want to build GPUs to build an AI brain, if you will. That's something that we are working on. But Sakai is huge. Then I think 7 out of 8 can be empty because it's too huge. That's something that we were afraid of. Battery will be the beginning of Sakai's launch. But by end of this fiscal year, I think that we can talk about more different industries. We are looking at getting it into good shape.

But in the future, like industry factories in Japan over the coastal line. And if we have AI brain in those previous industrial complex and the new industries are reborn by taking advantage of AI is something that we can build as a business model for the future Japan. So taking Sakai as a trigger or beginning, we want to try a lot of new things.

Talking about the battery, so the expertise that you have built in creating batteries, are you going to offer or sell to other companies?

Well, in terms of building cells, we want to build expertise in materials and also chemical reaction or chemicals. We don't expect them to evolve significantly, but robots can be utilized to build a lot of things by using AI brain. So this can be a potential business model going forward. So I wonder if manufacturing is good, agriculture is good or fishery is good. Whenever industries are close to AI, I believe that they will grow further.

Next question.

[ Jaima ] from [ Toyo Keizai ]. Two questions about cloud AI. So your strategy against the hyperscalers the other day, so you also announced with the Microsoft the other day. And your source will be linked to Microsoft. And how -- what is the background of reaching this agreement with Microsoft or announcement partnership with the Microsoft? Also the sovereign cloud collaboration with Oracle announced recently. And so what is your thought of the strategy of collaboration with those hyperscalers.

And the next question is about in the AI infrastructure area. So NTT KDDI also announced about the distributed AI data centers recently. So what is your thought on the midterm perspective? Where will be the competitive area? So what is the uniqueness of your offering?

To answer your first question, the collaboration with hyperscalers. Now B2B is mainly used for -- used by AI. And Japanese companies are to use AI more and more in the future. So there are many different areas of AI, but -- so there has been various discussions about data sovereignty. So I have been also emphasizing on the data sovereignty. So now I see some needs or demand coming. So since we do -- since there is an environment that we have, that's why they have been contacting us. But in the future, they will be having their own environment. In the near future, there will be also a competition as well.

Regarding the Oracle, same as I just explained. However, the contract type is very different from with Microsoft. Therefore, with Oracle, like so the environment is different from Microsoft or Google. But sovereign data center or sovereign AI is major keywords. This has been penetrated up to now.

To answer your second question about competition in Japan. So distributed AI data centers have been discussed over past 5 years and it has been quite active. And I am not talking about something special. So other carriers also being building AI data centers. Even so, AI data centers, the number of AI data centers is not enough in Japan. So it's even less than half of what's available in the U.S. So there will be more companies doing this. So that will also improve the competition among us in Japan. So I think that will boost our entire environment. So I think it's a good thing.

So what is the uniqueness advantages of SoftBank?

So the data center are providing with bare metal and the neoCloud is different. So like the neoCloud, like CoreWeave is doing. So it's very rare in the world. So our software called Infrinia, this is OS, and we have invested and then developed ahead of the others.

In the interest of time, we're going to take one last question from the venue.

[ Chikiguchi ] from [ Ketai Watch ]. First question is about the CapEx. You talked a lot about investment in AI, but telecom and Enterprise, you mentioned that over JPY 330 billion level of CapEx for the last few years, and it will go up to JPY 440 billion level something. So in what areas you plan to invest in whether it be 6G or AI-RAN?

First, submarine cables. I think JPY 40 billion every year is what we are anticipating because there's a huge demand for submarine cables. So we want to invest proactively. And also, we need to build a very robust network that distributed base stations and cell sites, and we want to enhance existing network, which requires investment as well.

And talking about AI-RAN, I think we want to roll out a little bit further ahead. We are preparing for that. But in our concept of capital allocation, we don't have a huge investment in AI-RAN in our capital allocation concept. Investment AI-RAN is something is to be used for us to use on our own as opposed to source from external vendors.

Next question is about LINEMO started when you became CEO, it's been 5 years. So may I ask you about LINEMO, including customer base, customer numbers, price plans, et cetera. So going forward, what's your plan for LINEMO? Just like a SoftBank brand, are you thinking about increasing the price for LINEMO? Do you have any plans or ideas?

Well, the most important point from you is whether we have plan to increase the price? No. Because this is an online dedicated brand. So if we only focus on our profit, then we would like to be a little bit more patient in terms of increasing the price for LINEMO. The future of LINEMO. Well, since Chairman, Mr. Shimba is here. He has been in the consumer business for so long.

Well, thank you. This is Shimba. Well, nothing has been fixed for now as a strategy for -- so our mobile business has been 20 years, and it's been 5 years since we launched LINEMO. So in the AI era, new -- as a new life producer, we would like to reflect the voice of our customers. And then with the new COOs, we would like to -- what is the best -- what the best for us. We would like to make the solid plan. But as of today, as CEO Miyakawa mentioned that there is nothing fixed as of today.

So in April, the new price plan was announced. So the network system will have some -- need some cost as well. And even though you said that you're not going to increase the price for LINEMO in the meantime, but to increase the revenue and profit, do you have any other plans? And what is your thought on increasing the price this time?

LINEMO is the brand that we do not see a big increase in the number of subscribers yet. Our 2 big brands, SoftBank and Yahoo! are our major brands. So we have been discussing what would be the best way to do, and we need -- we are considering that as well. And as for price increase, we tried not to increase the price to the very last minute, but also looking at other carriers' actions. But due to the inflation, we came to the point where we had to give up on not increasing the price ultimately. So of course, we had to do our best, but it was our very last throw to increase the price.

But are we going to do the same with LINEMO? That has -- nothing has been decided with LINEMO yet. But we may be discussing increasing the price of LINEMO in the future or not, it could be sometime far future.

That was the last question from the venue. Next, we'd like to take questions from participants via the Zoom. In the interest of time, we want to take only one person from Zoom. Masuno-san from Nomura Securities.

First, for the FY '26 and next midterm management plan. First, in the next year, I think JPY 100 billion can be expected in terms of revenue growth and JPY 100 billion of loss in other segment. But Enterprise is in good shape. So what do you think about JPY 100 billion loss in others?

For next fiscal year, I'm going to ask CFO, new CFO, Akiyama, to talk about the numbers in next fiscal year. For this fiscal year, because of the financial treatment of acquisition cost, we may have to do or go slowly in the first half of this fiscal year, but we expect numbers coming up next year. About JPY 100 billion of R&D, for example, we expect to use some of them, but we are not going to probably use up JPY 100 billion, but you never know until you close the books. So we want to run the business conservatively. That's why we budget JPY 100 billion of -- Akiyama-san, you may want to add color.

Impact from revised price plan. So maybe we are looking at about JPY 100 billion in this fiscal year. But next year, I think we can deliver the numbers that you mentioned. The latter half of FY '26, we expect incurring less cost. So I think we can deliver more numbers in next fiscal year. About the loss in other sector, JPY 100 billion of loss. Since we want to have a buffer for proactive investment, we expect JPY 100 billion of loss in other sector.

Next question is about next midterm management plan. I think JPY 1.5 trillion of pretax and Finance, Media EC, JPY 600 billion. The remaining JPY 900 billion will be your own. So I think pretax profit will be JPY 600 billion. But I wonder the relationship between net income and dividend, JPY 600 billion for JPY 9 per share or JPY 700 billion for JPY 10 per share you mentioned.

So we want to increase -- excuse me, dividend continuously for the next 5 years. So again, like I said, net income is directly connected to dividend. We didn't want to say too huge numbers. JPY 800 billion you mentioned, JPY 800 billion, we want to consider JPY 11 per share if we hit net income of JPY 800 billion. Of course, we want to achieve higher than JPY 800 billion as net income.

In the past, SoftBank has not ended the year underperforming against the beginning of the year target. So I don't think that we should disclose numbers that we are not confident with achieving for medium-term management plan. So whether JPY 800 billion, JPY 900 billion, you never know until you try. But again, we want to hit definitely JPY 700 billion of net income to deliver 20 dividend to shareholders.

Thank you so much. This concludes Q&A session. We would like to conclude today's earnings results presentation for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026. A recording of today's session will be available on demand on our website at a later time today. Thank you once again for joining us today. We kindly ask for your cooperation.

Thank you for waiting. We will now begin the investor meeting for the third quarter of the fiscal year 2026 (sic) [ 2025 ] hosted by SoftBank Corp. Let me start by introducing today's speakers. Mr. Fujihara, Director, Executive Vice President and CFO, SoftBank Corp. Mr. Akiyama, Vice President, Head of Finance Unit. Mr. Onoguchi, Head of the Finance and Accounting Division, Finance Unit. Mr. Sasaki, Senior Director, Financial AI Promotion Office, Finance Unit. Today's meeting is also being streamed live online. Thank you for tuning in.

Now Mr. Fujihara will provide an overview of SoftBank's consolidated financial results.

We announced the financial results earlier today, and I'd like to share with you more in detail about our financial performance. Once again, thank you very much for coming despite busy schedule. This is executive summary. Revenue increased in all segments and hit record high. Revenue and profit increased. Accordingly, we revised full year forecast for fiscal year 2025. We want to give an update, especially because of the impact from ASKUL. Operating income in Financial segment doubled, and we received high external ESG ratings.

Okay. Let me go deep into this. Result for the third quarter, revenue and profit increased. Steady progress toward full year forecast for all segments, especially operating income, 88.4% and net income, 89.9%. We see high progress rate toward the full year forecast. Let me give you a breakdown. Revenue increased by 8% or JPY 383 billion. Progress toward full year forecast of JPY 6.7 trillion was 77.5%. Financial and distribution achieved more than 20% increase. For Media, excluding ASKUL's third quarter revenue decline of JPY 63 billion, Media and EC represented an increase of 6.7%. So modest contribution was there.

Now EBITDA. Again, we see steady growth, and we hit the record high. Compared to last year, we saw increase of JPY 52 billion or plus 3.8%. Progress toward full year forecast is over 80%. Excluding Media and EC, four segments contributed a lot. Due to ASKUL's impact, Media EC presents those numbers in terms of ASKUL. Next, operating income. We increased JPY 62.3 billion or 7.6%. Progress toward the full year forecast was 88.4%, again, steady growth. Especially in finance sector, we saw double growth. Each segment gave us a contribution, but Media and EC declined by 2.5% or JPY 5 billion because of the negative impact of ASKUL, which was JPY 19.9 billion. But excluding that, however, we would have been seeing an increase of 7%.

Now by the segment, Consumer. Mobile revenue continued to grow and the revenue increased by JPY 72.2 billion or 3.3%. Sales of goods and others increased significantly by JPY 73.2 billion or 14.2%. Unit price of mobile device increased significantly and number of mobile devices also increased, resulting in substantial revenue growth. Electricity because of diminished trading transactions saw revenue decrease. Broadband saw continuous increase in subscribers. Mobile recorded JPY 26 billion, thanks to subscriber growth and improvement of ARPU. And mobile revenue, since third quarter FY 2023, we posted a continuous revenue growth. We had a lot of questions about acquisition and others earlier today, but we want to grow both in revenue and profit. So we continuously want to focus on increasing the top line.

The Consumer segment waterfall chart. Excluding cost of goods and service, gross profit was JPY 37 billion and expenses or promotion expenses increased by JPY 36 billion and acquisition cost increased by JPY 13.6 billion because of increase of amortization. And promotion expenses increased mainly due to the more cost to support device purchase program. As for electricity, revenue down, but cost of electricity services improved by JPY 35 billion. Broadband saw JPY 7.4 billion increase and depreciation and others, net-net, JPY 3.2 billion. The mobile increased by JPY 26 billion. So that's how it constitutes of 6% of profit.

And next, Enterprise segment. Revenue and profit increased steady growth. Revenue grew by 8.8% or JPY 59 billion. Especially Solution was good, which posted a 13.1% growth. And we continue focusing on double-digit growth in this area. As for segment income, we saw increase of JPY 17.7 billion or 12.6%. Again, double-digit growth is our commitment. And progress to the full year forecast is 84.1%. So Enterprise continues to be driving force for future growth. Business Solutions and other revenue, especially recurring revenue, posted 11% increase.

Media and EC segment. System outage by ransomware attack at ASKUL posted a negative impact. In Commerce, we saw a loss of JPY 9.6 billion, which mainly due to ASKUL's third quarter impact. But excluding that, we saw a modest growth. Media posted a slight growth in revenue and strategy, thanks to M&A, we saw a steady growth. And segment income is shown on the right-hand side. Overall, we saw a decline by JPY 5 billion or 2.5% year-on-year. There were some valuation gain from restructuring, which was a onetime impact and ASKUL negative impact was JPY 19 billion. And details were already disclosed by LINE and Yahoo!, so I'm not going to go into detail here.

Next, Finance segment. Revenue expanded steadily, increased JPY 56.9 billion or 23.9%. And PayPay posted double-digit growth and income contributed JPY 32 billion, and that resulted in JPY 66 billion of segment income. Distribution segment and others. Again, we see a steady growth and increased JPY 157 billion or 25.6% year-on-year. Income increased by JPY 7 billion or 29.2% and progress toward full year forecast was 96.3%. Others operating income up to third quarter, we increased R&D investment by JPY 19 billion. Subsidiaries costed promotion expenses in the third quarter, but it's been recovering. And for the full year, we should be able to show you a positive number.

And net income, thanks to increase in operating income, overall, we saw increase of JPY 48.9 billion or 11.2% year-on-year. Progress toward full year forecast was 89.9%. Other than operating income, financial income and loss, thanks to LY was JPY 15.7 billion. Absence of valuation loss of put options for equity method associated in the previous year, profit from sales of shares in Remember & Company and company that was last year's onetime event. And tax effect relating to PayPay was also there.

And SoftBank, absence of deferred tax impact from business restructuring in the previous year, we saw improvement in income taxes. CapEx, almost on plan. Consumer and Enterprise, this year's guidance was JPY 34 billion and -- excuse me, JPY 340 billion and progress towards that full year forecast is 67.3%. And AI saw a decrease by JPY 10 billion and IFRS 16 impact increased due to the signing of lease contract for data centers. AI computing will be described later in the slides.

Since purchasing Sakai, including Tomakomai partly, also AI computing infrastructure. And you can see as of now at the right bottom, total is JPY 257 billion, and we are going to do the acceptance of the JPY 200 billion and the payment is JPY 190 billion. So this is funded by bond type class shares. For the next mid- and long-term business management plan and how we are going to manage is we are now in the discussion. We would like to announce in the next presentation.

Regarding primary free cash flow -- so as for the cash flow generation is our big target. So it has a steady progress. And operating cash flow increased in EBITDA and investment cash flow also increased. As for the long-term growth investments are funded by the different things. So we have continued with the same reconciliation. So free cash flow and net leverage ratio are our focus.

So let me explain about the net leverage ratio. First, left side, interest-bearing debt is 3.07 compared to previous year. It's 0.12 increase year-on-year. And this is increased by JPY 120 billion year-on-year. And as you can see for the net leverage ratio, it's almost flattish. And here's the balance sheet. So our balance sheet, please pay attention to this JPY 18.2 trillion compared to the last fiscal year-end, it is increased by JPY 1.9 trillion. So this is due to the financial business expansion, including M&A. And as you can see, the equity attributable to owners of the company and equity -- this one is showed JPY 211.6 billion year-on-year. And -- so over 7 years, it has grown greatly. So when you look at equity and since we do have dividend payout compared -- so it is good to see year-on-year compared to previous year. So it has increased by almost JPY 200 billion.

From here, I would like to explain about KPI. First, telecom. Mobile subscribers grew by 0.69 million by 2.2%. Just before listing, it was it was 2.46 million. So it has increased by 15 million or so. So looking at the right side churn rate due to the electricity churn rate, so it has increased to 1.45%, 0.15% year-on-year. So we hope that we can announce improvement of the result in the next quarter.

So next one is the net additions and Mr. Miyakawa mentioned in the previous presentation, so net losses were recorded. And this corporate change would also lead as we focus on the increased revenue and income. So next, ARPU. Year-on-year, it's minus JPY 10. So on the right side shows it was minus JPY 30. Now it's minus JPY 10. When we look at Consumer, so it's turning to positive. So including Enterprise, it still shows minus. However, our forecast was minus JPY 30 full year. And at the end of the -- so full year forecast of minus JPY 30, we would like to maintain this.

And next to electricity broadband. Compared to last year, so it's increased by 0.1 million and electricity shifting the acquisition effort. So it is improving gradually. And media and EC, so both EC transaction value and group total advertising revenue expanded. Next, PayPay users increased steadily. And so the number of users exceeded 70,000 and the MTU also exceeded 40 million. And the number of payments increased by 18.5%. So number of payments significantly outpaced the user growth. So it means that the rise in payments per person.

So next, GMV, this also growing steadily and increased at 23.7%. So since the number of payments was 18.5% increase. So all the businesses is increasing in every manner. And next is -- the PayPay Bank's deposit and loan balances also showed steady growth. So as for PayPay revenue increased by 26.3%. Right side shows EBITDA shows great increase. So we are looking forward to its further growth. SB Payment Service. So this business is growing steadily and the non-telecom area is growing as we make strategy.

And the next is about ESG topics. So we were recognized as a prime Seat company this year as well. Also in other areas, we have received a very high rating. Please take a look at this slide for the details. Next, I would like to explain about our upward revision of full year forecast. This is the summary from revenue to net income, all of them we revised upwardly. Revenue, all segments contributed, excluding impact from system outage at ASKUL. So we were at the pace of exceeding the JPY 7 trillion due to the system outage at ASKUL. So we revised the variance by JPY 250 billion for revenue. As for EBITDA, mainly due to distribution and improvement in R&D and other costs. Operating income, I will explain detail later. And net income mainly due to upward revision of operating income and so on. And this is the details of the operating income. Upfront investment and R&D expenses were the major reason. This concludes my presentation. Now we would like to move on to the Q&A session. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Tokunaga from Daiwa Securities.

Today is the last investor briefing for Fujihara-san. I just want to say thank you, Fujihara-san. With that, I have two questions. I want to hear from Fujihara-san and the new CFO, Akiyama-san. Fujihara-san, what's your expectation for next-generation SoftBank? And second, Akiyama-san, do you have any resolution that you want to share with us?

So I'm going to ask Akiyama-san to give you a few words lastly. From myself, Fujihara, I said goodbye at the end of earnings result announcement earlier. And SoftBank increased both in revenue and profit, and we hit the milestone of JPY 10 trillion. We are ready for our next leap. Talking about AI in the last 10, 20 years, we have been transforming ourselves and AI will bring us more even greater changes. And I think AI will determine the next 10 years of SoftBank. So again, I have high expectation from the new leadership team and whatever I can help, I will do my best.

Second question, more in short term, looking at the plan for operating income, fourth quarter, Consumer expected a little bit of loss and other segment also a loss. So I think others is expected to lose money in the fourth quarter. So Consumer would lose profit a little bit. And also you expect others to suffer from revenue loss.

Well, Consumer, we are working on restructuring and whatever we can do by the end of this fiscal year, we will try to implement. And JPY 150 billion by this year is definitely possible. And other segment, there are a lot of uncertainties, including ASKUL's potential lingering impact. So others and investment may seem big numbers, but we have some buffer included to get ready for next year.

The Consumer's preparation in terms of preparation, Consumer, in which area you prepare for network, marketing expenses or what?

There's not things specific. But in general, we want to get ready. When it comes to acquisition cost, for example, if we can spend the cost efficiently, we wouldn't mind spending acquisition cost. But we just want to make sure that our plan is doable.

Next, Masuno-san from Nomura Securities.

First of all, Mr. Fujihara, thank you so much for all your contribution. And even after your retirement, you will be staying in a certain position. So I'm looking forward to communicating with you. So my question at the earnings results of the midterm, last September, already, you -- so after September to December, over that 3 months, how did you change the direction since the churn rate increased, you drastically changed the direction. So you made a quite drastic change. So what made you do so?

Since September, we have started looking ahead. And in the third quarter, we started shifting our direction. Acquisition cost and lifetime value, the balance between these two, actually, it does not really make sense. So we objectively reviewed the situation and to shift our direction. So as for the Consumer segment, it's been stable, the business. Therefore, our approach -- so we changed our approach, including the acquisition as well. So we need to continue brushing up towards the next fiscal year as well.

So the churn rate, 1.38 -- the churn rate in the third quarter, it could have exceeded even 1.4%. And so just by looking at the churn rate, the figure itself, it could have even exceeded further. So what happened within SoftBank is SIM users canceled in a very short term. Is there anything unique? And what was the -- what is the countermeasure that you have?

Going back to the last -- second half of the last year, our acquisition was doing well with the good net additions. And those users cancellation actually appeared more clearly in this quarter. So far, our acquisition was doing really well. Therefore, it showed quite a big negative figure. So our intention is to take actions when we see the challenges. So that's why we decided to shift our direction to this.

So those who purchased a number of lines and those who has a very short-term contract, so was the bottleneck. So what did actually change?

So we made it more strict for those potential users. And so we reviewed our policies.

Next, Kikuchi-san SMBC Nikko Securities.

You confidently explained the reasons behind net loss. From my perspective, it was amazing. Like Masuno-san earlier asked you ARPU is not really going steadily, and you see increase in churn. And in the fourth quarter, well, even though you revised your forecast a little bit, still very small upgrade. So again, in the fourth quarter, are there any reasons why you have to cost or you just operate the business in a very healthy manner or there are any things that you may have to cost a lot in the fourth quarter? So again, to me, your upward revision was still very small.

Yes, a slight increase, that's for sure. So maybe it is too small to call it upward revision. But on the other hand, ASKUL's impact needs to be absorbed to share with you updated forecast. So that's how it happened. And upward revision is rather conservative. In other words, we are having our business under control.

And Fujihara-san, I have trusted you a lot. So I always wonder how you operate as CFO while looking at potential dividend and looking at investment. But in the next mid to long-term plan, you may want to aggressively invest and you may want to aggressively return to shareholders. So it sounds like very stretchy. Stretchy financial operation you may have to do going forward. So Fujihara-san, what's your view while you are retiring? I don't expect you to say anything at this moment. But I wonder if you have any concerns before you retire.

We have had very healthy productive discussions internally with the senior management team, including CEO, shareholder return and growth, we want to achieve both. And this remains the same. As for shareholder return, dividend ratio may look a little bit high. But in the inflationary environment, we have kept the dividend ratio same. So we want to be comfortable and confident before sharing our view with you. Net leverage ratio and free cash flows are very important from CFO perspective. And in fact, my successor, Akiyama-san has been looking at them for a long time in finance team. So he has a good knowledge, cash flow and net leverage ratio. The growth strategy and investment, we have been again discussing internally to make sure that we can present a very responsible performance.

[Operator Instructions] Masuno-san from Nomura Securities.

I would like to take this opportunity to ask you one more question about investment for the next fiscal year. So you mentioned that you did not include the investment for Sakai data center as well as for the GPUs. How -- so the depreciation for data center is quite long. But for GPUs, it's usually 5-year depreciation. So it would impact. So with the sovereign cloud, together with Oracle, you're going to prepare a large cloud. And I believe that you need to have your own GPU as an asset. So for -- especially for sovereign cloud, the cash out plan for AI, particularly for next fiscal year, what is your view?

Overall, primary cash flow and the upfront investment for midterm plan. For free cash flow -- primary free cash flow, including dividend, and for the rate, we will make sure to handle properly. And for the investment for mid to long term, so what is the return? So we need to also show that clearly. So how we are going to get -- take it back, then we need to also make a proper decision. So for the next mid to long-term business management plan, so what kind of business we would like to plan and establish needs to be well considered. So that will be our core discussion moving forward. As President -- CEO, Miyakawa also mentioned in the presentation, so he mentioned that for you to kindly wait until our next midterm and long-term management plan presentation.

So just for a follow-up, in the 4 to 6 years, there will be more and more return for the investment. But looking at the 4 to 6 years, normally, first year or second year, it will be the upfront investment and 5th or your final year will be the one that you get a return. So -- that's how it normally works for the upfront investment and return.

So the details is still in consideration. We would like to give you a more clear answer to that question in our next presentation or briefing. So we have accumulated our plan and also the funding is quite stable compared to before. So therefore, we should be able to -- once we can establish the good return base, so we have more and more options for our business strategies. So therefore, how we would like to draw a map for the mid- and long-term management plan. And we do also understand your concern. So we would like to also take into concern. Thank you.

That concludes SoftBank Corp's Investor Meeting for the fiscal year 2026 (sic) [ 2025 ] third quarter. Last but not the least, we're going to introduce a successor of Fujihara, Mr. Akiyama.

First of all, thank you very much for your continued support for a long time and really appreciate that. My successor is sitting next to me, Mr. Akiyama. As the Head of Finance Unit, I think he is ready for taking over my role. So I'm going to ask Akiyama-san to give you a few words.

Good evening. My name is Akiyama, SoftBank Corp. I am going to take over Fujihara-san's role as CFO. Let me briefly introduce myself. I joined Nippon -- SoftBank from Japan Telecom. And most of my career was spent in finance. And in 2018, when we listed and since then, I have been engaged in fundraising and making plans of capital and finance to make sure that we can achieve both growth and shareholder return. For the last 12 months under Fujihara-san's leadership, I have been looking over what Fujihara-san do or does. And I'm going to take much more bigger responsibility going forward. But again, I want to still make sure that we can both achieve growth and return. And through that, we -- I would like to help growing corporate value.

As Miyakawa-san indicated earlier today, the senior management team will be much younger. And then in May, we're going to announce the latter half of the mid to long-term plan, and I hope that you will expect a lot from that. And Fujihara-san has given me a very warm words, and I myself want to meet his expectations and your expectations. Once again, thank you very much for joining us today and appreciate your continued support.

Thank you. This concludes investor meeting for the third quarter of fiscal year 2026 (sic) [ 2025 ]. A recorded version of today's presentation will be made available on demand on our corporate website. Please feel free to view it at your convenience. Once again, thank you very much for coming to our investor meeting despite your very busy schedule.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

We would like to begin the SoftBank Corporation Earnings Results Presentation for the 6 months ended September 30, 2025.

We'd like to introduce today's attendees. SoftBank Corporation, President and CEO, Miyakawa; Board Director, Executive Vice President and CFO, Fujihara. Today's presentation will be broadcast over the Internet.

Now President and CEO, Miyakawa, will give an overview of SoftBank consolidated financial results and business overview.

I'm Miyakawa. Thank you so much for your attending. Now I'd like to present our financial results for the first half of fiscal year 2025. Revenue reached a record high of [ JPY 3,400.8 billion ] representing an 8% year-on-year increase. Thanks to this strong momentum, we are now in a position to aim for JPY 7 trillion in full year revenue. Here is the breakdown. All segments reported revenue growth continuing the positive trend from Q1. Our distribution and financial businesses, in particular, performed strongly. Operating income also reached a new high record of JPY 628.9 billion, up 7% from the previous year with a progress rate of 63%. We are steadily on track toward our full year goal of JPY 1 trillion.

By segment, all segments delivered profit growth. In the first quarter, the consumer business saw a 2% decline in profit. But looking at both the first half and the second quarter on a stand-alone basis, profit increased. The financial business has more -- was more than doubled driven by PayPay's strong performance. Net income also reached a record high of JPY 348.8 billion, up 8% year-on-year. The progress rate for net income 65%, which also indicates solid progress.

To summarize progress against our full year forecast. Revenue stands at 51%, operating income at 63%, and net income at 65%, indicating a strong first half.

As shown each segment, as you can see, exceeded the 50% progress mark with all segments contributing to our performance not just one of the -- one of them, but everyone contributed to our performance. So far, we focused on growing non-telecom areas such as DX, FinTech and AI. As a result, the share of non-telecom revenue, as you can see, expanded from 47% to 63% ever since I took my presidency.

As our business has diversified, the total revenue increased by about JPY 1 trillion in the first half alone.

From here onwards, let me explain performance by business segments. First, the consumer business. Revenue was JPY 1,475.7 billion, a 3% increase. Mobile revenue also increased by JPY 9.6 billion, continuing the positive trend. Operating income was JPY 330.9 billion, a 3% increase. And in second quarter alone, it rose 7%. So we had a very robust second quarter.

Smartphone subscribers expanded steadily and increased by 3%, with both SoftBank and Y!mobile brands growing steadily. The increase in short-term cancellations was inefficient from an acquisition efficiency perspective, that's through bundled packages such as broadband, electricity and credit cards. We intend to focus on customers who use our services for longer periods and proceed with the second half of the year.

Now I would like to explain Enterprise business revenue rose to JPY 482 billion, an 8% increase. Solutions continued to perform well, contributing to 12% revenue growth. Operating income was JPY 104.1 billion, up 10%, exceeding JPY 100 billion for the first time in the first half, a new record high.

Now the Distribution business. Revenue reached a record high of JPY 505.8 billion, up 17%. Operating income also hit a record JPY 22.0 billion, up 36%. There are 2 factors behind: one is the growth in AI-related products, the market for AI servers and IoT products equipped with AI continues to expand. We expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future. So further growth is anticipated. The other factor is the steady growth in recurring revenue which is one of SoftBank's legacy core business. So the segment has transitioned from a onetime software wholesale model to a subscription-based business model. The Distribution business is now on track to surpass JPY 1 trillion in revenue this fiscal year. Although we expected the Enterprise business to reach that milestone first, Distribution may actually overtake it. Both businesses are growing through mutual competition and learning, creating a very exciting climate.

In the Enterprise market segment due to their different profitability profiles, so we disclosed the results for 2 segments: Enterprise and Distribution. Together, these 2 businesses are on the verge of surpassing JPY 2 trillion in revenue this fiscal year. So the Consumer business generates around JPY 3 trillion in revenue. So in our next midterm plan, we aim to grow the Enterprise segment to a similar scale.

Now for the Media and E-commerce business. Revenue was JPY 822.8 billion, a 4% increase driven by the commerce domain. Operating income came in at JPY 167.5 billion, a record high. And net income increased by 13%.

Next, Finance business. Revenue rose to JPY 189.7 billion, a 24% increase. Operating income was JPY 38.5 billion, showing a steady progress.

Turning to PayPay. GMV continues to grow strongly and reached JPY 9.2 trillion, up 25%. EBITDA was JPY 48.3 billion, more than doubling from the previous year.

Now let me explain our next-generation infrastructure initiatives. In our full year results announcement in May, this year, we explained the direction of our cloud business using this slide. Today, I'd like to share updates on those 3 key areas. First, our cloud software. Last month, we announced a new sovereign cloud service in collaboration with Oracle. The service will be offered sharing -- starting next April from our East and West Japan data centers connected via OnePort and SmartVPN.

Next, our homegrown LLM or Sarashina mini. Starting late November or 28th of November to be specific, we will begin offering APIs to corporate customers to accelerate Gen AI adoption within enterprise systems. Third, our AI compute infrastructure. Until now, this was mainly used internally for training Sarashina models, but as of October, we began offering it externally. In addition to support AI startups, we launched a GPU platform program free of charge. And the plan consists of 3 support tiers tailored to different phases of growth: First, start-ups building or testing prototype receive up to 60 days of free access; second, those entering the validation or proof-of-concept fees are offered discounted pricing and development collaboration; and third, companies moving toward commercialization, receive financial support as well as introductions to potential customers and sales channels.

Last but not the least, let me update you on Cristal Intelligence, which we made a press release earlier today about. SB OpenAI Japan is officially launched today, and it will offer exclusively Cristal Intelligence to corporate clients in Japan. As explained before, SoftBank and SBG established C Holdings and together with OpenAI formed SB OAI Japan as a 50-50 joint venture. We are working toward a service launch next year and development is progressing smoothly. This is one of the seeds of future growth that we are excited about in the next fiscal year and beyond.

In closing, let me summarize today's presentation. First, in the first half, we achieved record highs in revenue operating income and net income, with all segments seeing year-on-year growth. Second, we made excellent progress against our full year targets across all 3 indicators: Revenue; operating income; and net income. Finance segment more than doubled, and we shared progress on strategic growth initiatives for our next midterm plan, including the Sovereign Cloud, Sarashina and Cristal Intelligence.

That concludes my presentation. Thank you very much for your attention.

[Operator Instructions] Please raise your hand.

My name is [ Mario from Diamond Company ]. I have 2 questions. One, so the established today, the joint venture between SB and OpenAI, SB OAI Japan. I would like to hear the target and the goal of this joint venture. And I understand that first, this service will be used internally of your company and then to the external sales. So I would like to hear what's your plan onwards. And also the offering to other enterprises, you said in next year, exactly when next year? And how many companies you're targeting? And what is the sales target?

So related to this topic, but the AI agent services for enterprise. So like NTT data like a vendor company like that, so the ChatGPT enterprise reseller agents or NEC or Hitachi, those IT vendors. So they are in -- establishing the environment for AI agents. So how you're going to differentiate from them?

So our target onwards. So the joint venture was established today and the servicing will be next year. So since we first announced in this spring, so Cristal Intelligence -- fees of Cristal Intelligence was created by openAI. So the alpha version we received and we just started internal verification. So from our engineers the feedback from them, this is something in a totally different world comparing to ChatGPT or enterprise, it's unlikely new. So I only glanced and I haven't used yet. However, what I was expecting to do has been in shape. Of course, we need to do the fine-tuning onwards. But once this is ready and the way to work and also the speed of manufacturing products and everything will be completely different. So with high anticipation, we are now internally coming up with and working on the details. So what we are doing is that we are putting together some systems and also -- we also feel the risk to directly connect to the company's system. So we are now internally working on establishing a certain environment be able to connect to the system. So once we are ready for verification of the -- our test bed and then we would like to start promoting to other companies in Japan. So as you mentioned, differentiation from the others. But this product itself is compete on a different concept. So once the similar ones come up, then I also believe that others might follow once our product comes in the market, but then the cost competition will be something that we need to look at. So I hope I've answered to your first question.

So for Enterprise, what is your target?

well, we can't tell right now. But within our company, the number of resources who is working on the data. So initially, certain efforts required at the beginning. So tens of hundreds of companies cannot be our target from the beginning. So we would like to target one by one thoroughly. So that's how I imagine for now.

So my next question is about computing infrastructure. So recently, NVIDIA announced that they also participated in the APAC kind of a conference in South Korea and announced that they would be providing 260,000 units, and that will be the third largest units to provide. So SoftBank is the most advanced utilizing GPU of 10,000 units GPU. So comparing the volume was 10,000 and 260,000 that NVIDIA has decided to offer. It's a quite big gap. So considering your initiative, and I believe that Japan is way behind. So which you also had a concern on. So some -- the government support for GPU implementation. So I would like to hear your opinion on that. And also do you have any plans to implement more than 10,000 GPUs, for South Korea, 260,000 units?

So I heard that it will be distributed to some companies in South Korea. So rather than operating individually, but by clustering to be more efficient. So 10,000 -- so the 4,000 clusters -- 4,000 GPUs is clusterized. So compared to the large data centers, of course, still in Japan, it's much weaker. So less advantages. That's why we are also working on Sakai data center and Tomakomai data center. We would like to start the operation of Sakai data center first. With that considering GPU volume for Blackwell of 150,000, and we would like to implement Rubin, the next version. So there will be like -- 30,000 or 40,000 would be the maximum capacity for that scale of data center. So with Blackwell, 150,000. And so I think the computing performance capacity will be the same. So now this scale is being combined and accumulated to make a bigger -- so what's coming next is that AI infrastructure scale and as we call it next-generation social infrastructure, which we started 5 years ago or so. So the key is that computing power, computing power would be the power of each mission. So I also believe that the government has made a reasonable comment on that. And now South Korea owns the 260,000 GPUs, which is quite aggressive one. So we think about so -- whether South Korea or Japan would be the center of this AI business. So computing power is the key. So I would like to bring the schedule forward to try and so if I can contribute to our new Prime Minister, Takaichi, if I could provide some input, I'll be grateful.

So what about the government aid? Do you have any opinions on how government should be supporting?

I heard that South Korea is providing JPY 1 trillion or so of subsidies. So I would say that Japan should provide double of that. However, we need to keep a balance and what the government has to do also what the private companies like these corporates have to do or can do and we need to keep balance and to establish a recent infrastructure.

Thank you. Any other question?

Suzuki, freelance journalist. About PayPay's IPO and U.S. government institutes are not working at the moment. So I wonder if you have any comment on that, the process of PayPay IPO?

Now that U.S. government institutions are not operating, and especially [indiscernible] reviewing process is being on hold. We can't say anything unless or until the process restarts.

Any other question?

Hosoda from Nikkei. First question is about consumer mobile. In the second quarter, I wonder how much confidence you have for the whole second quarter. [indiscernible] mentioned that competitive environment is very harsh and they are looking at reducing operating income or margin. So how do you analyze the market.

In terms of number portability or MMP as far as SoftBank goes, we are performing good. However, we saw more short-term churn users than we thought. So we need to come up with an idea to acquire customers more efficiently. That's the lesson learned. But in general, we are in good progress.

Next question is about Enterprise business and Solution business. You mentioned before that those 2 business, you want them to exceed the Consumer in the next midterm plan. I understand you don't disclose respectively, but what's your confidence level?

Well, Consumer, people often ask me whether SoftBank is ready for raising prices, unless ARPU goes up, we don't expect high liquidity of users. We are looking at a small net increase or net adds, but we don't expect 4 million, 5 million users switching from one operator to the other, like we saw before. So 1 million net adds times ARPU would be a growth of Consumer business. We want to make sure that we keep a slight increase trend -- increasing trend. And we want to utilize AI agent to make our business more efficient. And if consumer business grows gradually on the upward trend, Enterprise business and Solution businesses can follow the trend. So I think at some point, Enterprise and Solution business will catch up with Consumer business in terms of volume and JPY 3 trillion will be the substantial size. And then they will get more momentum in the market. So JPY 3 trillion for consumer, JPY 3 trillion for enterprise, that's something that we want to look at in the next midterm plan. And our employees are watching this earning results. So I want to sort of woke our employees to stimulate them.

[ MJ ] from Bloomberg. I have 2 questions. First is about Cristal Intelligence. So you just mentioned earlier that it's not comparable to ChatGPT in terms of speed? And can you give us some examples of what is so different? As for the concept, it's closer to agentic AI? Would you please give us some examples?

I would like to give you some examples, but I cannot answer. So the OpenAI told us not to disclose. So I cannot give you details. However, just to give you an image or -- so you don't have to manually input. You can just speak to it. As for -- because this is for Enterprise. So when you do some tests, you need to establish workflow. The workflow can be generated automatically, that is the future, it has. So the ChatGPT or Enterprise features are just like rather Q&A features so -- but exceeds that level of feature. So once the product is ready, then we will hold an orientation session. And so I would like to refrain from answering by ourselves.

The second is about PayPay that you mentioned that right now, SEC's assessment is in suspension. So once it resumes, the valuation I've heard, it's the JPY 2 trillion, JPY 3 trillion. What is your expected valuation of PayPay?

Well, I don't want to really mention the actual figure, but I would like to expect higher. Why? Because looking at the speed of the business growth, I believe that it will remain and even I feel that it's too early to go to the public. So with the power of business growth of PayPay and the profitability, looking at those 2 factors together and also as for the potential, the bank main. So I see some future. So in Japan, it's a lower country risk. So we do have some unique features to look at. So I also expect that the higher valuation, it will be valued when it goes to the public or it might take a little more time, but in general, overall, I believe that PayPay is the company which has the highly valued. So more and more means it's more than JPY 2 trillion, JPY 3 trillion. When I say more is -- a little more is not too big but I believe that this company is worth being assessed.

And next question, please.

[ Uno ] from Yomiuri newspaper. I have a question about the Consumer business. Maybe somebody asked before, so Mobile business was good in the first half? Or what do you think is the reason exactly Miyakawa-san? And as of end of September, in Y!mobile increased price so what's the reaction in the market since then? And what kind of impact that could have on the first half result or bottom line?

Related to that, Rakuten Mobile said they would not increase price. What -- to your view on Rakuten Mobile from a market competition perspective?

For the first half, yes, we are good. But the question is to we are better than what? All segments are growing steadily, and most of our businesses show 2-digit growth. And to be very honest with you, we -- I wanted them to go more. But in the first half, we achieved net adds and increased revenue. So in terms of on track to the plan, yes, we were on track, and we achieved a good performance. And whether or not increasing price contributed from mid- to long-term prospective, since in general, prices are going up. So at some point, we may need to consider our pricing. I don't know whether it's tomorrow or 1 year ahead. But at some point, we would take an action. We are still studying. I don't know how long we can say that we are only the one in the market that is progressing well.

About Y!mobile price increase, I was impressed. They did a great job. Reaction from users is pretty good. And we don't see any huge difference in trend. So Y!mobile companies continues performing well, it's difficult to answer to your last question, however, which is Rakuten Mobile. Rakuten Mobile said they would not increase price because their structure was different from companies like SoftBank. What costs to carriers? Well, in urban areas, you can make money easily, to be honest, because of huge population and users are concentrated. People are using mobiles a lot. And so as long as you offer services, making sure that connectivity is maintained then urban areas are very good markets in terms of making profits and making business. But especially the last 5% geographical area of Japan, when I was CTO, we had a huge challenge because we need -- we may need to build a huge high power, which cost a lot and optical fiber cables length would be very long, which cost a lot. And the cell site that you build would be used only less than 1% of urban cell site in terms of usage. So we need to continue fine-tuning even after we built our cell site. So it costs a lot to build a network in rural areas in Japan. So if they would do the same and if they could say the same thing, I would say that's unfair.

I think before spectrum was allocated across Japan, and that was the rule. And we did go outside and build cell sites. So again, the last 5%, 10% of area coverage is very, very challenging. And if Rakuten would do that, and they would stand on the same stage with us. And if they could say the same thing, I would say it's reasonable, but it's still unfair now because they were given the spectrum without competition. So I don't want to say more because otherwise, I would start getting excited.

My name is [ Sam ] from Toyo Keizai. Two questions. One about GPU, not only your internal use for Sarashina learning, but external cells to start. So the GPU resource, what is the demand do you have from other companies externally? And what kind of resource you are expecting? And you also talked about South Korea and in GPU to be procured more. And when you look at the current the resource and availability and also the demand by the other companies, if you could share, it would be great.

And about -- the second one is about Sarashina mini, JPY 70 billion parameters and NEC and also other smaller parameters, this is -- Sarashina mini is closer to the others so? But what is the differentiation from the others?

So to your first question about GPU supply and demand. There are large scale of business sentiments and was not suitable for what we could offer so far. So the major -- from the major companies and a lot of big volume of allocation was demanded. But we do also have different purposes for use, and we cannot just provide it to one company. Therefore, we prioritize the use internally. Now we are to start external sales. Some Japanese companies create their own AI and also to create services on outside AI and also for their own systems, some companies want to implement AI. So we would like to also start recovering the cost that's spent. So we are also thinking in a fair way that we are also reusing one for the next version of Sarashina. So we are going to start releasing more and more, and -- which we do not expect a big return, if we could cover the cost to be good enough. So the current phase is seeding and we've just the field so far. And now we are ready to -- for seeding. And moving forward, when you look at globally, the supplies in short, so GPU changes [ labor days ]. So it's not worth holding the older version and of course, modification is required, but we need to focus on newer version as well.

To your second question about Sarashina, our competitors is the differentiation with OpenAI model, we are looking at it every day. So it requires a lot of time and money, and we believe that technology is not inferior at all, but time and so the efforts are the key. So a lot of engineers are needed for that. And there is an area which requires some academic level, then we would like to utilize OpenAI. But the call center level, we do not require and -- that high level of engineers. So when we also look at the cost, and we can also create a decent cost structure. So differentiation and -- is the key and we would like to also catch up at the end. So the data for learning may be in short in the future. So then there will be an opportunity for any AI to catch up, but we need to keep moving and so that we do not have to give in or give up. So we need to stay on the race tracks so that we do not lose an opportunity.

Next question.

Yamamoto from Nikkei. I have 2 questions. First about Mobile business. You are getting customers, but ARPU looked on the declining trend since last year. In the second half, you may want to focus on high-value customers. But in order for you to stay on the upward trend, what kind of initiatives you may have?

ARPU looks decreasing, which is true. While Consumer business positive, Enterprise negative and all in all, negative. I'm not going to go into details in numbers, but consumers are looking at the steady growth of ARPU. So in general, I'm not too much worried about. And Enterprise business, which a very competitive market, but our Solution business is growing. So you may get an idea, our strategy, if you look at our Solution business. So we offer a bundled products, Solution and Mobiles. So strategy-wise, our is the right strategy.

But the second half, I think that you mentioned that you want to focus on high-value customers. What's the reason behind? What's your intention behind? By that, what I meant was to address a worsening churns. Customers would churn in a very, very short term, or those users are hopping around carriers and users contract, they realized later, the contract did not meet their expectations. So they may leave us very quickly, but we want to keep or retain users as long as possible. That's why we want to offer different products like PayPay or electricity. And if our users can enjoy other products, not just on mobile, then they would stay with us. So that's something that we discuss internally pretty recently.

Next question is about Cristal Intelligence. In the mid-term plan, consumer and enterprise business, you may want to have the same level. So I wonder to what extent, AI agent contributes to such a growth strategy? And I have an impression that monetization may take time because it costs at the initial phase.

Yes, our joint venture, SB OAI Japan, I don't think it will expect losing money even in the first year because structurally the joint venture can offer consulting services while getting a return from customers. Resource-wise, we have about 100 employees now, but the mid -- by mid-next year, we want to increase headcount to 1,000, for example. And the resource should meet demand. And if product doesn't sell, then those employees could come back to SoftBank.

About JPY 3 trillion, I mentioned before does not include potential AI agent services. even without AI agent, we want to hit JPY 3 trillion, and upside is AI agent or Cristal Intelligence. That's something that we can expect as an upside on top of JPY 3 trillion that we want to achieve. So our upside is actually growing, what would be the profit structure of the Enterprise business. Well, for example, Distribution business, even though they increased revenue by JPY 1 trillion, profitability-wise, it's small. And if Solution goes pretty well, it has a high margin business, not only revenue, but also profit should grow both. We are calculating assuming that the profit margins stay the same, but if we restructure our businesses in a better way, maybe we could expect better performance than we planned in the midterm plan.

We would like to take the next question as the last one from

the venue.

I'm Ishikawa, freelancer. About network, at this timing, the REDCap and Expedia started things, so what is your new network strategy? And about the -- how do you receive the result of Opensignal?

Right now, our network is a step behind of KDDI. When you look at the result from different sources, but we do not think that we are in inferior to others, but the network design is superior to them, I believe. But other than communications, we are expanding to noncommunications area and when the population is declining and when we concentrate on telecommunications business alone, then we have to consider getting more from the users, and we need to add more products or services on top. So new technology as the is for -- is the seed for a new product. So at this timing, now AI emerged. That's why we are slowing down or we are shifting the priority from telecommunications to non-telecommunications area, but we are now going to slow down that.

And about the Opensignal that standard of the assessment does not make sense. That's the feedback we -- I hear from the people from -- on the field. So having said that, there -- it is true that there is -- are some areas that we are still behind the others. So we don't want to make excuses. Of course, it's not only debt but what's most important is that the customer satisfaction indication, it's called SBF, and we are also calculating that and we are still seeking for higher level to achieve and gain customer satisfaction. So we are not going to compromise and then I'm also discussing with the on the field. So I would like to make this company so that everyone says that we are the #1.

So where do you think it's a bit different from what the actual...

so what I heard from the field is that some items that the staff of field, the higher score is different from what they believe. So which does not contribute to customer experience so it does not really refer to or reflect to the actual customer experience. So I am not criticizing the result but to motivate, the ones on the field and to achieve the higher customer satisfaction. And so some areas should be fairly assessed.

Now we'd like to take questions from participants on Zoom. First, Kikuchi-san SMBC Nikko Securities.

I have 2 questions. First, about Cristal Intelligence. I heard that OpenAI owns copyright. I wonder if it stays the same or IP? So royalty is not that big. And SoftBank's gain is bigger. So loyalty, OpenAI gets more or SoftBank gets more? And SBG pays $3 billion a year, and you are the biggest operator. So I think -- most of that will be paid by SoftBank, I have that impression. But Miyakawa-san says that pay for use. So you don't want to pay that much or you don't intend to pay that much. So the usage fee, how that would impact on your bottom line?

Thank you for your question. I said pay for use, that's our intention. And in fact, we started paying just a little bit. We just started paying just a little bit. But for the -- this fiscal year, we already take into account of the pay. We -- sorry, fee that we pay.

About IP, original one was created by OpenAI. So OpenAI definitely holds the IP. But when it comes to joint venture, whatever created in the joint venture and what's generated in the process of consulting then the joint venture own that IP. We are expecting major Enterprise customers. Whatever Enterprise customer would create with our capability, then the ownership would belong to that Enterprise customer. So it's case by case. The payment we have made so far was pretty small. Again, that's pay-for-use.

Okay. That's the current status. But would you expect or should we expect that would remain the same. For example, would that have any impact on next year's financial results?

I would say we could expect positive but negative. We outsource a small task and that's something that we could replace quickly with OpenAI or SB OAI's capability. And if outsourced cost JPY 1 billion a year, then we don't have to spend that much if we replace such outsourced resources with AI or OAI's product. In other words, we don't start anything that could cost more than we pay for existing operations. So again, we don't expect anything negative from that pay-for-use scheme.

And second question is about the Mobile business. Yesterday, some carriers made an earning results announcement and they -- you said that they criticize others or use excuses for their poor performance. And Miyakawa, you don't want to spend money on short-term churners. So my question is going forward, quality matters than quantity. So instead of spending a lot of money to acquire consumer customers, you may want to focus more on Enterprise or Solutions so the carriers don't have to compete each other saying that they are losing their customers to others or vice versa. Compared to last year or looking back 6 months ago, what's your position in terms of market competition? Sorry, it's very a big question though.

Thank you. Our carriers, if they feel that they were attacked by others, I think they indicated SoftBank but my people said the other way around, but SoftBank is aggressive. And I think SoftBank is actually aggressive and may be considered as an attacker. And if we put the brake, put a foot on the pedal, they might stop and then we would stop. But again, if you stick too much on quantity, but you don't see any business growth. I would rather shift the focus to AI than just getting more numbers of users. And our royalty users would pay more than others and that means we expect a higher ARPU and they are very important users. And we should spend money for those loyal customers and the customers who stay with us along. And our people understand that direction, and we are on the same page. Internally, so even though we see a small decline in numbers, we don't want to be too concerned.

Masuno-san from Nomura Securities.

Regarding the next mid- to long-term business plan. I have 2 questions, how you can make profit? And as far as Japan, so what is the demand of AI? So in January -- so the Japan entire GPU supply and demand balance has lost its balance due to this initiative by the company. And when we look at this climate, when you look at the U.S., the super companies like in the U.S., making AI or data centers and in Japan, many companies are utilizing U.S. foreign AIs. So when there is not enough demand and where is the demand for the data centers? What is your thought on the demand of the GPU demand in Japan?

So 6,000 GPUs are now operating Sarashina. That is possible, that is feasible. But right now, JPY 460 billion parameter, that is the Sarashina's, which I would like to bring it up to 1 trillion parameter. But to do so, if we just utilize the current infrastructure, then it will take years and that is the disadvantage that we hold. We want to do, but we cannot do so because of the -- due to the shortage of power and also the GPU supplies in short. And we, as a public company, and we need to also consider our earnings. So compares to GAFA, we haven't been able to make enough investment in this particular field. So Japan as one of the economic powers, then -- to remain in this position, then we need to face this and tackle with this situation and what we are -- what we think now and a year later will be very different. So we need to have more GPUs and considering that, and we have presented our earnings results today, and this is being monetized gradually and next fiscal year onwards. And we have no plan to present our result, that dragging the result due to the data centers and GPUs. So only SoftBank is taking initiatives in this, but not other companies are taking the similar initiative, which I feel sad about or disappointing about. So SoftBank is taking initiatives in AI and also like coming up with the Intelligence and even just building a data center that the structure is not enough.

So as you mentioned, compared to 2 or 3 years, 3 years ago, GPUs not sufficient right now. So what do you think about the business model of data centers?

I also explained in the Board meeting and what I would like to do and internally so that the cloud business. So right now, the cloud in Japan, even they try to catch up with the overseas cloud, it's too late to catch up. So when we look at the Sovereign, even though we call that Sovereign and this is only within the contract. And then that's how I explained to the Japanese government, and we would like to also hold the technology verification capacity. But when we look at GPU-as-a-Service and the GPU cloud is going to be made completely differently. So when we start from scratch, we can accumulate knowledge. And once it comes -- the time comes, and we would like to become a cloud company. So that's how our commitment is. So we do not have any intention to just build a data center structure. So it's not the -- profitable. Because of our business scale, what we can do is that we can this related business horizontally, comprehensively. And that's why we started from zero. So it has taken a little time, but we have natured engineers, and we have nurtured some resources. So we would like to materialize this.

So it means that in Japan, domestically, your business model is this scale, you don't see any competitors right now. Of course, like how much GAFA can do in Japan market, but including Japanese companies, you do -- how do you see the competition?

It depends where you look at. Of course, there is a compete anywhere you go. So AI on GPU. So I believe, therefore, the platform has to be a versatile platform, I mean, the companies will be creating its own platform. And telecommunications company like us, will be the one to establish the environment for them to be able to easily use or make a platform. So we all have to compete and learn each other. There will be a one like openAI GPT or like Gemeni.

For us, we would like to make sure that we are the one to offer.

And we'd like to take the last question. Tokunaga-san from Daiwa Securities.

I have 2 questions. First, about the shareholder return, you want to return to shareholders, maybe more than before because of the inflationary environment. And I think that's good from minor shareholders' perspective and your group perspective. So any update on your view about the shareholder return?

We shared with you the first half results. And usually, second half, we could achieve better. And since first half was good, are we going to quickly increase return to shareholders? Well, while at the moment, may be easier decision to make is share buyback as opposed to more dividend. But the midterm plan that will start next year will be even more important. And we want to grow further in the next phase. So as long as we achieved the target that we have envisioned, I think we can definitely aggressive about shareholder return. So I think it just depends on how it goes in terms of our business performance against the target. So we will make a decision accordingly. Current level of dividend plus something is, I think, something that we could afford. So I would just say today that please expect more for next term.

Next question is about retention of customers, maybe stop excessive cash back to acquisition or maybe you may want to preferentially treat long time customers, you may want to combine a lot of initiative to keep customers. So are you looking at only acquisition plan or you may also consider price plan?

We look at both short-term plan and we may make an announcement of price -- new price plan or change price plan at some appropriate time.

Thank you very much, that concludes the Q&A. That was all for the earnings results announcement for FY 2025 Q2.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]