DIP Corporation (2379) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you so much for participating in our briefing session despite your busy schedule. We'd like to announce our Q4 and full year financial results for the fiscal year ended February 2025. I will first discuss toward enhancing corporate value. Now let me talk about Spot Baitoru. This is a new market. We are a latecomer. So we are the very late comers. However, we do have a differentiator because we've been in this part-time job market for long-term period, and we do have a lot of customers, and we do have a lot of salespeople. That's why quite rapidly, we are aiming to catch up with them and outperform them. So as a strong weapon or as a strong differentiator, we do have good job bonus feature. This is a unique feature for us. This good job bonus is something we've been explaining from before, but the day labor part-timers, it's relatively difficult to enhance their motivation. But by enjoying tri or bonus, meaning once they can be evaluated by the company side, they can enjoy higher pay and they can get more motivated, which is in line with our philosophy, which is to further enhance terms and conditions for the fix-term part-timers. Part-time is a convenient way to work. However, in exchange, hourly wage is relatively low. We've been always making efforts to increase the hourly wage. And in that sense, we believe that this good job bonus is in line with our philosophy, and this will enable us to differentiate ourselves from our peers. Now who is very popular now is showing up in our TV commercial. And during the MLB season opening series when viewership was higher than 30%, we were being able to air as many as 44 of these TV -- 44x of this TV commercial. So you may already had an opportunity to take a look at this TV commercial. Well, for the first time, we've been able to use our talent who belongs to start a company. They are quite popular. Now there is a culture called Oshikatsu. Fans greeting for certain talent is now a big culture. And any time this TV commercial being aired, these fans were chatting with each other using social media saying they've been able to see various types of showing up in our TV commercial. There is another differentiator we have, which is that fact we do have existing product Baitoru. We do have the #1 part-time job advertising media in Japan. If we compare regular part-timer versus spot part-timer, the users are actually the same. Their thinking may be slightly different, but the users themselves are the same. And our idea is to add this spot add to the existing regular Baitoru apps. By the way, from before, Baitoru has been providing the experience opportunity from -- since, I believe, 5 years ago or so. And this experience is now going to be replaced with Spot Baitoru. And if the worker uses Spot Baitoru, they can be even paid. And then they can decide whether they want to work as a regular part-timers or not. And at this moment, not a lot of regular part-time of advertisements are attaching Spot Baitoru. However, quite rapidly, our salespeople are increasing the number of this attachment. And we are finding that this is increasing the hiring efficiency a lot because from worker point of view, the hurdle is relatively high to start working as a regular part-timer from day 1, especially that is the case for the post-pandemic generation. So -- but now they have option. They can start working on a spot basis. They can understand the workplace environment. They can understand what job they are doing and then they can make the decision. They may want to start working as a regular part-timer in the future. And worker company side as well can know the worker. So this is not only about enhancing the matching efficiency, but this will be beneficial to lower the turnover. And this is about achieving a good marriage. In reality, for example, there's a nationwide [indiscernible] in store. And they -- if we count the number of regular part-time hiring, it's 5, which is not a small number, but by adding spot, they have additional 5 hiring. So in total, 10 hirings. Another example is driver hiring, which is relatively different -- difficult nowadays. And in addition to 4 regular part-timers, they have 2 additional spot positions, so 6 in total. We are observing increasing number of such cases. So this should be considered as a new style of hiring. We do have more than high expectation. We are quite convinced that this is going to reach to a big extent, a big success. And our people are now saying that because the efficiency is so high, the pricing should be revisited. Now the pricing is too low. Of course, the lower the pricing, the easier to sell, but we should also take the effect into consideration. Our salespeople are becoming quite confident. So they are saying this pricing should not be the right pricing. And after accumulating more track record, we should be more logically provide explanation and convince our customers to accept potentially higher pricing. But the first step is to accumulate more track record. Another topic is this is something covered by Nikkei newspaper. So you may already know about it, but this is about spot part-time job big problem. After we started to provide this service, we started to notice this situation. And this is related to cancellation. What we are finding now is the company side is canceling at the very last minute. These fixed-term part-time workers, they are adjusting arranging their schedule to take this job. And on the very date, the date they're going to work for, they're going to face cancellation and not going to be paid, which is a very serious problem. We are always saying that our philosophy is user first, and this situation is totally not in line with our philosophy. So you have to pay 100% since then. That's what our new contract says. And in the past, there were such cancellations. And because those cancellations, we did not have contract that was prior to contract revision. So we is going to pay 100% for the workers already faced those cancellations. We are now already paying for the workers. And so we are taking this action. We are always supporting the workers. So we hope that the situation should proceed to the right direction. And major company has not been paying until now. And for the spot part-time job, when it is expected to play quite important role in labor industry in Japan, we believe that the situation has to be sorted out. Next is DIP AI. So now Gen AI type AI through conversation, job seekers have been able to apply for a job. But now new features are going to be added. Workers can not only choose work, but also arrange the interview schedule, create regimen. And I will come back to this later, but we have another product called Baitoru Talk, service called -- feature called Baitoru Talk, and it will have seamless link to Baitoru Talk. And if a worker is cooking from the job, then they can use DIP AI again. Anytime the worker is clicking the job, the information is going to be shared with us so we can be the first to have access to the worker. And that's the service we are aiming to develop. And these missing pieces in the future, we are going to add as additional features. Next, evaluation to a solution sales organization. Spot Baitoru and DIP AI to make them successful, we believe we have to revisit the organization structure itself. Till now, we've been selling media. But now we have to provide solution. We have to, first of all, understand what kind of challenges our customers are facing. And accordingly, we have to provide a solution. That's how we think now. And to make it happen, now our salespeople are taking care of various industries. But we believe that we should have industry experts. Sales should have deep understanding on certain industry. They should become a specialist. So we are going to have an organization where we can develop a lot of experts. We are going to have this new organization starting from June this year. As a result, we believe the productivity is going to be higher and the information is not here, but we believe that the turnover is going to be lower because after entering -- well, after start working with DIP, they are going to be -- our salespeople are going to be able to sell media, but still, they are not going to be confident enough. They have to they are wanting to develop expertise on each industry. That is one of the reasons why our people are leaving. But with this new organization, our salespeople can become a specialist for certain industry. As a result, we believe that the turnover is becoming lower. And by increasing the productivity, the pay salary should become higher. In June, we are going to have this new structure. And starting from 6 months prior, we've been getting prepared for this new organization and our people motivation already getting higher. And talking about the solution sales organization for each industry, the Senior Executive Officer is going to be the head. And Senior Executive Officer is something we started to have from this year. For example, Ino-san, who's been in charge of Media service is going to be the Head of the First Solution sales group. And the second solutions, Kitasato-san is going to be the head. And actually, the third solution sales group head is going to be myself. is, I earlier discussed this cancellation issue, but we still need to keep developing this product or this service as our unique service. In that sense, speed matters a lot, and I would like to get deeply involved with the service to totally fully deeply understand the service. That's why I'm going to be the head. The next one is secondary areas. Before, there were -- these are very the top minor areas. Major cities fall under first and second solution sales, but they will not be able to cover the minor businesses, but it is going to be under my coverage. And the number is going to be a lot. And the next one is rural regional development. Now the situation is kind of a half big. So I am going to revisit the situation and to make sure the productivity of this regional rural regional development is going to be higher. Next is about promotion. Mr. Ohtani is our brand ambassador. And since then, for example, when he was taking 50-50, our commercial, our advertisement was being geared. And baseball, especially MLB we are focusing a lot to have our advertisement. And Tokyo Series, the latest one as well, we've been the platinum sponsor. The viewership was 30%. So a lot of citizens are being able to see our advertisement. The giant game when there was a home run, again, dip was being advertised and the home run was falling towards advertisement. So we were being able to increase our presence a lot. And this time, there is additional news, which is going to be quite a commemorative moment for ourselves. In 2023 or even from before, WBC has been quite popular in Japan. And for 2023, World Baseball Classic, we've been chosen as the title sponsorship. It's going to be DIP WBC 2026. That was it. WBC has been becoming a title sponsor of WBC has been a dream of myself. I'm so thankful. I'm making it true. And everyone will be watching these games. And leveraging this opportunity, I want to make sure this is going to be known by everyone. Actually, when the tournament was starting in Korea last year, I happened to come across with MLB's commissioner. That's when I could directly negotiate with the person to capture this opportunity. So I've been so lucky. And I believe that my passion was compelling enough. Next is about leveraging AI. This is a company-wide project to take AI for, which is making a good progress. And 500,000 hours per annum is going to be replaced with AI. We've been able to meet this target. And for example, reducing the advertisement production fee by JPY 300 million per annum. This is another effect we've been able to achieve. This year, we are aiming to increase the number of sales presentation by 4% order success ratio, additional 4% unit price per order, additional 4%. You may feel that these are conservative targets, but we'd like to make sure we exceed these set targets. Every year in April, we are welcoming a lot of new grads. This year, we have welcomed 296 new grads. We had classroom type of trainings in Tokyo, and we also had another training in Atami. Now new grads are working at regional offices. And we've been holding face-to-face interviews this year to make sure we hire the right person. So I'm quite satisfied with the hiring this time. Our new grads are highly motivated and our theme for this year, go major. And the other policy we have or the band we have is working hard. Let's work hard or working hard. I will provide your explanation later, but in these 2 themes. It may be going opposite to improving work style. However, it's about let's work more. Let's get more motivated. We are going to make it happen. That type of idea is the slogan for this year. And our new grads are happy with this idea. And this year, we want to make sure that the turnover is not going to be as high as last year. We are aiming to make the turnover ratio half compared to last year. We are strongly determined to make it happen. To further strengthen our execution, we are welcoming 2 new external directors. And the gentlemen are Oohitsu-san and Takagi-san. Takagi-san is also Audit and Supervisory Committee members. The female ratio is going to be lower as a result, but we are happy having these 2 gentlemen. Oohitsu-san, a lot of you may know him, but in this industry, in our industry, he is quite famous. For example, our competitor [indiscernible] and Mercari and other venture companies, he's been able to get involved with from the very beginning. So anyone in the venture industry does know this person. We are relying on him a lot. He feels fry that he is going to leave Mizuho Bank. But if he is leaving Mizuho Bank, and it seems that more than 40 listed companies have been asking him to become external director, and he chose out of this more than 40, and it's us. He's leaving Mizuho Bank. He's been listing Mizuho Bank. But I believe that as a result, it has been a good progress, at least from our point of view, and we want to make sure that Oohitsu-san is also going to be happy to be working with us. Another gentleman, Takagi-san he has a lot of experience in corporate risk management. And as a member of Audit and Supervisory Committee, we have high expectation. He's going to play an important role. I'm sure you have integrated reports on hand. We've been always wanting to win this award. We were always sitting very close but not being able to win. But this time, we've been able to win this executive award at the Post Nikkei Integrated Report Award. So please take a look at our integrated report in very details. That's it from our side -- from my side. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Shidachi. I'm going to present the financial results. First, consolidated results for the fourth quarter. Sales increased 1.5% from the previous year to JPY 13.7 billion. The sales growth rate for the third quarter was 3.8%, meaning the sales growth slowed down. The reason is that some media sales staff were dedicated to Sport Vital for sales expansion after the ahead of the schedule nationwide rollout in December last year. So that's the reason. That's the impact. However, these dedicated sales staff of Spot Baitoru are now also selling Bitoru because we are now selling Baitoru and Spot Baitoru as [indiscernible]. Mr. Tomita explained. So the latest growth rate is picking up, and it is expected to recover in the first quarter. Operating income was JPY 2.5 billion, down 14.3% Y-o-Y. This decline was due to the execution of upfront investment of JPY 870 million, including advertising and system development for Spot Bitoru. Excluding this upfront investment, operating income increased for existing business by 15% year-on-year. The segment profit of the Personal Recruiting Services business declined because of the impact from Spot Baitoru PL being included since Q3. Next, this is the sales trend of Media service compared to the market. The ratio of new active job openings to applicants ratio, which is roughly in line with the market growth rate was minus 3.5% in the fourth quarter, and the market has been moderately recovering since the third quarter. We see this as a result of strong job market, particularly in the food and beverage and retail sectors. Since DIP Media service sales growth rate has outpaced the market growth rate, DI's market share continues to increase. Next, SG&A. The advertising and sales promotion expenses ratio increased by 2.3 percentage points due to the increased investment in Spot Baitoru Group. Excluding that, the existing business advertising expense ratio was 17.8%, lower than the previous year's 21%, indicating that the existing business is leaner. In addition, the advertising investment in Spot Baitoru have started to take effect, and we can attract and draw workers to Spot Baitoru. Next is personnel cost. Headcount declined by 6% Y-o-Y as of the end of the Q4. Since we were able to achieve the operating income target with less employees, we paid a special bonus of JPY 400 million in the second half of the year for achieving the operating profit per employment target. As a result, the personnel cost ratio increased temporarily. Next is the full year consolidated results. The market growth rate forecast was 0% at the beginning of the period, but the market was weaker than that and actual figure was minus 4.7%. As a result, sales fell 2% short of the forecast, landing at JPY 56.38 billion. When it comes to operating income, although advertising expenses were higher than initially planned, thanks to the nationwide rollout of Spot Baitoru ahead of schedule. Personnel expenses and other SG&A expenses were lower than initially expected and operating income was in line with the plan. Next is the forecast for the current fiscal year. With the 3 innovations, namely Spot Baitoru DIP AI and evolution into solution sales organization, sales are expected to increase 6.3% Y-o-Y to JPY 60 billion. Decrease in profit is due to the impact of JPY 4 billion upfront investment in SpotByer. Moving forward, we will make sure to generate sales and profit from this upfront investment while increasing the profitability of existing businesses. cost breakdown. We will accelerate our advertising investment in Spot. So we plan to spend JPY 13.9 billion on advertising. And we hope the headcount exceeds the number of previous year in the second half. However, full year average headcount will be smaller than the previous year and personnel expenses are also expected to be lower than the previous year. For other expenses, system costs are expected to increase by about JPY 1 billion year-on-year due to the development costs for Spot Baitoru or DIP and Baitoru Talk and others. In addition, we expect to incur one-off expense for the office consolidation in conjunction with the shift to solution sales organization. Next, the medium-term management plan. We have updated the planned figures for the next fiscal year, which is the final year of the current midterm plan. When we formulated this plan, we assumed in this year, the monetization of the services to which we made an upfront investment. However, we decided to continue upfront investment to increase the sales growth rate. But even with that, we would like to exceed JPY 17 billion in operating income, which is a big hike compared with the current period. Next, business overview and progress in DX business. Cove lineup, there is no update here, so I will skip it. So about the talk. Well, President Tomita already explained this in his DIP Air part, so I will skip. -So results for the DX business in Q4, sales were 6% higher than the previous year. Although sales of flow products declined compared to Q3 due to the impact of seasonality in recruitment advertisement demand. On the other hand, sales of stock products, mainly in the promotional area expanded steadily compared to Q3. The number of companies subject to monthly filling remained at the same level as last year. KPI. While the number of companies declined, ARPU rose and average quarterly sales remained flat. This is due to a decrease in the number of interview scheduling KOBOT, while more companies are now using the customer attract KOBOT MEO whose unit price are higher. Next is the strategy for DX business. Recruitment and HR domain was covered by Mr. Tomita in sales and promotion support domain. We will promote bundle sales of customer traction, patronage and SMS booster, and we will increase customer sense of effectiveness and reduce the cancellation rate. In addition, we will further improve the quality of MEO KOBOT for customer traction and promote the sales to major customers. By implementing this strategy, we plan to achieve sales growth rate of 10% this fiscal year on par with the previous year. Profits are expected to grow by 24%, mainly due to lower personnel costs resulting from the transfer of personnel to Spot Baitoru. Next is progress in person recruiting service business. First, media sales. Sales increased 0.9% Y-o-Y. The growth slowed down from -- excuse me, 2.9% in Q3. So the growth rate has been picking up a little recently. We will increase this fiscal year by expanding sales. I'm going to explain sales growth rate, breaking down into the number of contracted companies and unit price. The number of contracted companies decreased 2.6% Y-o-Y as a result of assigning some of the media sales staff to work exclusively on Spot. On the other hand, the unit price per company increased 3.8% Y-o-Y. The third quarter was 2.9% increase. So the unit price increase has accelerated slightly. Continuing from Q3, unit prices are rising, particularly for major clients companies, staffing agency and other human resource-related companies. Next, sales result of permanent placement service. Sales of our permanent placement service were down 1.4% Y-o-Y. The impact of less number of new graduates hired is dragging on. Finally, Q4 sales for the entire personal recruitment service combining media and permanent placement services. This increased 0.9% Y-o-Y. Strategy for the personal recruitment service business. Mr. Tomita has already talked about the first and second and also fourth one, then -- so I will skip them. The third one, we plan to hire more than 100 mid-career employees during the current fiscal year and actively recruit new graduates who will join the company next year at Salesforce. Furthermore, we will revisit our training and education system and compensation system to prevent turnover, and we hope to achieve a year-on-year increase in headcount in the second half of this fiscal year. The fifth is the finally monetization of permanent placement service. While improving the productivity of carrier advances, we will work on development for the release of new service utilizing GPI. Business plan for personnel recruitment service. planned sales growth rate is 6% this fiscal year compared to 3.9% in the previous fiscal year. Profit is expected to decrease due to the upfront investment in Spot Baitoru. That's all from me. Thank you. Shareholder returns. As planned, full year-end... Full year JPY 95, year-end, JPY 48. This year, 26th term, although we are expecting the profit to decline, we are planning to pay JPY 95 full year dividend interim JPY 47 and year-end JPY 48, which are the same as last year. The shareholder gift, it's well pretty much well accepted by shareholders. This is a card prepaid card with Mr. Oi's picture. If the number -- if the shareholder has more than 500 shares, then we give not only the card, prepaid card, but also the clear file with, again, Mr. Hani's picture. So we hope that you increase your holding in our shares. Thank you very much for your participation. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]