Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for joining our earnings briefing session for the fiscal year 2025. This earnings briefing session is provided in both Japanese and English languages to the audience from the entire world. I believe it's early in the morning for people living in Europe, it should be at midnight in the U.S., for people in Asia, it's the evening. Thank you very much for joining this session despite the time difference. I am Suguru Miyake, the President and Representative Director. Together with me are Mr. Naraki and Takeuchi.
Hello, I am Naraki. Thank you for your time.
I am Takeuchi. Thank you for joining this session.
Let's get started with the earnings briefing session. We would like to start with some congratulatory or the remarks of appreciation. On the 25th of April, we celebrated the 35th anniversary of our founding or since our founding. Our company was founded in April 1991. We got listed on the Mothers section in October 2006. We got listed on the First Section of the TSE in December 2007. This is all thanks to your support. Thank you very much for your continued support. We would like to have regrowth as a company. We had our accounting inappropriate incident in FY 2021. Then after that, we've had introduction, development, change, and conclusion. We experienced these four phases. Through these four phases, we renewed ourselves. In the fiscal year 2025, I think that we made enough preparation for our next journey.
When you look at our ordinary profit, we had JPY 16.8 billion at the time of the accounting incident, and that went down. After that, we had a growth from JPY 15.4 billion. On the fourth year, this time we've had JPY 19.1 billion ordinary profit, a major growth. The new fiscal year, we are celebrating the 35th anniversary. We are going to have the second founding as a company, Next GENESIS. In 2032, we would like to achieve JPY 30 billion in ordinary profit in that year. That's Vision 300, Next GENESIS. Under this vision, we would like to make a huge growth. Now, for the fiscal year 2025, I would like to call this the current year, and I am going to call FY 2026 the ongoing fiscal year.
I would like to provide the executive summary of the fiscal year 2025. We've had a hard time after the inappropriate accounting incident. After a recovery phase, finally, we were able to end this fiscal year with growth in both sales and profit. Our sales ended at JPY 50.25 billion, up by 14% year-over-year, and ordinary profit was JPY 19.15 billion, up by 13.2% year-over-year. We have regained our momentum that allows us to achieve our target ahead of the plan toward our midterm target. Our original performance achievement cycle of reaching a peak in December and spending the fourth quarter to prepare for the year after. We are recovering toward the cycle, and I think that we've had a good transition toward the new phase of regrowth.
About the current fiscal year or the FY 2026, the full year guidance of sales, JPY 52.8 billion, and ordinary profit of JPY 19.3 billion was set. We are going into a growth phase. The premise we have for this target is that we're going to exceed this target. Since it's the 35th anniversary since founding, we set Vision 300 as the start of the second founding phase. In fiscal year 2032, we would like to reach ordinary profit of JPY 30 billion. This is the target that we have set. To get there, I think that employees and executives should share the same values together with investors. We should all be on the same boat. That's the reason why we've decided to introduce a new stock type stock compensation plans. New trust type stock compensation plans, rather.
In order to introduce this, we have to get approval at the coming general shareholders meeting to be held in June. Also, we have formulated our new vision and core value that's based on our purpose. About shareholder return contribution, JPY 29 per share of dividend is planned to be continued. Other reporting. Batonz is one of our equity method affiliate, and this company, Batonz, on April 21st, got listed on the Growth section or segment of the TSE. Compared to the opening price or offering price JPY 660, the opening price was JPY 1,674. Batonz has received huge expectation for the future growth. Let's start with the summary of FY 2025. Starting with positive factors.
I believe that we restored fully to the performance achievement cycle of reaching a peak in December and preparing for the next fiscal year in the fourth quarter. We got back to this original cycle. The mandates we receive should be prepared early on so we can match the mandates with other ones. I think that we did well on this. Also we have to do thorough management of the progress by holding kickoff meeting and thoroughly managing the progress, et cetera. We've been doing this fully as well. With these initiatives, we are starting to see really good signs. For example, budget achievers and budget-achieving departments grew significantly in number, especially the number of the departments that achieved budget. The ratio was only 29.7% last fiscal year.
This fiscal year, this ratio increased to 67.4%, more than 2/3. This improves the momentum as a company. Employees talk and departments talk with each other about the status of each other and they encourage each other. We achieved 80% of the whole year target at the end of the third quarter. I believe that this creates positive momentum for the fiscal year 2026, the ongoing fiscal year. We're not saying that we are free of any issues. For example, we had a really small but a slight decline in the number of transactions closed. We had a decline in new sell-side mandates year-on-year. However, I think that you can see these items positively. M&A consultants declined in number this time.
This is an item that we've been taking actions already with enough sense of an issue. I'm going to elaborate this later. The reason why we've had smaller number of the new sell-side mandates is because we are now more focusing on the quality of the mandates we receive. To improve the quality, we started to not accept the kind of mandates that we used to receive. Thanks to this new policy, I believe that we now have been accepting a growing number of the mandates with higher likelihood or with high likelihood of being closed in the future. We used to be not able to be focused enough on trying to grow or develop people with tenure of more, no more than three years.
We have been reflecting back on this that we should have done better and we have to take necessary actions. About actual recourse, sales-wise, we achieved 108.5% in sales compared to target, and ordinary profit was 112.7%. We achieved 49% of the full-year target by the end of the first half and 50.4% when it comes to ordinary profit. At the end of December, 82% in sales and 92% in ordinary profit were achieved compared to the full year targets. I think that with this we can say that we are now fully back to the original cycle of achieving performance. As I've been saying, sales were JPY 50.2 billion, up by 14%.
The number of transactions closed was 1,061. This indicates a 17 less transactions closed compared to the year before. JPY 45.7 million is the M&A sales per transaction, up by 15%. We closed 115 large transactions. This was up by 45.6%. Especially mid-cap mandates and large mandates were closed a lot, and that contributed a lot to multiple points. For example, M&A sales per deal. About cost of sales, JPY 19.9 billion, up by 15%. I think that this should be considered as a positive news because we have received enough mandates from the partner network, which is a good news. SG&A was JPY 11.5 billion, up by 15%.
We've been making IT investments and other kinds of positive forward-looking investments, so please consider this as the positive investment results. Ordinary profit was JPY 19.1 billion, up by 13%. This is our income statement with more exact and clear numbers. This page shows the status of our various leading indicators that I think many investors are interested in. The decline in the number of new sales and mandates, I believe that there are some and many investors who are worried about this. In the fiscal year 2024, the last fiscal year, we focused on more volume to improve the motivation level of the entire company. We kind of welcomed all sorts of mandates back then and as a result, we had the largest volume of mandates since the founding.
I think that that was effective in the sense of creating a momentum of the company. Based on that, this fiscal year, our focus is now on closing more deals and having a breakthrough. That has been the target of the current fiscal year. In the first half of the fiscal year, we aim to have a rocket start to the extent where we could have upward revision. When it comes to receiving mandates, we didn't have too much focus on that. At the same time, small mandates, the kind of mandates with the seller's annual sales of less than JPY 100 million, we started to shift these mandates to Batonz. Therefore, the volume of the mandates we received declined. About the second half of the fiscal year, we had a turnaround in policy.
We started to accept and receive mandates that we think we can close. We started to be more responsible of the final result. That has been the new policy. For example, insolvent and loss-making company, this can be a company that we find it difficult to be fully responsible. For example, in the financing or, then the likelihood of not being able to release the warranty of the owner could be higher than other mandates. We started to avoid these kind of mandates. We started to be more focused on promising companies or promising deals. The mandate number, the volume may have declined, but we have been focusing more on quality. We don't think that this is actually a decline. We are bringing this toward improvement. Please think of this as a positive factor.
About sell-side mandates, there is a decline, - 11%. When you look at pipeline volume, this increased year-over-year. No concern is needed for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2026. About new sell-side mandates, I have explained already, and what I've explained is summarized on this page. This page shows the quarterly transition of closings and mandates. You can read the major trends. Next is the balance sheet. I will pass the floor over to Naraki-san to explain here.
Here's the balance sheet information talking about financial status. The top half, the asset side. The total is JPY 66.223 billion, and that was the total assets. Line three, at the accounts receivable, a year ago, it was JPY 2.633 billion as a balance. This year, at March 2026, we had it decreased down to JPY 808 million. We completed the delivery and trying to complete the settlement by the end of the fiscal year, and that actually resulted to see the huge reduction of the receivable. The liabilities and net assets. Net assets was JPY 50.643 billion.
The percentage within the total liabilities and net assets is about 76.5%. Thank you.
Next, about the number of employees. This is also another important KPI. As I mentioned, the number of headcounts at the end of the year, the M&A consultants, changed from 630 to 626. There was a decrease, and there is a need for us to take actions to address this drop, especially for those who are within three years since joining the company. We see the increasing number of people leaving. People who are with us for three years or more are increasing, we have been able to capture them. Let me elaborate more on the net increase.
This is the most important element for us because in M&A, this requires the people engagement. Excellent employees, we need to have the net increase of excellent talents, not just having net increase. While it's important, but to also reduce the turnover rate at the same time to have the net increase. This is directly supervised under President Takeuchi. We are taking actions to address the situation. The current fact, we haven't really improved the turnover rate for those employees less than three years with us. We weren't able to accomplish the target and increase because of this situation. As a background, for the last four years, we were quite focused on recovering our performance, not being able to pay enough attention to new employees.
Because of the misconduct, some of the mid-career employees have left, and that actually weakened the support for developing talents and resources. Since we were also focused on recovering the business, we weren't able to set up a solid mid and long-term vision for growth. For those who are less than three years with us, it was difficult for them to picture and align their own growth along with the future career path inside the company. We consider those are the reasons for the current situation. Therefore, this year, from the second half this year, we have started to make changes. One is the net midterm plan and Next GENESIS is now clearly set out and established. It's been a while since we have clarified the midterm vision.
By having a solid midterm vision, employees will have a good understanding of the growth the company is thinking, and now we have been able to give more dream and vision for them. The budget for the employees with no more than three years of tenure, we have revised the budget. We also revised our follow-up and framework for them. We are reinforcing recruitment activities. Through these efforts, we will make sure to accomplish the net increases in the coming years, along with the solid in our contents and results. Next, talking about the business performance forecast and the midterm management plan. Starting with guidance numbers, the year, this year, for fiscal 2026, the sales target is to be JPY 52.8 billion. Compared to this year, actual, it would be the 5% increase.
Compared to last year guidance, it would be up by 14%. The ordinary profit would be JPY 19.3 billion compared to the actual past fiscal year. It would be up, increase by 0.8 percentage points. Compared to last year forecast, it's going to be increasing by 13%. We always show the first guidance and first forecast number to be quite conservative or the number that we are sure to accomplish, set out as the guidance. That's why our original guidance tends to be conservative. First, we set out the sales forecast to be 5% increase from the year before. We want to promise that we will go beyond this growth, and we will run the business to make sure we can outperform this guidance number.
Regarding ordinary profit, we expect the ordinary profit margin could be slightly declining because we need to make some, you know, advanced investment things into human resources or in IT and also branding. This year is, will be our 35th anniversary, so we want to take this opportunity to focus more on branding, so to improve our brand image. We'll be spending in those areas. That's why we will tend to see a somewhat conservative ordinary profit. If the sales go stronger than the forecast, then we should see the increase in ordinary profit. That's why we want to make sure to outperform this forecast in sales first. In the midterm management plan.
What we had announced in the past, this year, we were looking at JPY 17 billion ordinary profit, but we came out to be JPY 19.1 billion, so that 12% increase. The sales went up to JPY 50 billion from JPY 46 billion, so it is up by 8%. The current year, we originally expected the ordinary profit to be JPY 18 billion. We want to bring it up to JPY 19.3 billion, meaning up by 7%, the sales to be JPY 54 billion, from JPY 50 billion, it would be up by 5% in our new guidance.
The year-over-year, well, since we had pretty good results that year, last year, we hope that we can outperform this fiscal year from what we see here. Next GENESIS. What is this Next GENESIS that we just announced? Out of this misconduct, finally, we were able to recover our business in 2026, the FY 2026. This is actually the starting year of our second founding and renewed growth. There are two parts within this second founding year. I became 74 years old this year. Gradually, I know I'm still good and healthy, but I am starting to think of the succession plan so we can gradually transfer the business over to next generation.
Second, now it's been 35 years since we started this business. The things have changed a lot. There were no internet 35 years ago. The mobile phones were started to be seen back then among the elite people. Now AI has become quite common as a course of nature. Of course, we're gonna have to change our business model, and that is the second founding year, from the regional revitalization over to the renewal of Japan, then to be the number one M&A company in the world. We want to go over JPY 30 billion as an ordinary profit in the year ending March 2033. However, this takes many different actions to accomplish. One is the trust type stock compensation plan.
With this system, the management employees and yourselves, like as shareholders and investors, will be on the same boat. Second is the expansion and relocation of the headquarters. Thirdly, we are redesigning our corporate vision and core values. Regarding Trust Type Stock Compensation Plan, we will put our treasury stocks in a trust, and for the target employees and senior management, we will give, you know, the grant points to them. Once the targets are met, then we will provide the shares in line with the points provided. Regarding the head office expansion, currently our sales team at head office are actually spread among four different floors.
We will consolidate them into two floors, and at the same time, sales team to be consolidated on a single floor, to allow them to have real communication to be more productive. That's how we can drive our innovation. The mission framework, the new vision, core value. We were talking about corporate ethos, purpose, and philosophy, through the M&A and business. We contribute to preservation and sustainable growth. There is no change. Purpose, to bring best-in-class M&A ever closer. No change on this. We broke down the philosophy into two parts. Vision, starting with regional revitalization, driving the renewal of Japan, and ultimately becoming the world's number one integrated M&A company. We have clarified the vision. To realize this vision, we are talking about these core values.
To be a professional, utmost respect for clients, swing the pendulum and pull. If you swing the pendulum and pull, that could create potential risks. That's why the right things in the right way is also needed. Those are defined as our core values. Regarding sales force, sales organization. In the past, we also made a change on here. We had, actually, organized the sales team by channels. We actually consolidated them into three groups. The Alliances Division would be talking to mega bank and accounting firms and regional banks and securities business. We collaborate with them and then get the business through referral. We put them together into single division. Second, Corporate Business Division. This is mainly for the seller, buyers. Sorry, the sellers.
We will have a more detailed growth strategy for the selling businesses, so we can implement the solid matching. Thirdly, Regional & Industry Strategy Division. Right now there is no point of just sending out direct emails to anybody around there. We need to focus on specific industry and specific regions, and that's what they're doing here. There are different size of businesses within this pyramid, large size and midsize and small sizes. Small businesses could be handled by our group company Batonz. Mid-size business will be handled by M&A Center ourselves and for accomplishing further growth. The Capital Market Division will bring them into the TOKYO PRO Market. Also listed businesses will be covered by IB and Strategy Division.
IB coverage team will be looking at mid-sized listed companies, will make proposal to them as well. Strategy Division will be looking at the fast businesses, including various kinds of financial advisory businesses.
Earns JPY 29 dividend per share is planned to be kept. About 60% dividend payout ratio, we have promised this. The X is over this as declined from 7% to 6%. An ROE has been hovering above 20%. There is no major change to shareholder mix. As a related business, Batonz. is now listed on the Growth Market and our TOKYO PRO Market business has been quite successful. Of 176 companies listed on the TPM, 49 got listed with our support, we would like to expand this business further. About PMI consulting business.
With PMI, M&A becomes successful for the first time. Companies that are proactive in PMI is, it's only our company who does that. We exceeded more than 40% in growth year-over-year, and we received 132 mandates. This is quite a big growth. We would like to grow this further so we can create an era where PMI is taken for granted. About overseas business, this is the 10th year since we founded our base abroad. The third phase starts from the new fiscal year of authentic profit generation. This comes at the same timing as our second founding phase. We are going into the third phase from this fiscal year. It's the same as fund business. We have finally built our base.
J-Capital, an intermediary holding company, was established. We had all the funds underneath this J-Capital. This is again the second founding phase. Now we are moving into the growth phase, where we want to accomplish a huge leap. We can make this fund business as the second pillar. Topics. Let me skip topics section. Let me talk about the industries. As you know, SME Agency, two years ago announced a Skill Map. Based on the Skill Map, this qualification exam for small or SME M&A is announced. We now got more details about the exam. It's going to be basically a national qualification system going forward. A company that does the operation is being gathered and looked for, and it's in a bidding process.
This qualification is going to be a national qualification system. This is indeed a really good news for us, for our company, and it's going to contribute a lot to having a more sound industry. the inappropriate buyer. We have reinforced a lot to take measures against them. We started to hear a little about those businesses, and now we hear less and less about them on magazines and newspapers, but we can't rest our role laurel on the situation. Could be a possibility of start seeing some new methodology. We want to continue watching as the industry and as a leading business in this area, we are taking efforts to prevent those problems. With the collaboration among the business, industry, academic, and government, we are reinforcing the situation.
We are seeing the spread of understanding within academia, and we are seeing a much stronger level of understanding by them. Basically M&A was actually picked as the major research area by the Kansai University. M&A. This is a place where employees and families still form lasting bonds, so no failures allowed. We have to accomplish the best M&A, and we will consider this as the major pillar for to support the business. Starting from management all the way through the compensation system, we need to have a solid backbone to support the business. From the, you know, completed mandate over to the success. We'll make sure to solidify the contract. We also execute the proper PMI.
The president of the, you know, buyer to be the legendary e-business owner. Making sure buyers will not be in trouble, we need to have a smooth PMI. We will also provide automatic insurance at the same time for the representation of warranty insurance. We want to support the second life of the, you know, seller present. We can make everyone involved happy, not just about completing the contract. We also want to accomplish the success in the course of M&A process. I know I exceeded the time a little bit. For March 2026, we shared our financial results and the guidance for the year under review so far. From this fiscal year, we are now back onto the growth trajectory. Through fiscal 2032, we have set a major targets in Next GENESIS.
We are starting the second founding phase, and we are going back to the growth business. That's what we explained today. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, President Miyake, for the presentation. We will start Q&A session. We accept your questions through chat functions at the bottom of the screen. Due to time constraints, we may not be able to cover all of the questions we receive. We will now start Q&A session. While we wait for receiving your questions, we would like to start with some of the questions that we often receive from investors in our IR meetings so far. First question. About your initiatives about hiring and retaining M&A consultants, please talk to us about the issues that you think you have now and how that initiative is progressing. Also, please talk about the net increase plan in M&A consultants going forward.
Thank you very much. This is indeed one of the FAQs. In order for us to receive investments, investors should be interested in, on where we will be in three years' time or five years' time, and that will be determined by how effective we'll be able to secure our resource. And since this is an initiative that's right under the supervision of the President Takeuchi, I would like to hand over to him.
Sure. This is Takeuchi. Recent hiring status and retention of employees, as well as issues and plans about net, having a net increase in the number of consultants. I feel that we feel the effect of what we've been implementing.
Since this is a matter right under the supervision of myself, the President, I've been involved in the recruiting. When it comes to final interview, basically almost all the final interviews are covered by myself. I leave the entire day of Fridays for the final interviews, and also I make myself available on Saturdays as well to have final interviews. With personnel agents, I disclose my own address to them so they can have direct communication with me to shorten lead time. In the final interview, I try to talk about the vision I have with my own words. We have been selective in recruiting the good personnel. For that, it's really effective that I do the final interview, and I feel that it's been effective so far.
To talk about development of the personnel we have hired, general manager of the sales division and the group leaders' face and names, I know all of them. I think that important points about improving retention is that we hire matching personnel. We hire people who share the same mission as our company's mission. Matching is really important to have good retention. By myself doing the assignment, I think that we have made some improvement or major improvement rather. To talk about an issue, I think it's not good that I continue to do this all by myself as president.
I always require an attendance of channel general manager, and also we try to record the final interview or to re-record interviews with the agreement of the candidate, so we can leave data of why we decided to not hire that person or what the performance was after hiring, et cetera. I believe that we've been making good initiatives in doing effective hiring and retention. About the net increase plan, 10% net increase is the plan that we have under FY 2026. We are fully committed to this.
The 10% net increase is the plan, what's important is to have 20% in growth and we also have to be ready for 10% of the resignation, so the net increase is 10%. In the current fiscal year or the FY 2026, our plan is to have 25% growth through recruitment, 15% resignations or net increase can be 10%. We want to narrow the gap by and that leads to productivity improvement of the company. I think that making sure that the newly hired people are highly attached, emotionally attached to our company, that's very important. We would like to do all these things together at the same time.
Next question. Among your partners, due to the difference in the conditions, isn't there a risk for them to maybe shift a collaboration with other M&A supporting company? What do you think about this possibility?
Thank you for the question. Let me answer this question. We are receiving a text.
Other players in the market, they are basically not able to implement direct marketing. Because they sent a call, made calls too much directly, they send emails too much, so the customers are fed up with such a direct marketing. From customer perspective, receiving direct mails from tens of different companies, they had no idea where to talk to. Actually, that situation, so basically, three or four, five companies could be, you know, sent out as a non-dedicated company. Through that, they're trying to find a partnership. That's what we are starting to see among the regional banks and accounting firms. First, regarding financial institutions, I believe we will be able to protect our business, pretty much all of them, because having business with, through the financial institution isn't that easy.
Of course, they will collaborate with you, but whether they will actually refer you over to any projects or not will all depend on the long-lasting relationship. Also, from a top management all the way down to the people on the field, you need to have the trust relationship at every level. With the regional banks, I also talk to the head of those regional banks and the executive of regional banks and have meetings and have dinners with them quite a lot. Such a relationship that I built has been there since I was with the previous business. I have such a quite long relationship with them, so it's not that easy for others to break this relationship.
We are doing a lot for their sake, not really, you know, for their merit, like a qualification system and also, award system for them. So many things that we're doing for them, so we should be able to protect. Accounting firms, I think you can get the business, if you could actually get the intention of the accountants. If you bring good conditions, for example, with M&A Center, we actually provide, this is the ratio that you receive, but if you work with us, we can give more than that. That's what happens. The accountants, they will go for the better deals. Accounting firm, not many of them are actually quite business person because they have the philosophy to run their accounting firms.
They want to actually be of a help to the mid and small-sized businesses. They also want to protect the regional businesses. They have such a high philosophy to become the tax accountants or the basically accountant business, corporate accountants. A lot of them are like that. Of course, it's not just the condition, but also we actually talk to them with the philosophy, and the mission-driven business is what we offer. We always think of what's the best practice for the sake of clients. For clients, who would be the best choice for the clients? That's what we value the most. It's not for the purpose of making a revenue for the accounting firm. If they will look for other partner, then that can actually be a conflict of the interest for them.
The top-rank accountants and tax accountants, qualification, hates to see the conflicts of the interest. They want to focus first what's best for the customer. We will be there to allow that to happen and to accomplish that philosophy. Of course, we may lose one or two deals from certain situation, but there are about 1,000 or 1,500 accounting firms, those core accounting firms, we basically are protecting our business likely not to be attacked by the others, or we're even expanding our network. The other day, we held a major, you know, conference gathering a lot of accounting firms in March. I think it was on 18th of March, we held a major conference called as ACCOUNTING DAY. To 2,600 participants we had.
By executing these actions, we should be able to capture those accounting firms as well.
Next question. Is there going to be any impact on the business from the development of the generative AI? Please talk to us about the threats and possibilities or potentials that AI have.
I would like to take this question together with Mr. Takeuchi. I think that AI can be a huge potential for us. I am very excited about what AI can do for us. I think that almost zero negative effect we may receive from AI. When it comes to generative AI, when it comes to AI gathering generic data, we can use AI at the same condition as a boutique company that's run by a single person. What's more effective is more specific individual information. Here we have 600 M&A consultants who visit our clients' office every day, and they gather data.
We have been building a huge database with the data, and we can use the database. When it comes to negotiation with our clients, sometimes we succeed, sometimes we have a break-off of the negotiations. We build all the knowledge or all the experience in the database. With AI, we can enhance the level of the database we have. We can also improve productivity with AI. I feel that the potential that AI has is unlimited. What do you think, Mr. Takeuchi?
I feel exactly the same way. AI is indeed a tailwind for our company.
M&A is a theme that could be important, but it could be low when it comes to emergency level. When it comes to AI, I think that it doesn't drive the final decision-making. It should be human who makes the final ultimate decision-making when it comes to M&A. That should be the way of using AI in our field. What I think is important is to accumulate potential information as much as possible. We've been building 7,000 companies or 9,000 companies' data. We also build the information that's in the brains of the company owners of such companies. I think it's really important that we stay ahead in using AI with AI-driven measures.
Next question. talking about the decrease in number of transactions closed. If you were to focus, continue to focus on quality, I believe it's possible to see a continuous decline on the number of closed transactions. Is it, what is the view how you can actually increase the number of closed transaction while focusing on quality? Thank you for the question. Takeuchi-san, can you maybe answer this question as well?
A great question, I believe. It is exactly true. There are two points to answer. First, of course, we'll continue to focus on quality. How do we increase the number of closed transaction? Quite natural. Well, throughout the whole process, we just wanna have to take one step forward in a solid manner. There is a Value Promotion Department who will improve, who will go through the potential risks and identifying them. If there is a bit, how do we move forward the project? We'll take more meticulous actions by analyzing the data and set up a rule.
That way, last year, after we conclude the agreement and up to the closure, we were able to actually improve the ratio by 10%, up to 80%. That is one thing to improve the, you know, the ratio of completion. For receiving mandates, I believe we kinda hit the bottom already right now. That's what I'm feeling. The year before last year, we tried to focus on the volume of mandates, the market. If we take all the mandates, whatever they are, we just take them. And if we were to be successful in closing the transactions of a large enough, like JPY 100 million or the revitalization project, then we'll be also responsible for the result and outcome.
We just also need to be selective and to in choosing the right project and mandates. We are thinking of increasing the number of closed transaction in a V-shaped manner or the U-shaped manner. We want to focus on the quality mandates or quality project and then increase the number of completion by 10%. That's what we want to accomplish as part of the vision in the second founding phase.
Next question. Could you share with us the number of negotiation open deals at the end of March 2026, the number of active pipeline projects?
About back orders or open sell side mandates. In March last year, it was 2,200 orders. At the end of the last month, it was 2,500 orders. This is not the number of negotiation. Back orders was 113% of what it was a year ago. We have a lot of ingredients for future negotiations. The question we have received, the number of pipeline deals or pipeline projects, it's growing as well. The number of pipelines last fiscal year was 305, and it became 425 projects. Time. A growth of 20%. Especially we had 425 projects that's during or in negotiation now. We are going to close them in Q1 and Q2.
Next question. For March 2027, regarding the forecast, the guidance number. The operating profit is expected to be 3%, to increase by 3% year on year. Whereas net income is expected to grow by 7%, which is larger. Can you explain this growth? The fund business A to G exit extraordinarily profit is going to be posted, which is actually increasing the amount of net income. Naraki-san, anything else?
Yeah, that is exactly the reason why we see bigger growth of net income. Thank you.
Since there is no additional question, we would like to make the next question the final question for today. Please talk to us about your initiatives toward FY 2032. This is indeed a very important theme for us. I would like first Mr. Takeuchi to take this question.
I am simply excited about what's what lies ahead of us. In the four years since the financial misconduct, we had a lot of learnings in the good sense, and the M&A industry itself is having a major turnaround period. We started to take actions ahead of others, and we've transformed our entire company. Our headquarter systems improved with establishment of the administration headquarter as well. We can stop what we should stop and so we can proceed what we should proceed. We think that we have really a strong base now. We would like to achieve JPY 30 billion in ordinary profit in seven years' time, and we would like to make a huge leap under this Vision 300.
Thank you for the remark. About 2032, I am really excited about where we will be. We have fully recovered from the misconduct. We have some relatively minor issues such as talent issue, et cetera. In the huge sense, I think that we have made a full recovery since the misconduct. This fiscal year is going to be the first year of the second founding. We're going to once again put ourselves on the growth track for a huge growth. I indeed enjoy this process. The necessary strategy and tactics for us to get there, we have refined the strategy and tactics that are required.
We have put a lot of time on preparing them. To employees, stock-based, a new stock-based compensation system is planned to be introduced. With that, investors, employees, and our executives will be on the same boat with the introduction of this new system. We would like to realize what we formulate under the Vision partially with this system. We would like to be able to have a huge jump in the next 30 years and 50 years even. Maybe consultations targeting listed companies can start in M&A. In our overseas business, I think that we'll be able to grow significantly. Fund business is going to be developed into a second major business or second major pillar rather. We're going to expand our business this way without failure. We plan to have huge jump in both sales and profit.
Please look forward to the story we have ahead. Please enjoy our journey together with us.
Thank you for staying with us till the end, and thank you for taking your time out of your busy schedule. Thank you for being with us till the end for the earnings session for March 2026. Participants in Japan, participants in Asia, the U.S., and Europe, we thank all of you indeed. Besides that, we've been focusing on IR, and we will continue to do that so you can fully understand where we are. We welcome one-on-one meetings, IR meetings. We would like to have enough communications with investors to expand our market cap and our corporate value. Thank you, and please continue to support our company. Thank you indeed.