Good morning, everybody.
[Foreign language].
I very much appreciate everyone's attendance. It seems like we're joined by New York, London, and others, so thank you so much.
[Foreign language].
Let me now go ahead and explain our financial results for the third quarter this fiscal year.
[Foreign language].
I would first like to give an overview of the results, and that can be followed by Q&A.
[Foreign language].
Page three, please.
[Foreign language].
I am not particularly happy about the third quarter results myself.
[Foreign language].
Every situation is upward. Everything is starting to be positive.
[Foreign language].
That being said, the only loss that we had to see was the number of transactions closed. That's why I'm not particularly happy about it.
[Foreign language].
That obviously has hit sales as well, which is a composite of the number of transactions closed and unit price.
[Foreign language].
However, leading indicators, they're very, very strong continuously from the second quarter.
[Foreign language].
Let me go ahead and dig a little bit more on those numbers.
[Foreign language].
Sales were JPY 29.8 billion, down 4.2% year- on- year.
[Foreign language].
Ordinary profit stood at JPY 10.7 billion, down 8.3% year- over- year.
[Foreign language].
Ordinary profit has been deferred because of the fixed cost, which essentially stays the same regardless of earnings.
[Foreign language].
Again, the biggest critical thing for us was the number of transactions closed. It decreased to 738, down 7.3% year- over- year.
[Foreign language].
M&A sales per transaction stood at JPY 39 million.
[Foreign language].
It was an uplift of 4% year- over- year.
[Foreign language].
For M&A sales transactions, I feel that it's in the ideal state because that's in line with the target of JPY 39 million, ± JPY 10 million or so.
[Foreign language].
Moving on to the number of new sell-side mandates, one of the leading indicators that we have, we hit 1,029, which is a whopping upward uplift of 19% year- over- year.
[Foreign language].
Following that, we had a good rate of matchings we were able to conduct, which translated into a great number of new transaction negotiations that we did. It was 951, or an increase of 8.7% year- over- year.
[Foreign language].
Even if you look at the third quarter standalone, the number of new negotiation meetings was 340, which was a historic number for us.
[Foreign language].
These two leading indicators are very, very important for our business.
[Foreign language].
There are two meanings related to that.
[Foreign language].
One of them is the fact that our employees are more engaged, more motivated, and that has equated to more traction in terms of their actions.
[Foreign language].
The other is those mandates, those projects in the pipeline are going to directly have a positive impact on April and onward earnings.
[Foreign language].
Go to the next page.
[Foreign language].
In terms of the sales progress that we have done so far, it was 61% to the full-year forecast.
[Foreign language].
Our guidance can be broken down into 40% for the first half of the year and 60% for the latter half of the year.
[Foreign language].
Which means that we would have had to achieve 70% as of the end of the third quarter.
[Foreign language].
Again, it's really unfortunate that we only did 60% or a little more for both sales and ordinary profit. Apologies for that.
[Foreign language].
We also conducted some analysis as to why we could not see more growth in terms of the number of transactions closed.
[Foreign language].
I feel that there are three reasons behind it.
[Foreign language].
One is that we have a lesser number of mandates than we got about a year ago.
[Foreign language].
For us, when it comes to M&A transactions, it takes about a year from the mandate receipt to the closing of the transaction.
[Foreign language].
Number two is because we have a higher level of guidance, we had to take on a lot of actions, and that had to take a lot of time on our consultants.
[Foreign language].
Those so-called guidelines that come out of small- to mid-sized companies, agencies, self-regulatory body. They are not that really difficult ones in and of themselves for us.
[Foreign language].
Many of those are basically the ones that we had already taken care of ourselves.
[Foreign language].
However, we need to make sure that those guidance are being implemented into our operation as we are trying to be compliant to the guidance.
[Foreign language].
For that to happen, again, we had to spend a fairly good amount of time on the administration, managerial stuff, trying to explain to the customers. That is one other factor.
[Foreign language].
However, this is also about familiarization, so this can get better as we go.
[Foreign language].
The next one, the third one, is actually the most important challenge for us.
[Foreign language].
That is the buyers' awareness and knowledge. We have seen it heightened.
[Foreign language]. Sellers' knowledge.
Sorry. Sellers' knowledge.
[Foreign language].
In 2024, we had a lot of news coverage talking about the issues in the industry, Lucian problem, for example.
[Foreign language].
That has led to, again, those seller companies being more wary of the transactions.
[Foreign language].
They would go and investigate in each step of the transaction. They would go and talk to their lawyers, talk to their accounting experts to get more knowledge to make sure that they are okay.
[Foreign language].
We have obviously done this, been there before in terms of those sellers' anxieties and questions.
[Foreign language].
That means that if we can successfully take lead on their questions and anxieties and proactively clarify those, then we will not see much long time that we need for the lead time.
[Foreign language].
However, that was not something that we could see happen this time.
[Foreign language].
In other words, we were a little more receptive, passive. We could only answer those questions as they came along, not being very proactive.
[Foreign language].
That turned into negotiation meetings takes longer than expected. Some are slipping into the next quarter. Customers got anxiety still not clarified, and the deals got to break down halfway through and so forth.
[Foreign language].
Going to the next page.
[Foreign language].
As for the first issue that I talked about, the less number of mandates that we had that we got a year ago, we have seen, as you can see on the screen, quite a bit of improvement on that front, so I feel that this problem has been more or less solved at this point.
[Foreign language].
Again, for the problem number two, we are able to resolve that as well as we are trying to make sure that we bring those guidance and information into our steps meetings so we can get better on that as well.
[Foreign language].
Again, the third theme is the biggest for us.
[Foreign language].
It really comes down to the proactive approach that we can do. We must shift to that more and more so that our consultants can go talk to them before our customers have anxieties, questions, so the problems can be solved earlier rather than later.
[Foreign language].
For that to happen, we actually conduct kickoff meetings for every deal that's come to the table.
[Foreign language].
In those kickoff meetings, we have this list of expected challenges that may pop up in the minds of sellers and buyers, and we try to answer those questions.
[Foreign language].
We also try to make sure that we list up stakeholders of sellers and buyers and make some explanation engagement to those stakeholders.
[Foreign language]
We create thorough, detailed timeline schedule for the transactions, and we make sure that can get shared to sellers and buyers.
[Foreign language].
By implementing that sort of approach, we're trying to resolve this problem number three as well.
[Foreign language].
Let's go to the page 7. I'll skip to page 6.
[Foreign language].
About the leading indicators as new ones that we onset, these are really great.
[Foreign language].
Let me explain that looking at the deal flow.
[Foreign language].
New sell-side mandates stood at 330, up 15%.
[Foreign language].
The quality, content of those new sell-side mandates were also great.
[Foreign language].
For one, we could see growth in the number of mid-cap mandates.
[Foreign language].
As you can see in the bottom left, we had 65 for the mid-cap mandates, 140.7% growth.
[Foreign language].
If you could also look at the yellow at the bottom, we had higher number of mandates that we got out of central areas.
[Foreign language].
For those mandates that are from local, regional areas, in its nature, they're lower average M&A sales per transaction, and also they're not easier to close.
[Foreign language].
I would then like to go to the third indicator here, registration for matching. We had a growth by 18.4%.
[Foreign language].
Obviously, just working on the matching doesn't go anywhere.
[Foreign language].
Which means the next indicator means really a lot, the proposals to buyers we marked all-time high for this one.
[Foreign language].
This means that we had approvals from the sellers, and we went and talked to the buyers with the proposals.
[Foreign language].
And that resulted in the record high number of new transaction negotiation meetings. At the further right, we had it at 340 for 14.1% growth.
[Foreign language].
Our intention is that we're going to be thoroughly working on the kickoff meetings, as mentioned just earlier, to make sure that those negotiation meetings in the pipeline can get closed.
[Foreign language].
Let me go and talk to page 11.
[Foreign language].
In terms of the number of employees, we have seen steady growth in the number of consultants.
[Foreign language].
However, there's a slight chance that we will not be able to hit the net increase of the consultants by 120, which is something that we had in mind at the beginning of the year.
[Foreign language].
We also have seen fairly good improvement in terms of the direct ratio, the proportion of the consultants relative to the total.
[Foreign language].
Going to the page 17.
[Foreign language].
Again, we have got really strong leading indicators. We have got highly engaged, highly motivated employees.
[Foreign language].
For that reason, we remain unchanged with the guidance for this year and also the mid-range plan. We would still like to aim for achieving those.
[Foreign language].
I'm going to jump over to 29.
[Foreign language].
From an industrial landscape perspective, this past year, this fiscal year that we are running, has been very, very impactful.
[Foreign language].
One of the impacts was the revision of the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency Guideline.
[Foreign language].
Aside from that, we have also seen our own self-regulatory body guidance revised.
[Foreign language].
I would describe those revisions as quite timely here.
[Foreign language].
In 2024, we had, for the first time in the history of M&A intermediaries industry, malicious, fraudulent buyers. Those were something that we had never seen before.
[Foreign language].
In that perspective, we were able to implement measures against those malicious buyers as an industry.
[Foreign language].
Going to the page 30.
[Foreign language].
Obviously, we are working on things even more stringently than what guideline expects.
[Foreign language].
We are conducting various checks for each point of the deal process.
[Foreign language].
We have three checks. One is anti-social force check, and the other is the buyer's financial state check, and the third is the scheme itself.
[Foreign language].
In Japan, we had a quite shocking announcement come out this week.
[Foreign language].
That was the news about the company called M&A DX, who were not following through those checks, being compliant to the guideline. They actually got removed by name from the registration of Small and Medium Enterprise Agency.
[Foreign language].
It was announced by the head official at the agency himself, so it had a really significant impact.
[Foreign language].
Going into the next page.
[Foreign language].
We have changed the name of the association ourselves.
[Foreign language].
We changed the name of the association as an industry, and we also strengthened the governance.
[Foreign language].
This one that I'm holding right now is about the advertisements that were put out this week.
[Foreign language].
Additionally, the board of the association used to constitute only M&A intermediaries.
[Foreign language].
From this time and onward, we are also bringing on board regional banks associations, accounting officials associations, financial advisors associations. So there's more kinds of people that we have constituting the board.
[Foreign language].
Next page, please.
[Foreign language].
Amid such environment, we are taking point on making sure the industry is really the safe place, healthier place, by accelerating the collaboration between government, companies, and academia.
[Foreign language].
With academia, we are planning to launch the Japan M&A Society this coming April.
[Foreign language].
We ourselves overcame quite a bit of hardships and challenges following these scandals.
[Foreign language].
Because of that, we are almost complete with the compliance check at this point.
[Foreign language].
That has also translated into the higher motivation, the engagement of the employees, and the record situation with the leading indicators.
[Foreign language].
That has, I feel, put us in the better structure, the better people, better indicators. They really have put us at the new starting point for the growth to come.
[Foreign language].
This is the end of my presentation, so let's go to Q&A. Thank you.
[Foreign language].
[Foreign language].
[Foreign language].
Okay, we are getting into Q&A session from here on. For those who have questions, please use chat functionality of the Zoom or raise your hand.
[Foreign language].
If you raise your hand, our facilitator will call on you, and so you turn on your mic and ask questions, please. Okay, let's get started.
[Foreign language].
Any questions?
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language].
[Foreign language]
While waiting for the questioner to write up his or her questions, I would like to start referring to some of the questions that we had from yesterday's earnings call, and that was, please provide with the number of new negotiation open meetings as of the end of December.
[Foreign language].
In terms of the number of meetings, first of all, what we had last fiscal year was 374, but that we have seen good growth to 405 this fiscal year.
[Foreign language].
Again, with these growths in the number in place, our job is that we make sure to get those mandates in the pipeline, those meetings in the pipeline to be closed in time, so they're not to break down halfway through. So it's our job to make sure that we increase the ratio of closing out of those mandates in pipeline.
[Foreign language].
[Foreign language].
昨年度はネゴシエーション数と年度を通してのクローズ数がほぼ同数でしたが、今期は1から3期のネゴシエーション数とクローズ数に大きな開きがあります。ネゴシエーション数のクオリティが下がっているということはないでしょうか。また、去年はほぼネゴシエーションに入るとブレイクしなかったけれども、今期はかなりブレイクしているということでよろしいでしょうか。
[Foreign language].
The question is about the negotiation meetings and the number of transactions closed. The person said last year it didn't seem like you had so many breakdowns between negotiations and number of transactions closed. However, this year, is it correct to understand that, first of all, do you see a significant gap between the number of negotiations and the number of transactions closed? That's question number one. And also, in relation to the breaking down of the negotiations halfway through, do you see the quality of those negotiations themselves kind of deteriorate this year, and that's why you have seen more breakdowns happening this year?
[Foreign language].
That's a really sharp question.
[Foreign language].
In fact, it's exactly as you said.
[Foreign language].
We have seen an increase in the number of negotiations open.
[Foreign language].
There's a couple reasons why, then, those negotiations are not leading to transactions closed directly.
[Foreign language].
One is the slippage of the transactions because of the longer time needed for the transaction.
[Foreign language].
The other is breakdown of the negotiations. It just gets gone.
[Foreign language].
This, however, is not necessarily driven by deteriorated quality of the negotiations themselves.
[Foreign language].
It is, however, because of us not being proactive.
[Foreign language].
Again, those sellers have had a higher level of awareness and knowledge.
[Foreign language].
That was primarily driven by those news coverage about malicious buyers.
[Foreign language].
Again, they would go and search themselves online. They would go to lawyers and accountants to get more information.
[Foreign language].
Because of that, as we were not very proactive in terms of the necessary actions and engagement with sellers' companies, we had a breakdown, higher number of breakdowns in terms of the negotiation meetings, and they're sometimes spilling into the next period.
[Foreign language].
We also have seen our rate of closing the deal down by about a few percentage points.
[Foreign language].
This, again, is a testament to the fact that we were not able to address those anxieties from the sellers in a timely and quick manner.
[Foreign language].
We have, for that reason, set in place the structure to accommodate and address this problem that I'm talking about at this point, so I feel that we are able to now solve the issue.
[Foreign language].
[Foreign language].
Awesome. Next question is about the new managers. I feel that there's a higher number of new managers that may have impact in terms of not being able to always control the lead time, as you talked about. What is the state of developing those new managers?
[Foreign language].
Thank you for the question. Again, you really pointed out correctly here.
[Foreign language].
We increased the number of new managers quite greatly.
[Foreign language].
We had growth in the number of directors by more than 15.
[Foreign language].
We also appointed 40 or so group leaders newly.
[Foreign language].
There were two benefits that come out of those appointments.
[Foreign language].
One is about the retention, that we're seeing the higher rate of people staying at the company because of the more thorough and careful trainings that can be conducted with the higher number of managers.
[Foreign language].
We also had a better bond among groups of the consultants that led to a higher number of mandates.
[Foreign language].
This is a result of higher traction in terms of our actions.
[Foreign language].
In the meantime, in the context of deal management, training is still ongoing.
[Foreign language].
That being said, we have had really enhanced trainings running.
[Foreign language].
For those group leaders, Takeuchi is conducting the management training every month.
[Foreign language].
For those who have been through those monthly trainings for more than two years can become directors.
[Foreign language].
So these people have the higher level of the deals management themselves.
[Foreign language].
But when it comes to actually putting those knowledge into practice in the field, it's a different story.
[Foreign language].
I wouldn't deny the fact, for that perspective, that we're seeing those rather still inexperienced new managers are somewhat leading to the delay or longer time needed for the deals to be closed.
[Foreign language].
On the other hand, however, these people are growing on a daily basis as well.
[Foreign language].
I feel that we're going to see a great amount of improvement as we go.
[Foreign language].
Next question is about the number of consultants as of the end of December last year who are specifically above three years in terms of the tenure. So can you give me the number, and can you also touch on whether you see improvement year- over- year for that number?
[Foreign language].
Thank you. This again is a very important challenge for us.
[Foreign language].
Because those people who are above three years are the ones who bring results and develop other consultants.
[Foreign language].
The number of consultants who are above three years in the Q3 last year were 246, or 38% of the total.
[Foreign language].
Oh, sorry, so the Q3 last fiscal year was 246, which was 38%, but now we are seeing 41%.
[Foreign language].
[Foreign language].
But now this year, it's grown to 320, which is 44% of the total. So we have seen growth in terms of the number.
[Foreign language].
This is a plus of 74, so I feel that we have had success in growing the number.
[Foreign language].
The next question is, what was the number of transactions spilling into the next quarter as of the end of the third quarter?
[Foreign language].
Yes, thank you for the question. That number was 35 mandates.
[Foreign language].
In following that, do you think that you'd be able to more successfully control the transactions so that you won't see higher or the same level of transactions slipping into the next fiscal year in the fourth quarter?
[Foreign language].
Yes, I definitely would like to see a fewer amount of slippage that we're going to see in the fourth quarter, as well as a fewer number of breaks of the deals.
[Foreign language].
We also have taken on measures so that we can actually see those stably going.
[Foreign language].
Kickoff meeting that I talked about is a testament to that.
[Foreign language].
I also feel that the February that we're getting into is the most important month for that.
[Foreign language].
Next week on Monday, I am going to speak to all employees that we have, for that matter.
[Foreign language].
We're working on those various kinds of measures so that we'll be able to see minimized number of slippages and the breaks and maximize the number of transactions closed.
[Foreign language].
Next question is, can you tell us about the new sell-side mandates in the third quarter that were directly sourced and that were coming through the network?
[Foreign language].
Directly sourced sell-side mandates was 35%, or 352, that's the count, and the ones that came through the network was 65%, or 666. The rate and the number remains unchanged with what we had last year.
[Foreign language].
The other question that's related to the new sell-side mandates, it seems like that you have seen growth in terms of the mid-cap mandates of those new sell-side mandates starting this year, but what drives that?
[Foreign language].
For one, we have strengthened the structure and support mechanism to increase the number of mid-cap mandates.
[Foreign language].
In the case of small-sized companies, if they don't have anyone who can succeed their companies, then they are left with a couple of options.
[Foreign language].
That is, they go bankrupt, they declare bankruptcy, or they go a route of M&A to ask for help.
[Foreign language].
Whereas for mid-cap companies, they have more number of avenues.
[Foreign language].
Because they are mid-cap, the family of the company can also be attracted to the succession.
[Foreign language].
Obviously, there's a head that they can approach to and have the person succeed the company as well.
[Foreign language].
They can also approach to some fund to execute IPO.
[Foreign language].
What is important here is that as they have a higher number of options and they choose one of those, we must be the best option for them to work on the M&A.
[Foreign language].
For that reason, again, we have set in place a new support mechanism or supporting department to facilitate and assist in those fronts, and every consultant, every other team can utilize this supporting department.
[Foreign language].
This has translated into more appropriate approaches, proposals that we can bring to those mid-cap companies.
[Foreign language].
I'm thinking that we would like to further strengthen this point.
[Foreign language].
Next week, I am traveling to the United States.
[Foreign language].
In America, I appreciate that there are some companies who have those mid-cap corporations, and they take time to receive the mandates.
[Foreign language].
I feel that there's a lot to learn from those companies as we try to increase the number of mid-caps further than what we have today.
[Foreign language].
It doesn't mean, however, that we're shifting ourselves completely to mid-cap.
[Foreign language].
Our intention is that we're going to continue expanding the pool of M&A opportunities in a healthier way.
[Foreign language].
When I see it as healthier, I mean as we expand the bottom section of the pyramid, it can also grow upwards to the top of the pyramid, top parts of the pyramid.
[Foreign language].
By working on that, we are hopeful that we'll be able to secure the average M&A sales per transaction too.
[Foreign language].
Next question is about the start of the new M&A Intermediaries Association, in which you said that in January this year, you're starting this self-regulatory committee. So the question is, what kind of revision of the rules do you expect to see from here onward?
[Foreign language].
Yes, thank you. One, I think, is about the morale.
[Foreign language].
I appreciate that there are boutiques in today's industry that are putting out some violent advertisements that are working on phishing sort of sales approaches.
[Foreign language].
For one, we are setting in place more regulations against those approaches.
[Foreign language].
The other is about compliance.
[Foreign language].
We have the problem of the conflict of interest in the context of using intermediaries.
[Foreign language].
We have the problem of insiders as we see involvement from listed companies.
[Foreign language].
We are going to put in more regulations against those as well.
[Foreign language].
The biggest theme at the moment is how we go about addressing those malicious buyers.
[Foreign language].
We're going to enhance the checklist that enables us in finding those malicious buyers.
[Foreign language].
We are creating contract templates to prevent those malicious buyers from taking on some bad acts.
[Foreign language].
We are making sure that we'll be using escrow so that payment will come through with no problems.
[Foreign language].
Those are challenges that we are facing today.
[Foreign language].
Next question is about an overall environment that you're in, including the recruitment. I took part in your peers' earnings call yesterday, and it struck me as weak overall. They said the recruitment environment is becoming harder and harder, and there are more people leaving the company. That contrasted a bit to your earnings as well. I'm sorry, to your earnings, where you said hiring is starting to sort of improve, although it's still underperforming your initial guidance, potentially. So what are your thoughts in terms of what is really happening in the industry that are leading to those weaknesses? Comparatively speaking, how do you see your positives and negatives, tailwinds versus headwinds, if you can elaborate on that a little more?
[Foreign language].
Thank you for a great question. This again is a very important theme.
[Foreign language].
I feel that what may be happening in the industry is that we are in this transformation, transitionary period right now.
[Foreign language].
I see there are different companies with different missions towards this M&A intermediary work.
[Foreign language].
In Japan, the M&A industry is still relatively new. It's still not matured.
[Foreign language].
My gut says that about five years back, the number of boutiques was only about 30 or so.
[Foreign language].
But now we have seen it grown to 450.
[Foreign language].
We have seen many entrants to become boutiques from various industries.
[Foreign language].
Our company historically started M&A intermediaries work specifically for the clients of the accounting offices.
[Foreign language].
The accounting offices were shareholders of our company.
[Foreign language].
At the same time, those sellers that they introduced to us were the ones that those accounting firms have been forging the relationship for the past 30 years.
[Foreign language].
So it was the culture that we were always sticking to, to make sure that we carefully, thoughtfully approach the M&A transactions.
[Foreign language].
What contrasts to that sort of culture, especially among those new boutiques, is that some of them treat those companies as products.
[Foreign language].
Those companies are only focused on efficiencies, turnaround as they run their firms.
[Foreign language].
Obviously, as they do that, efficiency improves.
[Foreign language].
But there's a bigger problem behind it.
[Foreign language].
One is that they're not able to adhere to the guideline.
[Foreign language].
The other is that they're not able to come through with the customer satisfaction and PMI.
[Foreign language].
Today, both SMEs agencies and also financial services agencies have said that it's important to encourage those M&As in a way that can be compliant to their guidelines and make sure that there will be M&As that can well include post-merger integrations as well. They're trying to activate in a healthy manner for the M&A intermediaries work.
[Foreign language].
I suspect that those boutiques, there are a number of those who have had to make sure that they stick to what those agencies are saying today.
[Foreign language].
I also think that employees are leaving the firm who may have used to work on those efficient sales and earned great amount of incentives.
[Foreign language].
Because if the companies, those boutiques, are now having to be compliant to the guidance, they're not as efficient as any more before. They're not giving out more incentives any more before. Those employees at those firms get demotivated, and they end up leaving the firm.
[Foreign language].
For this, I do believe that we're going to see radical change in the industrial structure for the next two to three years. There'll be a dynamic shift.
[Foreign language].
That change for us is a positive tailwind for us.
[Foreign language].
We were already working on our work to a level that needs to meet the guidelines since before.
[Foreign language].
Therefore, we do not need to change anything drastically in terms of how we do things, the culture as we try to be compliant to the guidelines, because we had already those cultures in place before.
[Foreign language].
Equally, we have always been mission-driven, not the incentive-driven.
[Foreign language].
But we're not seeing our employees quitting the firm because of those problems.
[Foreign language].
We're also fairly underway. Things are really underway for recruitment for us.
[Foreign language].
Especially if you look at the new graduates pool of the talent, we ranked number fifth in the context of consultants work.
[Foreign language].
We also have gotten quite a bit of popularity for interns in the ranking of whether the intern was helpful with the growth. We actually ranked second in the chart, and we have received 5,000 applications from the interns.
[Foreign language].
Moving forward, we are planning to increase the ratio of those new graduates hiring versus the mid-career recruitment.
[Foreign language].
Therefore, again, I feel that there are a lot of tailwinds in front of us that we are experiencing right now, so we are more ready to regrow ourselves.
[Foreign language].
[Foreign language].
We are almost ending the session here, so just finally have Miyake-san say a closing word. Thank you, everybody, for attending the Q&A sessions today. Some are really in early morning, some are really in late evening, so really appreciate your participation.
[Foreign language].
We have overcome massive challenges ourselves since the scandal.
[Foreign language].
I feel that at this point, our employees are highly engaged. We have gotten stronger bond, and we have those motivations peak for the people.
[Foreign language].
We have seen lower number of people leaving the firm, and we are enjoying really strong leading indicators continuously.
[Foreign language].
Those various kinds of regulations that are taking place in the industry are working out as tailwind for us.
[Foreign language].
We are at the starting line of the regrowth that we are capturing. I'm confidently saying this.
[Foreign language].
There are many, many challenges, however, that we need to undertake.
[Foreign language].
For one, we need to strengthen our management so that those leading indicators are resulting into earnings numbers.
[Foreign language].
As we are trying to engage and deliver our strength and advantages in the context of industrial guidance to the customers, branding is also key.
[Foreign language].
We also need to improve productivity of the people per head as we're trying to achieve the mid-range plan.
[Foreign language].
For that matter, we would like to borrow the power of digital transformation.
[Foreign language].
There are many challenges ahead of us still, but we have at this point successfully put ourselves at the right start line, so we're going to be making sure thoroughly taking on those various actions so that we can sustainably grow and mid to long term.
[Foreign language].
I would very much appreciate your continuous support for that direction. Thank you again very much for your time today.