DIP Corporation (2379) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Happy new year. Looking forward to have another fruitful year. This year is Year of the Horse. And actually, I was born in the Year of Horse, meaning I'm going to celebrate my 60th birthday this year. And having said Horse Year, there is a special Horse Year happening every 60 years, and this is the year. It is said that it's going to be quite a passionate year. We were sowing seeds last year. We've been shifting towards solutions-based sales organization, and also we've been initiating Zero Project and Othello Project, which we will discuss later. And this year, we are going to bear fruit following these initiatives. We are getting excited to make them happen. So please have high expectation on our performance this year. Now I'd like to start. This year's theme is GO MAJOR, especially Spot Baitoru. We're going to make it bigger. We are working on various initiatives. And we want to make sure we make our Spot Baitoru a major service. To make it happen, compliance is very important. There were gray zones when it comes to spot part-time jobs, but we want to make sure that users can use the service with more peace of mind. So we've been making effort. And to make it happen, the challenge we wanted to overcome and we've been able to overcome is the unpaid wage situation. And we discussed this when we announced Q2 results and when we announced Q1 results, but when that matching is happening between the companies and the job seekers, it's considered that, that's the point of when employment contract is established. But some of the service providers, they were saying that it is as of when the QR code is scanned when it is considered that the employment contract is established. So there is a period between matching and when the worker is screening the QR code. And if the corporate side makes last-minute cancellation during the period, they were not paying wages to the workers at all. And this should be considered as after employment contract being established. So somehow, wage had to be paid. But that was not taking place. And we were the first to take action. And including the previous cases, we paid all of the unpaid wages on behalf of the corporate to the workers who suffered from these last-minute cancellations. And in Q3, there was a major step forward happening. In October, for the first time, the workers side, they brought the situation to the court saying, this situation should be considered as unpaid wages. And court side made a decision asking the corporate side to pay. Well, the court is recognizing this is an unpaid wage situation. And this situation has been covered a lot by media, including the national broadcasting system called NHK or other broadcasting companies and newspapers as well. And this order, asking corporate side to pay, the amount is not that big because we are talking about spot part-time job. But potentially, if it accumulates, that total amount can become very big. So the lawyers are saying that we should make class action lawsuit. They are asking for these workers who suffered from unpaid wages to participate in this class action lawsuit. But we are confident that we are operating our business without any gray zone. And from user point of view, when they consider which service to use when they search for a spot part-time job, the factor, the users can be trusting the service providers, should be very important. The unpaid wage situation, the Diet is also taking action now. The Diet is saying that, well, the period during which the workers can claim for these unpaid wages will be expiring after the first 3 years. So we have to take action quickly. That's what they are starting to point out. And needless to say, following the situation, corporate side are starting to take actions. Especially major food service chain stores and other industries as well are starting to take actions. And Baitoru Talk, customers, clients are finding this service very attractive. So Spot Baitoru, well, corporate side, they are wanting to shift from spot part-time job to regular part-time job. So this is another trend we are starting to observe. And this regular part-time job, we are the #1 player in the industry. So triggered by the situation, increasing number of corporate now saying they want to shift to long-term shift-based part time, which is a tailwind for our business. Both the number of companies and users are increasing, and we believe this is just the beginning. We should be able to expect further acceleration. Next is about Baitoru Talk. And other than the logos you find on this page, we are starting to have other major size clients start using Baitoru Talk. This should tell how promising this service can be in the future. Next is about our promotional activities. Mr. Shohei Ohtani, last year, he was very, very successful. And this year, again, he's going to bring in enthusiasm. The WBC 2026 will be starting shortly, and we're going to be the crown sponsor for Tokyo Pool. And we actually shoot a new TV commercial. And last time, there was a short video featuring the interview with Shohei Ohtani, and the YouTube effect was very big. The equivalent ad value was much more than what we paid for Mr. Shohei Ohtani. And I asked him, what does he think about participating at WBC 2026. I also asked other questions. And we are sharing the video already. And it is only a 3-minute short video. The total was more than 20 minutes, but we edited it. And it's only 3 minutes video, but we already have had 140 million views. Now the equivalent ad value already achieved JPY 140 million. The number of views was 1.5 million. We have a series of interview videos following later so please have high expectation. And we believe that equivalent ad value will keep expanding in the future. On November 11, we held a conference, and this is the third time we are holding this annual conference. And during new year, this year, at Aoyama University, the manager of the Hakone Ekiden, we could have a presentation made by him. And so they showed that a lot of participants participating in this conference became quite satisfied with the content. Next is about Zero Project progress. On December 10 last year, we had a newspaper advertisement on Nikkei. First page was about was focusing on Mr. Ohtani and another page focusing on this Zero Project. One of the social issues is the illegal part-time jobs. It says part-time job. So as the #1 player in the part-time job advertising, we have to take action to do away with these illegal part-time jobs. We feel responsibility to make it happen. So with these 3 mega banks, we have had discussions to collaborate together to make improvement. To do away with illegal part-time jobs, we're going to exchange information. We're going to collaborate in conducting screening. That's what our advertising is talking about. And needless to say, it's not only about the 3 mega banks. Other banks and regional banks and trust banks, other financial institutions are proactively participating in this initiative. And we're going to strongly collaborate with them from now on. Now we are getting a lot of client referrals from these financial institutions. One of the goals is to overcome the problem. We have newcomers. They are not necessarily good at making phone calls. But luckily or unluckily, a lot of financial institutions are introducing their customers to us. So the number of phone calls we need to make is maybe coming less than before. And we are aiming to make the number of illegal part-time jobs down to 0. Thinking about our sales, we believe that this should be a very beneficial initiative. Please have high expectation on what we can achieve. Next is about AI. Our industry is going through a major transition, and the core is the AI development. If you turn on TV, you will hear AI agents or various industries discussing AI agents. But we've been the first to start discussing dip AI. AI can serve as a job searching in agent. We've been airing TV commercials starting from last year. And initiatives leveraging AI technology is making good progress. In this industry, we'd like to be the #1 company in leveraging AI technologies. That's what we are aiming to achieve. So this year, this is another point we would like for you to have high expectations. That's it from me. Thank you.

This is Shidachi. And from my side, I would like to talk about the consolidated results for the third quarter. Sales were down 4.9% year-on-year and it was JPY 13.5 billion. And this is because with the transition to a solutions system in June last year, that caused a number of handover operations to increase, and the sales activities such as discovering new customers and existing customers were not sufficient. While sales in the second quarter were down 0.6% year-on-year, the reason for the further slowdown in sales growth in the third quarter was because in the second quarter, our sales growth rate of plus 5% before the transition to the solutions system was included in June. Currently, the handover has been completed and the sales activity volume has returned to pre-transition level. In addition, headcount has turned positive year-on-year, and we are aiming for a high single-digit sales growth rate in the fourth quarter. Operating profit was JPY 2.6 billion, down 21.4% year-on-year. Although advertising investment, including investment in Spot Baitoru was negative compared to the previous year, in addition to the impact on the declining sales, profit decreased due to an increase in personnel costs driven by stronger big career hires. Next is the sales trend of media services compared to the market. First, please refer to the black line graph. The job-to-applicant ratio, which is roughly linked to the market growth rate, continued to be weak at minus 5.9% in the third quarter. By industry, we believe that the food and beverage and retail sectors are particularly weak as in the second quarter. However, this is due to the temporary increase in the sense of sufficiency of manpower. The structural labor shortage remains unchanged so we expect it to return to a gradual recovery trend in the medium term. The orange line shows the growth rate of media service sales. It is roughly at the same level as the market growth rate and maintains its market share. Moving on to sales reps. Currently, the sales growth rate is temporarily slowing down, but we have built a solid foundation to increase sales growth, so I will explain this next. Specifically, I will first explain the sales foundation, which is the number of sales reps and their motivation and then the product foundation. First, there is a change in the headcount which affects the sales growth rate. Over the past 6 quarters, the headcount has continued to decline, which has led to a slowdown in sales growth. But in December, it turned positive compared to the previous year. 200 mid-career hires are expected to join the company this fiscal year and we were able to significantly exceed our target. And also, lower turnover rate compared to last year has also contributed. We believe that with the number of sales reps increasing, we have secured sales resources to accelerate sales growth. Next, let me talk about the effectiveness of the solutions system. From the survey to sales reps, we can see that they are making the system transition an opportunity for growth. More than 60% of our sales reps feel that they have grown and the value they provide has improved compared to pre-transition. About 30% of the employees are in charge of staffing companies in regional areas. And since these departments have hardly changed before and after the solutions system transition, so I think there are quite a few answers saying nothing has changed. Also, please bear this in mind. In addition, in a survey to our customer companies, 80% of the companies said that they are satisfied with the value provided by the sales reps in the solutions system. Next, I would like to talk about the status of the product foundation and the specific flow of solution proposals. As was explained from our CEO, Tomita-san, currently, by using Baitoru Talk, which is a communication tool in the workplace, the business negotiations with management and HR managers who were difficult to reach are increasing and it is easier to receive orders for job postings. And the number of contact with existing companies is increasing and the relationship building is progressing. And we have products that support each recruitment processes. And by utilizing this, it is possible to propose solutions that cover the entire recruitment flow. And these proposals lead to improved customer satisfaction, and at the same time, we believe that this is also contributing to strengthen the expertise and motivation of the sales reps. As I mentioned in the previous slide, the number of sales reps have turned positive compared to the previous year. So please look forward to future sales growth driven by the increase in headcount and better productivity. Next, moving on to SG&A expenses. First is labor cost. The personnel cost ratio increased by 2.7 percentage points due to the strengthening of mid-career hires this year. Next is advertising expenses. While increasing investment in Spot Baitoru, advertising efficiency of existing services increased, hence, lowering advertising expenses by 2.7 percentage points. The increase in other expense is due to the increase in rent due to the expansion of the head office. Moving on to the full year forecast. There is no change from the earnings forecast announced at the full year financial results in April. And also for the forecast for next year's sales and profit, there is no change from the content disclosed from the full year financial results announced in April. Now I would like to move on to the progress of the personnel recruiting service businesses. The media sales growth rate was minus 5.2%. The next page shows the breakdown into the number of companies and unit price. First, the number of contracted companies decreased by 7.5% year-on-year. And as I mentioned earlier on the consolidated results page, with the transition to a solutions system in June, the number of handover work of sales reps increased. This has led to the slowdown in contract acquisition of new and existing companies. And the unit price per company continued to increase at 2.4% year-on-year, so it continues to go up. Next is user KPI. There is no significant change from the previous trend and so I will skip the details. And as a result, the second quarter sales of personnel recruiting services as a whole, combining media and permanent placement services, was down 4.9% from the previous year. I have already roughly explained the strategy of the personnel recruiting services so I will skip the details. This is this year's plan for the personnel recruiting services business. And there's no change, so I will also skip this page. Now I would like to move on to the business overview of the DX business. And this is the lineup of KOBOT series. And there's no update here, so I will skip the details. Sales of the DX business in the third quarter were minus 5.1% year-on-year. Sales of flow products decreased year-on-year due to the decrease in the number of media services subscribers. And for the stock products in the workflow solutions area, media customer acquisition progressed, causing temporary slowdown compared to the previous quarter. But the sales in the sales promotion support area increased. And companies subject to monthly billing were also affected by a decrease in the number of media subscribers and decreased by 12.6% year-on-year. This is the KPI of the DX business. With MEO KOBOT driving number of locations per client, ARPU has been steady. I have already explained the strategy of the DX business so I will skip the details. And this is the plan for the fiscal year for the DX business. And there's no change either so I will skip the explanation of this page. That was all for my presentation.

Year-end dividend expectation, no change. Like the previous fiscal year, we are expecting JPY 48. Next is about the shareholder benefit program, which is pretty much well accepted by the shareholders. We are going to have new design of Mr. Shohei Ohtani's QUO card, prepaid card. We have shot another photograph. We have a contract with the MBA, so Mr. Shohei will be wearing his uniform. That's what you will find on our new QUO card, the prepaid card.