CyberAgent, Inc. (4751) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

We would like to begin CyberAgent's FY 2025 Full Year Earnings Briefing. This earnings briefing is being streamed. With respect to the content we will be sharing with you today, please refer to the disclaimer contained within the presentation material. President, Fujita will take us through the earnings results.

I'm the President, Fujita. I would like to take you through the full year earnings briefing for FY 2025. First of all, this is the overall results. So overall, this fiscal year, we did well. We did make an upward revision, but we even surpassed those upward revision, OP increased considerably and sales grew for the 28th consecutive year. Individually, media and IP business, since ABEMA was launched, we have been investing quite significantly in ABEMA. But for the first time in 10 years, OP achieved profitability and IP business has been a focal area, but we continue -- we have continued to make investments in this area as well, and we are making progress. And with respect to the advertising business, we did see a large client leave. However, overall, we have continued to expand this business. OP, we had a little bit of a difficulty, but we are implementing measures. And with respect to the game business, we released 7 new games this fiscal year and multiple games became a new hit. OP grew dramatically as well due to other payment options. And this is a graph of our 28th consecutive year sales growth. So for the 25 fiscal years, ever since we went public for 28 consecutive years, we have continued to grow steadily. And we have been -- we have booked the second highest OP this fiscal year, especially Umamusume was a huge hit, but we even recovered from the huge hit that Umamusume was in the past. And with respect to the SG&A expenses, our performance outpaced our plans. So we did pay out a special bonus at the end of the fiscal year. These are the number of employees. We have continued to increase the number of employees as we have done in the past. This is the P&L. We have continued to invest for ABEMA for a long time, but the profitability has improved. So net income, we are seeing a great performance in terms of net income. There's nothing noteworthy about the balance sheet. Now I would like to take you through the FY 2026 forecast. We will be presenting an OP forecast as a range. So 2026 first quarter, November is the first quarter. The game business is doing well at the moment, but it's quite difficult to forecast a year from now. So at the moment, we are going to present an OP range. Moving on to the individual businesses. First, starting with Media and IP business. This has continued to expand powerfully. So we have done JPY 231.5 billion. So it's gotten to quite a sizable business. I already mentioned this during the highlights, but media and IP sector has achieved profitability after 10 years since ABEMA's launch, and we have invested quite significantly in this area, but we have booked profitability -- we have achieved profitability, and these are the results by quarter. And if you look at the OP by quarter, this is how it looks. This is the trends in WAU. In recent months, we have focused on original programs. So our own IP has high value. Many people watch them. So we believe that the quality of our original program has continued to improve. Vardi programs this fiscal year did very well. And WAU has doubled year-over-year. So it's a huge improvement. So time for chance and there are a couple of IPs that we have nurtured since ABEMA was launched, and they've become big hits. And also, we have new programs as well that are doing well. And we are working on dramas as well. And we believe that the quality of each drama has become even higher, and we will be releasing a new series, Scandal Eve, and we have high expectations for this. This will be released on the 19th of next week. And we have strengthened our Disney+, Wowow, DAZN, Green Channel and Downtown Plus as well. We've actually worked on fortifying our external partnerships to gain more membership. And overall, Anime Studio Kurm was established in November. We have high expectations for that, and we have a very wide range lineup, a great lineup of IP studios. We wanted to establish a framework where we can come up with our own original work and monetize, but we want to, of course, use ABEMA as a central axis and continue to expand this business. Moving on to the Internet advertising business. Internet advertising business, we did lose a large client halfway through the year. But overall, we continue to expand powerfully. So we're still expanding. On the other hand, OP is not growing as strongly. In this industry as well, AI is dramatically changing the market, the environment. So we are actively investing in AI and new business as well. And we lost a high profit business. So we want to implement various measures. We have been implementing various measures to improve our profitability. So we hope that those initiatives will bear fruit going forward, and these are the trends by quarter. And this is the quarterly OP. Internet ad business as well. AI, we're seeing significant changes due to AI. So we hope to transform this into a growth opportunity as well. So we are implementing various initiatives to take advantage of this opportunity, especially from search to gen AI, users behavior is changing. So that is a key area that we are focusing on. So we're making sure that we're addressing this change as well. So we are establishing new marketing methods, advertising methods. Moving on to the game business. With respect to the game business, we have overcome the impact from Umamusume and new hit games as well, we released many of them towards the end of the year, latter half of the year, but they have become great hits. So we're seeing this very clean growth trajectory. And OP has year-on-year doubled. So we have seen significant increases in OP. So this is the results by quarter and OP trends by quarter is on this page. In 2025, we released 7 new games Gundam, Shadowverse, Umamusume, English version had done very well, became huge hits. So we are actually increasingly producing more hits. So our hit rate is increasing. And overseas sales has gotten to TWD 20 billion in 1 quarter. So times 4 would be JPY 80 billion, so it's become quite a large size. Over the mid- to long term, Internet ad business is stably growing and the media and IP business has become profitable. So we hope to create a solid foundation and continue to generate new hits with games and build a highly profitable business model. So we would like to continue with the strategy. And lastly, we have announced today that the President, a new President will be appointed at the General Shareholders' Meeting next month, the President, we would like to pass the baton to Yamauchi as the next President. The reason being we have the Ah! Media interview as well as the blog, and you'll be able to understand why we are making this change if you can watch and read this content. So please take a look when they become available. This concludes my explanation. Thank you very much. This concludes FY 2025 full year earnings briefing for CyberAgent. Should you have any questions, please reach out to the IR team. Thank you for watching today. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]