Hello, everyone. This is Sugahara of MIRAIT ONE. I have been serving as president since June of this year. Building on what Mr. Nakayama has developed and on the foundations laid by those who came before us, I am committed to ensuring that MIRAIT ONE continues on a path of growth and expansion. I sincerely ask for your continued support. Now, I would like to begin by presenting our financial results for the second quarter. Today, I will follow the agenda shown on this page. First, I will explain an overview of the financial results for the first half of this fiscal year. Continuing on from the previous fiscal year, in this first half as well, we achieved year-on-year growth in both net sales and profits. Orders received, net sales, and gross profit all reached record highs. Orders continued to accumulate steadily, increasing by JPY 22.5 billion year-on-year.
On the profit side, thanks to higher sales and improved profit margins, operating income increased by JPY 3.2 billion year-on-year to JPY 7.9 billion, and the operating margin improved by 1.2 percentage points to 3.1%. Net income for the first half also increased by JPY 3.2 billion year-on-year to JPY 4.6 billion. First, orders received. Orders for the first half totaled JPY 341.7 billion, an increase of JPY 22.5 billion year-on-year. Of this increase, roughly 80% or JPY 18.2 billion came from growth in the corporate environmental and social infrastructure domain. That is the so-called non-carrier business. Within this, the ICT solution business performed particularly well with strong orders related to NEXT GIGA School.
In the telecommunications infrastructure domain, the so-called carrier business, orders also increased by JPY 4.3 billion year-over-year. Although the multi-carrier business declined, this was more than offset by growth in the NTT business. The ratio of non-carrier business in total orders was 64%, and the ratio of the MIRAI Domains, which we are focusing on as key growth areas, was 45%. Net sales. Similar to the trend in orders, both the corporate environmental and social infrastructure domain, that is the non-carrier business, and the telecommunications infrastructure domain, the carrier business, recorded year-over-year increases in net sales. By business segment, net sales decreased in the environmental and social innovation business and in the multi-carrier business. Total net sales increased by JPY 8.9 billion year-over-year to JPY 258.8 billion.
The non-carrier business accounted for 59% of net sales, and the MIRAI Domains accounted for 41%. The MIRAI Domains ratio at the end of the first half is slightly lower than in the previous year. We believe this is mainly because as project sizes have become larger, the timing of completion and revenue recognition is now skewed more towards the second half. Since orders remain solid, we will work to accelerate completion in the second half. From here, I will explain each of the 4 business segments in a little more detail. I will start with net sales by business segment, beginning with the environmental and social innovation business. In this business, orders were strong. However, net sales for the first half decreased by JPY 2.2 billion year-on-year to JPY 82.9 billion.
Within this, electrical and air conditioning work increased. The planning and consulting business, which is a strength of Kokusai Kogyo, remained roughly flat year-on-year. In civil engineering and water supply works, and in construction and renovation work, projects have become larger in scale, which is leading to revenue recognition being concentrated towards the fiscal year-end. Net sales for the first half declined. The ICT solution business. Here, net sales increased by JPY 7.7 billion year-on-year to JPY 69.9 billion. Breaking this down, in the global business, our subsidiary, LanTroVision, which provides cabling services for data centers, performed strongly. We also saw higher sales in LAN and related work, as well as in software. In sales of goods, net sales of NEXT GIGA School-related products grew significantly. The NTT business.
Demand for fixed line related work increased, and in mobile, investments for improving 5G service quality continued to expand. As a result, net sales in this business increased by JPY 4.9 billion year-on-year to JPY 90.3 billion. Lastly, the multi-carrier business. While there were differences among the telecom carriers, this segment was affected by the continued decline in orders from the previous fiscal year. As a result, 5G base station related projects decreased while fixed CATV related work increased. Overall, however, net sales decreased by JPY 1.5 billion year-on-year to JPY 15.7 billion. Next, I will explain operating income and EBITDA. EBITDA is operating income plus depreciation and amortization, including goodwill amortization, and we show this as an indicator of our earning power.
Operating income increased by JPY 3.2 billion year-on-year to JPY 7.9 billion, reflecting higher net sales and improved profit margins. EBITDA also increased from JPY 11.1 billion in the previous first half to JPY 14.7 billion this time. We believe this shows that our ability to generate earnings is steadily improving. The factors behind the JPY 3.2 billion year-on-year increase in operating income to JPY 7.9 billion are shown on this slide. Gross profit in the environmental and social innovation business increased by JPY 1.8 billion, and in the ICT solution business by JPY 0.6 billion. For the corporate, environmental, and social infrastructure domain as a whole, gross profit increased by JPY 2.4 billion year-on-year. In the telecommunications infrastructure domain, gross profit also increased by JPY 1.7 billion.
In total, gross profit increased by JPY 4.1 billion year-on-year. On the other hand, SG&A expenses increased by JPY 0.9 billion year-on-year. This increase was within the range we had originally anticipated. As a result, operating income increased by JPY 3.2 billion year-on-year to JPY 7.9 billion. Lastly, in this section, net income. Mainly due to the increase in operating income resulting from improved margins, net income rose from JPY 1.4 billion to JPY 4.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of JPY 3.2 billion. This slide shows our full year forecast for fiscal year 2025. As I have explained, performance in the first half has been progressing smoothly. We are not revising our full year forecast at this time.
We will continue managing the business with the aim of achieving orders of JPY 630 billion, net sales of JPY 620 billion, EBITDA of JPY 48 billion with an EBITDA margin of 7.7%, operating income of JPY 34 billion, operating margin of 5.5%, and net income of JPY 21 billion. I will discuss shareholder returns. For this fiscal year as well, our basic policy on shareholder returns remains unchanged. We will continue to focus on stable dividend growth and flexible share buybacks and actively carry out shareholder returns with a total return ratio at a target range of 50%-70%. Our outlook for business performance has not changed from the plan formulated at the beginning of the year. We continue to expect higher net sales and profits.
We plan to increase the annual dividend by JPY 10 to JPY 85, the same increase as the previous year. Including the JPY 3 billion share buyback implemented in the first half, the total return ratio currently stands at around 50%. Regarding additional shareholder returns, we will continue to consider this while taking into account market conditions, earnings outlook, and other factors. As for ROE, in aiming to achieve our medium-term target of 10% or more, we have planned a level of around 8% for this fiscal year, and at present, we believe this is well within reach. EPS is expected to be JPY 236, a 25% increase from the previous fiscal year. I will explain the key initiatives, the topics for fiscal year 2025.
The MIRAIT ONE Group is implementing the MIRAIT ONE Group Vision 2030, to become beyond a telecommunications construction company, we are expanding growth areas with telecommunications business as our base. To realize this vision, enhancing corporate value and creating group synergies are essential. Up to now, each of the group companies and the internal companies or business units have been working to strengthen its own business while also expanding through M&A, including the acquisition of SEIBU CONSTRUCTION and Kokusai Kogyo. In other words, we have been expanding through adding businesses. For further growth, it is crucial to strengthen collaboration among group companies and internal companies, as well as to deepen our partnerships with external partners. We believe that we need to shift to a more customer-oriented approach, enhance customer value, develop new customers, expand our business domains, and utilize new technologies.
In order to generate synergies across the businesses of each of the group companies and internal companies, we will focus on multiplying our combined capabilities and accelerate our consolidated management through multiplying value. From the next page, I will explain our shift towards customer-oriented approach and the expansion of our business domains. This slide is about our shift towards customer-oriented approach. The MIRAIT ONE Group has built a Full-Value Model across various business fields, enabling us to provide services from planning and proposals through to maintenance and operation. Based on this Full-Value Model and our customer data, we will work from the customer's perspective to create new customer value and to promote proposal-based sales, rolling out solution offerings that help solve customers' issues. We will also focus on developing new customers. To accelerate these efforts, we have newly established a group CMO, a chief marketing officer.
The CMO will lead our customer-oriented marketing and sales activities. This will be Mr. Takaya, who is currently the president of the Solutions Business Company. As 1 example of business domain expansion, I will explain the expansion of our O&M, operation and management business, through the consolidation of Y2S as a subsidiary. Up to now, maintenance services within the MIRAIT ONE Group have mainly focused on on-site response. In October, we made Y2S Inc, a company with cloud maintenance and expertise into our consolidated subsidiary. This has enabled us to establish a combined cloud plus on-site maintenance structure. Going forward, we will further enhance the quality of our services, including faster response when issues arise in customers' ICT equipment. In addition, we will evolve customer system monitoring and operations into managed services. On that basis, we will use customers' operational data to provide optimal proposals, including equipment renewal and modification.
In the future, we aim to expand this managed service model beyond the ICT domain into O&M businesses in various infrastructure fields, such as solar power and battery storage facilities, ZEB and urban and community development. Next is another example of business domain expansion, our initiatives in container-type data centers. Demand for data centers is very strong as customers seek to respond to rapidly growing AI-related needs. Our container-type data centers are attracting many inquiries due to several strengths. The speed with which they can be completed, the ease of providing one-stop delivery, and the high degree of flexibility in site and installation conditions. For the container portion, MIRAIT ONE Group offers variations such as air cooling, large air cooling, and water cooling, and we provide one-stop services from site survey and design through to construction and maintenance. The software-based service layer is provided by our partner, Morgenrot.
They offer a lineup of services, including on-demand and dedicated models and multi-vendor support for GPU servers. There are 2 main service models, 1 in which we provide only the GPU computing resources inside the servers to customers who simply want to use computing power, and another in which we provide the entire container type data center to customers who wish to own it themselves. Orders for this business totaled JPY 1 billion in the previous fiscal year, and we aim to increase this to JPY 7 billion by the end of the current fiscal year. Finally, I will explain the progress we are making on the MIRAIT ONE Group Vision 2030. This slide, which you have seen before, shows the 5 pillars of our business strategy, the 5 changes. From the next slide onwards, we show the progress of the initiatives under each pillar.
Due to time constraints, I will focus on some of the more notable initiatives. As you can see in the legend at the top right of the slide, for items where we can measure results at the end of the first half relative to the full year plan, we use weather icons to show the progress. For Change 1: People-Centric Management, the cumulative number of employees who have moved into growth areas has exceeded 800, and we are steadily progressing towards our target of 1,000+ employees by fiscal year 2026. In addition, indicators such as the utilization rate of MIRAI College, improvements in engagement survey scores, and the number of new hires scheduled to join next fiscal year have all met or exceeded the plans set at the beginning of the year, indicating solid progress. Next is Change 2: Acceleration of Business Growth.
Our urban and community development business and global businesses are progressing well. For the green energy business, there is a tendency for a larger portion of net sales to be recognized in the second half. For this and other reasons, progress at the end of the first half is around 20%. However, we are actively working in areas such as EVs and battery storage facilities, and we have been able to secure orders. We will work to accelerate completion towards achieving our full year plan. Regarding the synergies created through the Trinity Approach among SEIBU CONSTRUCTION, Kokusai Kogyo, and the rest of the MIRAIT ONE Group, orders in the first half of the 4 large resort facility construction and renovation projects totaled JPY 12.4 billion, already exceeding last fiscal year's full year result of JPY 9.1 billion.
We will continue working towards the target of JPY 20 billion. As for the highly visible data center business, in addition to the container-type data center business I explained earlier, we are strengthening collaboration between LanTroVision, which conducts telecommunication equipment and data center cabling work across 12 countries in Asia and our domestic business in Japan. We're also expanding electrical and air conditioning work, our own data center operation business, and large orders for UPS uninterruptible power supply equipment. As a result, orders in the first half reached JPY 31 billion. To further expand this business, we are currently promoting the mobility of human resources into this area. Next is Change 3: Our initiatives to become top-class profitability. Regarding the impact of the 3 company integration conducted in July 2022, we continue efforts such as group-wide benchmark comparisons, and we are working towards achieving the annual target.
In the telecommunications infrastructure domain, gross profit margin has improved by 1.4 percentage points at the end of the first half of fiscal 2025 compared with fiscal 2022. Compared with the end of last fiscal year, the margin is down 0.2 percentage points. However, compared to the first half of last year, it has improved by 1.1 percentage points. Given the tendency for margins to improve towards the end of the fiscal year, we believe that progress is on track. We will continue to promote value chain reforms and organizational restructuring to further enhance efficiency. For Change 4, management based on data insights. We have been focusing on developing DX human resources and using generative AI. The details of our AI-related initiatives are explained on the next page.
To advance the sophistication of our business operations and to drive fundamental transformation of our processes, we have established a secure generative AI platform available to all employees. As of end October 2025, we have rolled it out to 41 Group companies, and on a monthly basis, 9,577 users, equivalent to 60% of Group employees are using it. In terms of utilizing generative AI, we have developed an AI app for project risk management, which evaluates risks in incoming orders and helps prevent the occurrence of unprofitable projects. In this way, 25 different AI apps that we have developed in-house are being used 6,912 times per month, contributing to strengthening our capabilities in the field. Going forward, we aim to deploy AI agents across all operations and to accelerate business transformation.
Finally, Change 5, efforts on strong foundation for ESG management. One of our materiality themes is contribute to the creation of environmentally friendly and resilient communities. In the current fiscal year as well, we are steadily promoting initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas, GHG emissions, and to lower the final disposal rate of industrial waste in order to address environmental issues. For the first half, we have disclosed the actual results for fiscal year 2024 for each of these indicators. In July, we also revised our promotion framework, transitioning from the former ESG Management Promotion Committee to the new Sustainability Committee. With a view to realizing a sustainable society, we aim to further enhance corporate value by balancing the resolution of social and environmental issues with the growth of our business.
We have become a signatory of the United Nations Global Compact, and we continue to obtain various ESG-related evaluations and certifications such as Kurumin and Eruboshi. That concludes my presentation on the financial results for the first half of fiscal year 2025. Thank you very much for your kind attention.