Thank you everybody for attending this today. Now, I would like to begin FY 2027 First Quarter Earnings Briefing Explanation. From my side, I would like to start with what we are working on as a company, the critical important agenda. I would like to explain that, then I would like to pass on to Mr. Yagi to talk about the latest figures and the outlook for the forecast. Thank you very much. Now, this is probably what everybody has been keeping their eyes on. The food industry and their growth. Year-over-year growth used to be negative, and it has been the concerning factor for creating the model. There has been the comments that we receive from our investors. Now finally, we have been able to make it into the positive growth. It has been negative growth since the FY 2025 for two quarters now.
This first quarter, now it is positive growth, and hopefully we are expecting a very strong growth further on. There are a few factors why it has been slow. It has been mainly coming from the restricted use of the Timee driven by the management in the headquarter or the clients. That is due to a lot of cost issues rising up in every factor. The management tried to reduce the use because of that. Now, we have changed our approach to do the sales action to these clients. We are not simply just a mere tool to provide a solution to the labor shortage, but we are actually a solution to grow the sales. Store by store, every monthly sales figure and the day by day sales figure. Because the clients lack the staff.
If they had enough staff such as people people, they could have achieved more sales, but because they ended up with three people, they couldn't achieve the expected sales. Timee is actually a solution that they can leverage to grow the sales. That is the message we have been communicating. When we get the actual sales data by each location of the clients, we have been able to showcase that we are actually the one who can help them grow their business. That is the part of their It should be the HR strategy. The new verticals including the food sector such as the contract service, the cafeteria and the institutional, the meat catering service, that is also growing. Including a lot of schools, it has been difficult for them to hire the cooking staff to prepare these meals due to the labor shortage.
Now they are trying to consolidate that to the contract to the service providers, and that is what we are also supporting. It has been a little difficult for those business to use the Timee, but now we have created a good solid scheme to manage the hygiene and the regulation and operation. Testing what is positive and negative needed for these hygiene and safety requirements. So we have been polishing our products to support this business as well and have been able to support a good relationship, the scheme to support this business. Trying to also lower the hurdle of the growth. That is why we achieve this year-over-year growth. The full launch starting now from August 1st, the full scale launch of the long-term part-time support hiring plan. This is already probably the second biggest pillar of our business, the revenue.
Traditionally the clients, they need to post a job on the job boards. They need to do the interview and select the candidates, and then they would join the company. Only after that they would have the mutual understanding. Then it would not be as early as they preferred. They would drop off, they would quit later on. That would pose a lot of the burden on the management side. We created a completely new different scheme, infrastructure of the pre part-time job that changed the entire flow of the part-time job hunting. Only after they work once as a trial, they join the company. That is completely new scheme. Especially the students or the younger members, they have already given us the feedback that they are looking for the part-time job where they can work earlier.
I think we can accelerate the way the change shift happening to find a way to work. Some specific items here. Monthly plan starts from JPY 20,000, but on average they will be spending maybe around JPY 40,000. It depends on how much they use this service. This will be on top of the normal Spot Work take rate service fee, and this will be applied to per location. Kind of similar to the subscription model. As an image for the clients who have been using, they would be using both Spot Work and then because they still do not have enough people to work, they might be utilizing the job board to look for extra people. They used to think the Spot Work as more we use, more the budget we need to spend.
Sometimes they need to reduce the Timee's usage. Now, we are trying to go after the budget that they are spending on the other job boards, these companies. Trying to ask them to reallocate that budget to the Timee. The reason why we do this is now we can also support that demand by this long-term part-time support hiring plan, and trying to go after the niche, going just also beyond the part-time work, just a little bit niche, but now going for more long-term part-time employment. Some people, they used to, the far wave in terms of the location, the inconvenient location, they used to get only three applicants, and they had to choose just one. Because the mutual understanding is not there, they might quit very early. Even in the inconvenient location, if you use Timee, we can supply enough people.
The fill rate is around 90% for the Timee. Further reinforcing this situation by the new algorithm to support also the long-term part-time job hunting. The matching new algorithm is what we are providing. Now they post a job. If you call for 10 people, they can hire one, but now we have been polishing for long. For the POC period, I think we have actually spent quite a lot of time for that. Before we fully launch or fully swing this long-term part-time support service, we have been doing that. We have been comparing the cost that they needed to spend on the job or to hire the people, and then what if they use the Timee to hire the same person? The result is very clear. We have been able to prove that using the Timee was more affordable for the clients.
We assume that maybe within the five years, this business could potentially reach something close to JPY 10 billion. That is the potential we see, and we are directly managing this directly under the team directly reporting to me. Hopefully, you can expect a lot from this business. Now changing to the new topic. This is the initiative toward the Physical AI era. Now we are partnering in a co-creation partnering with a company called ZEALS. For Timee, we know which locations are suffering from the labor shortage, which location conduct out what kind of task or operation. We are the one in Japan that knows the most about this area. In this area, we know where the Physical AI has a room to enter.
We can then fill high, and then by partnering with this kind of company, we can further operate the better efficiency of the operation and also utilizing the robotics in that, and also the R&D as well. Our new business could be further developed by this, the new approach, new initiative. It is not really like we are manufacturing the robots, but we are the one who can support the implementation, operation, and how to use the actual utilization of the robots. Potentially, it could also be dedicated for the maintenance as well, supplementary, but trying to gather further experience on this and the assets. We are trying to lead the DX of the labor intensive industry market. This is also the release we just made. We are trying to prepare to the shift change happening in the classification to the Prime Market.
We are the one who is creating the new working infrastructure, and we are very committed to this approach, so that is why we started preparing the application to move to Prime Market. I hope you could understand and hope for more expectation on us by this. I have been giving you the positive news. As you can see, the theme of this year is defense to offense. Because of that, we are simultaneously running various initiatives in parallel, and some of them already started to sprout in form of what we mentioned earlier, something like the long-term part-time support job. Toward the mid, the target, also in the middle, we are setting the specific figures as a goal to further receive, and then hopefully you feel more comfortable to hold our shares. This is my part, then I move on to Mr. Yagi.
Right now, from myself, Yagi, I would cover about the specific figures and the industry trends. This is the first quarter overview in this slide. The other specific figures will be covered later on. The consolidated P&L, the net sales, as you can see, standing at JPY 10.044 b illion, achieving 24.8% growth, and the operating profit standing at JPY 1.93 billion. Year-over-year, it is 5.8% growing. Consolidated, that means that it is combining both spot work and non-spot work. As a trend, it is a little bit different on each. As a start, initially it started off as we planned. Looking at the profit, the first half, our plan was to keep making the strategic investments solidly. The investments are going as we planned, and then later on that will contribute to the profit.
As a start, I think it has been a very solid good start as we planned. Let me cover the details later on. The consolidated, the performance trend in terms of the sales and operating profit, both of them are achieving an increase from last year. This also includes the gross profit. We have been able to achieve the increased sales and the profit, and that's still the same story. Now because it's a consolidation, we now also have the Timee Solutions as a consolidated subsidiary. Because of that growth rate, if you look at the year-over-year, it's a few points going down because of that. Looking on to the other story of the profit, it has been increasing in the profits.
For the first quarter, as we mentioned, we're carrying out the strategic investment in the first quarter. That's the plan. The growth rate has been a little bit slow in terms of the top- line, but it's still as how we planned originally. Looking at the cost, we have been disclosing as usual, and the sum, the variable factors are what we listed on the right hand. HR marketing costs, that constitute a large portion of the cost. HR cost utilizing, and also the AI adoption has led us to the improved sales efficiency. That's why the ratio has been going down, the ratio against the sales. The worker marketing cost.
For this part, while we're still working on doing the strategic investment, we have been working on improving the every economics and then making sure the discipline and control over while continuing the strategic support. That's why the range, the increase gap is still within this very small range and generating a solid profit. The cost of the sales, and as we mentioned, this is the impact of the consolidation of the Timee Solutions. By the service, sales and the profit are shown as it is here. Talking about the consolidation, this is, yes, including the impact of the Timee Solutions and also the other new business in the non-spot work in the business. We're launching phase for that. Because of that, if you look at the profit, it's been in a deficit, but this is as we originally planned.
If you just look at the spot work only, what we can say is that we keep the investing strategically, but trying to maintain the very solid level, something close to the previous year. It's been trending very solidly in the first quarter. This is basically the outlook for the full- year forecast as a consolidation. I would like to talk about the trend in each industry. In the consolidation, we're breaking down into Spot Work and Non-Spot Work. For the Spot Work, we have had some macro, the impact, so it's been a little bit weak. Besides that, Non-Spot business, it's been exceeding our plan, and that's how it's trending. For the Spot Work, yes, it's still the very large portion. The logistic, retail, food and social care industry, that's what we're showing here.
As overall summary, what I would like to say here is that some of the factors why it has been a little bit weak, and it is not really related to us or coming from us, it is more like a macro environment, and we have been able to identify why it has been weak. We have already done the troubleshooting and applied the countermeasures. For the full- year, I think we should be landing in the plan, the phase, expected range of the net sales profit. For the logistic, some of the impacts are coming from the cool weather, and also the Middle East crisis. Mostly the macro environment. Some other major clients in the logistic has been a little bit weak in terms of the volumes to handle.
But we are still continuing the existing approach to go after deepening the relationship with the other major clients. After identifying that and applying the countermeasures for the macro environment, that also includes the temporary factors. We are trying to bring the growth back to the very high growth hopefully. We keep continuing working on that sales action for that. Retail and the food, we have been able to turn into the positive growth. Talking about the retail, this is a little bit overlapping with the logistics situation as well. We had the impact of the stockpiled rice, the demand, the surge last year, and now we are seeing the reactionally fall from it. This industry's performance is also impacting the Timee's usage, because they are trying to cut down on the outsourcing HR costs. For the social care, they are exceeding beyond our plan.
Very good. This is the partnership we have with the [Benesse Careeros]. That initiative has been very favorable in terms of the progress of our sales action with that. The product development as dedicated specifically for the social care has been able to release solidly. We have been able to grow our value provided. Regarding the progress rate towards consolidated full- year forecast in the first and to the fourth quarter, this is for your reference. This is against last year. Last year, as well as two years ago, we have this progress shown. In this first quarter, what kind of progress we have is shown in the slide. The sales for the top- line sales is mostly the same. Basically, it is in line with the plan, and that is the progress we are seeing today.
For the operating profit compared to the previous year, 25%, and this time it is 21% or less. Slightly behind, and it might appear so. However, as mentioned earlier, we have made strategic investments. That is one reason. Also the blue bar, if you look at that, it is 22.6%. For the last fiscal year, in the second quarter, we used many costs. For this fiscal year, those costs did not appear. For the first quarter, it was slightly low progress against last year. In the first half, we were able to have good progress in the profit and it is within our control as a company, and that is a recognition. In particular, for this Spot Work by industry, I would like to give more color. For the factors we mentioned earlier, and by each industry, we can see the growth rate as shown in the slide.
For the whole company's KPI, the major differences are not shown, major changes are not shown. On a YoY basis, it is AA growth, which is driving the transaction volume to 18.8% positive. That is a backup to the growth in transaction volume. Both KPIs, the number of AAs and also the average transaction, these are growing. When it comes to the reason why there is a slight weakness, I would like to give some color on the detailed reasons. On the left-hand side, you can see the YoY growth of transaction volume. For the first quarter, it is a slight decline. As you can see on the right-hand side, the logistic retail, and especially for logistics, the macro environment, which is the cold summer temperature and also the Middle East impact.
By these factors, we have a slight decline in the transaction volume and also the customer impact or client-specific factor. With this, there is some decline in transaction volume, and that is the factor. As mentioned earlier, for the logistics, we have this client-specific factor, but we have already taken measures against that situation. On a full- year basis, we hope that we can recover that situation. For the KPI, just for the logistic industry, as you can see on the slide. The transaction volume is a 22% growth on a YoY basis. Active accounts, number of active accounts is also growing. Transaction volume per AA has also turned positively finally in this previous quarter. Also in this quarter, we have a 1.4% increase YoY.
The increase in the average, the rates are also increasing, and that is leading to the growth of the recruitment, and that is the reason. To give more color on what I just mentioned, there are some numbers here from the past. The strategic strategies have been taken, and we have the Field Managers, which is above 100 people today. The Field Manager locations are where the Timee usage is increasing by 2 x. The Field Managers are being increased. Also in the locations where we dispatch the Field Manager, the use of Timee is increased. The smart group function for the posting of jobs, these are also increasing usage. As mentioned earlier, there is a macro environment impact that happened temporarily. As Timee, we have not changed the strategic direction, and we are facing with the customer and taking these measures.
The macro environment, once that impact is gone, we hope we can go back to the growth trajectory again, and we have confidence. For the retail industry, as you can see on this slide, the active accounts number have also increased. For this, the previous quarter, we have a positive growth. KPI, we have a good trend at this moment. For the social care industry, we also have a high growth rate, which is continuing today. In this quarter, for the first time, we are able to have a positive YoY growth in the transaction volume per AA. The logistic and retail, just like those two industries, we also have transaction volume per AA, as well as the number of active accounts turning positive for the social care industry. As mentioned at the beginning, for the social care, we have this product release in a serial manner.
As you can see here, we have improved the fill rate. In the social care, there used to be a low fill rate before, but now we have these measures and taking measures to increase this. We have the flexible time slots as a function. These so-called workers, let's say they have a certain hour they can work. For the social care, if they have a certain time slot that they post, because of the time slots, they cannot really fill that worker. That is the case in the past. With this, we have a flexible time slot. Having a range of this time, we can increase the fill rate further, and that is the product that we developed. The second was the shift schedule, which is in tune with the industry. That is one. Also the onboarding training can be done on apps.
These detail change that we have done, or product development we have done for the industry, we are able to provide this value to the customer, including the sales activities. Lastly, the food industry. Finally, we are back to the positive recovery. The KPI in detail, if you look at the number of active accounts, that is also positive, but also transaction volume per AA. These are also mostly even today. Compared to other industry or with other industry, we hope to have the same growth of AA as well as the transaction volume per AA, the positive trend, we hope to turn this more positive going forward. Regarding the fill rate, we are having a high fill rate continually. We are able to maintain that level. Outside of the Spot Work, we have Timee Career Plus and Timee Solutions.
Both are doing well today. Against the plan, we are able to overshoot significantly for Timee Career Plus on a YoY basis, 2.6 x. Timee Solutions last year, on a non-consolidation, it was non-consolidated, so it was difficult to have YoY comparison. We are able to have a good growth in sales. That is about for the presentation and the results. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Now we will proceed to the Q&A session. We kindly ask you that you display your Zoom naming for the formal company name and full name. If you have any question, please press the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. The moderator will then call you and then grant you the audio permission. Please unmute yourself if you are asking the question. Simultaneous interpretation is provided. Please keep your questions pretty concise. Now, if you have any question, please raise your hand. Then I would ask Mr. Arai to speak up.
Hello, hopefully you can hear me. Yes, we hear you well. My name is [Shoken Arai]. This is Arai speaking. I have few questions, but first question. The industry specific situation. Looking at the retail, seems like you had some of the weather factors in June, so it is temporarily. But I think for the logistic might be affected by the Middle East crisis situation, and also the decreased hot volumes handled at one of the major other clients. Could you elaborate on why the number of the volume of the logistics handled decreased, and do you also see any outlook for the improvement? Would you mind elaborating a little bit on this part for the logistics?
Thank you very much. Let me answer. Probably Mr. Yagi would like to answer.
Yes, let me cover that part. Logistics, the Middle East crisis situation, we do not know when it would end. It is hard to see in the future, but at the same time, a certain period of time has already passed. Rather than expecting this would continue just one year, two year, three years ahead. But we still see it as one of the macro factor. Some specific item here is that because of this Middle East, the situation, the crude oil price has been going up. Any other materials, including the oil derived material, including naphtha, handling of those goods has been reduced because of that. That is why some of the volumes logistic is decreasing. Decreased volume handled at some of the major logistics. Talking about that, we would like to refrain from pointing out exactly which company we are talking about.
But as an overall, some major clients, the volume they handle has been decreasing monthly because they have been able to manage themselves just with their in-house staff. That is why they have been reducing the use of the Timee. Rather than for our side, just waiting for them to come back, we are also trying to look at the fact that even the case with this, the large enterprise clients, our penetration is not necessarily 100%. We would like to further expand, try and expand to other areas that we have not covered yet, even within the same client. Then eventually when the logistic volume handle, that volume is coming back after being decreased, hopefully we would like to support further. So trying to expand to the area within the same client that we have not addressed yet.
Then trying to look at the macro factors, how it is affecting us. We are trying to address our situation with a certain counter images on those two aspects. For the logistic, even the same industry, not necessarily all the enterprise clients we have covered yet. Some of them, it is not just one or two particular one that covering the entire industry. We have more even among the enterprise clients in this logistics clients. So we are trying to diversify our portfolio to trying to create a more balanced revenue growth base.
Thank you very much. About the decreased volumes decrease in major client. Should I understand that that decrease of the volume logistic, that is also affected by the Middle East crisis?
Yes, partly. But there are a few other factors, but that is one of the factors definitely.
Thank you very much. The second question from my side. The long-term part-time hiring support plan seems like you are pretty confident. In your explanation, the employment advertisement or the job board medias, you are trying to go after taking over the share from them. It seems like you do not sound like it is going to cannibalize with their existing Spot Work. I just wanted to confirm that. Thank you very much.
As you can see on the right hand, the third line on the text, it says there are definitely several locations of the clients who have been only using the job boards. That means that they have not used the Spot Work at all. So we thought that there could be that risk that these clients could cannibalize for our potential Spot Work demand. But actually, it turned out that these clients who have never used Timee before with the current plan, they would like to use the Timee, trying to make. Some of the clients we have been able to acquire completely new clients or some of the dormant accounts now becoming active thanks to this because they can utilize Timee for the Saturday, Sunday, and using it a little more dynamic way so that we have been able to address a different market.
I think that is a big advantage. Additionally, the long-term part-time hiring support.
So looking at the industry, what kind of clients are using this? Are mainly coming from the food or the retail or any specific aspect that they have in common? What kind of clients are utilizing this plan? Do you see more bigger needs coming from the food or retail?
Yes, definitely the retail and the food and the retail are definitely the main target. Maybe the logistics, they might have some business impact because of the cannibalization. When we release this plan to the logistic, I think it might start becoming a little bit. They might reduce the use of the Timee in general. I think that is the risk that we might have for the logistics. That is why we are not opening it for the logistic. For the case for the logistics, I think we might need to do a different trial, different approach, trying to change the pricing plan to meet their economics. So we might need a bit more time to do that for approach for the logistic plan. Now we are trying to target the clients using the job boards as a list up and approaching them.
We would like to have [Noguchi-san]. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you very much. UBS, [Noguchi] speaking. So I have also two questions. Number one, the major logistics client. There are various measures taken as a company, but for the new customer, there is still more room to win new customers, major clients. What is the driver? Then also for the existing customers, is there still some areas that you are able to not tap yet? Why is there still major customers being untapped? What is your analysis as of today? Thank you very much.
For this long-term dispatchment, there are customers using for long-term, and then we have these transactions with these customers. So switching to Timee is something that is perhaps the discussion because the cost is going up and then the productivity is going down. So it is hard to make that decision. The management of those companies are not able to make those decisions. Therefore, we try to make aggressive proposals, but still we are not able to win those customers. That is one. The other thing is regarding the Spot Work, it is still a new service in the industry. So legal aspects and those attacks and also the social benefits based on the. As there is no internal corporate support and there are still customers who are concerned about that.
So we have to explain to customers in a more detailed way and to increase the use or the value of the usage of Timee. For example, how much cost benefit they can gain, and it is better to introduce Timee. So we are trying to persuade the customers about these benefits.
As a follow-up. Based on that situation that the logistic customer who are actually using your services by explaining those examples, perhaps after spending time you can solve that issue. Is that optimistic view or not?
Well, it is not like they cannot introduce our service. Of course, when it comes to the locations who have been dependent on the long-term dispatch using Timee, they do not have a declining quality, and that is the current track record we have been able to achieve. So it is gradually hitting those customers, and they are trying to use our service. Recently there are also an expansion phase of these major clients. So we think after time passes we can introduce these customers more.
Thank you. My second question is a long-term part-time recruitment. As you mentioned earlier, the current monthly fee of JPY 20,000 or so. You mentioned about that in the comments. But in fact, how much monthly fees are the amount paid or how much you are expecting today? Regarding that ceiling, what is the ceiling of this monthly fees? When you start from JPY 20,000, in fact, maybe it is up to JPY 40,000 for some customer. Can you please explain the background? Thank you.
The Lite plan, and we have the approach Lite plan, Connect, and Basic plan. Today, the Basic plan is mainly what we are selling to customers, and the Basic plan is from JPY 40,000. 90% of the customers are subscribing this Basic plan. That is the current status. The Basic and Lite plan, the difference of these two, for the Lite plan, we have Lite plan approach. Those workers who have interest in these are long-term, part-time hiring. But on the other hand, on top of that, if that person, whether the person has the intention or not, the questionnaire or the master of those questionnaire is difficult for the Lite plan.
For the Basic plan, those approaches, when we have these subscriptions through Timee, not only matching these part-timers with the work, but if that person goes to a store and has the intention of doing so, we can confirm that intention of the workers. Also using AI message, we can also follow the workers, whether they want to really work there or not. So we have that kind of structure in place. So Basic is what we try to propose to customers. For those customer who use the Lite plan, maybe they have room as a store manager, and then they know about the benefits, so they still want to go for the lighter plan, and that happens. Basically, we would like to sell these plans without much of a process. Thank you very much.
Additionally, over the mid- to long- term, on top of that, maybe are you thinking of a premium plan, and by that, the monthly fee might have an upselling opportunity if that is the case? Going forward for the clients or the locations will be expanded, and then by that expansion, there might be dilution. With that included, you are not trying to go for an upside in the monthly fees. What is your view on that?
Yes. We think there is still room to grow. For example, today we are talking about part-timers, but when it comes to new grads or the regular employees, people who have intention to become those position, we have some algorithm that we can provide. By that, today it is difficult to hire regular employees in this labor industry. Still people want to spend JPY 100,000 per month to have the regular employees, so we think there is still more room to grow in this field. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Does anybody else have any questions? I think we are good. Anybody else? If we have no other questions, I think we would end the Q&A session. I know maybe we are a little bit in advance for the schedule, but now we would like to conclude the financial result for the first quarter of the fiscal year ending April 2027. Thank you very much for attendance today. Thank you very much.