I am Seki, CFO at Persol Holdings. Thank you for your time today despite your busy schedule. I would like to commence the live streaming of the consolidated financial results of fiscal year ended March 2022. I have three topics today. I will be explaining about the summary of the financial results for fiscal 2021.
Then CEO Wada will be explaining the financial forecasts for fiscal 2022 and the progress of the Mid-term Management Plan 2023. Let me start with the summary of the fiscal year ended March 2022. I'd like to start with the summary of the consolidated financial results for fiscal 2021.
The full year result for fiscal year ended March 2022 was an increase in net sales and operating profit year-on-year, exceeding the forecasts announced in November 2021, and net sales, operating profit, and net profit achieved record highs.
Next is net sales by SBU. All SBUs achieved year-on-year growth. Core staffing SBU continued to be strong and Asia Pacific SBU also grew significantly. This is operating profit by SBU. Operating profit exceeded fiscal 2020 level in all SBUs, given growth in the highly profitable BPO sector in the staffing SBU and achievement of profitability by Asia Pacific SBU.
Next is consolidated balance sheet. Net assets posted JPY 31.5 billion of net profit, but as dividends were paid out, it increased by JPY 30.7 billion. As a result, our equity ratio stood at 43.4%, staying healthy and long-term issuer rating was maintained at A. This is a cash flow statement. Cash flows from operating activities increased approximately JPY 14 billion year-on-year due to increase in profits and depreciation costs.
In cash flows from investing activities, expenditure decreased year-on-year, mainly due to proceeds from the sale of investment securities. As a result, free cash flow increased significantly year-on-year. Cash flows from financing activities turned negative JPY 21.1 billion due to JPY 10 billion of corporate bond redemption and others, and was offset by free cash flow, making cash and deposits at the end of the fiscal year grow to JPY 106.6 billion.
We will maintain sound financial structure to be able to continue to invest in businesses and shareholder return. From here on, I'd like to explain the financial results by SBU. First is Staffing SBU. The core businesses are temporary staffing sector and BPO sector. In temporary staffing sector, number of active staffs continued to be solid, increasing sales by 7.2% in Q4.
High-margin BPO sector continued to enjoy robust orders, mainly in public-related projects, leading to increase in sales by 46.9%. As a result, both sales and profit increased for the SBU. Next is Career SBU. Core businesses are the placement business and job recruitment media business.
In Q4, the number of informal appointment of workers for the placement business and orders for job recruitment media business recovered strongly, leading to increase in sales and substantial increase in profits year-on-year. We are continuing with the marketing investments for increasing the registration of new job seekers aiming at further growth.
Next is Professional Outsourcing SBU. In this SBU, we operate outsourcing business in IT and engineering areas and temporary staffing business specialized in engineers dispatching. In Q4, demand for IT area continued to be extremely strong. Along with market recovery in engineering area, sales increased.
Operating rate remained high at approximately 95% for both IT and engineering areas. IT engineer temporary staffing also was solid, realizing growth in sales at all areas. The number of engineers increased year-on-year in all areas. We will continue to focus on hiring engineers in the future. Next, I will explain about Solution SBU.
We are creating new businesses for future growth of Persol Group and are currently in the strategic investment phase. In Q4, sales increased in both the MIIDAS career change application business and the POS+ cloud PaaS business, resulting in significant increase in sales for the SBU and decrease in deficits. The number of companies introducing MIIDAS and POS+ are continuing to grow, and we will continue to make investments proactively for future growth. Next, I will explain about Asia Pacific SBU.
In this SBU, PERSOLKELLY brand mainly operates temporary staffing business and placement business in Asia. Programmed brand operates staffing business and maintenance business in Australia. In Q4, sales increased mainly due to the growth of PERSOLKELLY and the recovery in the business of Programmed.
Foreign exchange also contributed positively. Operating profit of Asia Pacific SBU turned around due to the effect of the sales increase and cost controlled by Programmed. Furthermore, as Asia Pacific SBU is consolidated with a three-month time lag, the next quarter, namely January to March, is also described at the left bottom of the page. Both PERSOLKELLY and Programmed are performing well.
This is the breakdown between PERSOLKELLY and Programmed. Please refer to this at your leisure. Last of all, I will explain about others, companies directly managed by Persol Holdings and adjustment segment, which is corporate and reconciliation.
In other segment, sales increased and operating loss decreased year-on-year due to increase in internal transactions within the group in the disabled persons hiring business of specialized subsidiaries, in addition to recovery of the training business. In adjustment segment, loss was posted following an increase in costs associated with major promotional activities under Persol brand for the promotion of remote work and others.
Next, I will explain about dividends for fiscal year ended March 2022, and the forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2023. From fiscal year ended March 2021, we changed our dividend policy to focus on payout ratio and aim for around 25% of adjusted EPS. Based on this policy, year-end dividend for fiscal year ended March 2022 will be JPY 22 per share, JPY 2 increase compared to the forecast.
As a result, annual dividend will be JPY 42, a record high. As for the dividend forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2023, we are expecting JPY 42 as of now. This concludes the explanation on financial results and dividends for fiscal year ended March 2022. Thank you. Next, CEO Wada will explain about the financial forecast for fiscal year ending March 2023 and the progress of Mid-term Management Plan 2023.
Hello, I am Wada. I will be explaining the financial forecast for fiscal year ending March 2023 and the progress of Mid-term Management Plan 2023. First, I will start with the outlook of each SBU in fiscal year ending March 2023. Staffing SBU will see a temporary decline in demand for spot contract public related projects, but excluding that, stable growth is expected in both temporary staffing sector and BPO sector.
Career SBU will drive growth for the group this fiscal year with profit already returning to the pre-COVID-19 level. Professional Outsourcing SBU will enhance hiring of engineers as the highest priority while continuing to seek M&A in pursuing growth in this area. Solution SBU continues to be positioned as the investment phase.
This will be a year where focus will be on increasing sales and establishing a position in the market. Asia Pacific SBU will improve profitability with integrated management to produce synergy between PERSOLKELLY and Programmed and expand its business.
We will keep our words, and Mid-term Management Plan of Asia Pacific SBU will be announced in August 2022. This shows changes in operating profit/loss of each SBU. We put a number of assumptions in making the forecast this time.
First, we already incorporated a decline in orders for spot contract public related projects in Staffing SBU compared to last fiscal year. One-time cost will be incurred due to changes in the accounting policy for the application of the International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS, next fiscal year, which is already incorporated. We did not incorporate geopolitical risks such as Ukraine situation.
We've created a forecast this time separating out factors causing one-time impact as temporary factors, such as spot contract public related project in Staffing SBU and cost incurred for introducing IFRS. If we take a look at the waterfall chart based on these assumptions, all SBUs will enjoy increase in profits excluding temporary factors. Especially, Career SBU is expected to drive the growth of the group with a year-on-year increase in operating profit of JPY 7.9 billion.
Operating profit for the group is expected to increase by 8% year-on-year to JPY 52 billion. Even with temporary factors of -JPY 10.5 billion, we are planning to realize increase in sales and profits continuously. Next, I will explain the business of Career SBU, the driver of profit for the group this fiscal year a bit more.
The graph on the left shows trends in corporate demand. Indexing February 2020 before the impact of COVID-19 as 100, increase in the number of orders are shown. It plummeted in April 2020 when the first emergency declaration was issued. Demand almost halved. In May 2021, recovery exceeded that of February 2020, and corporate demand is expected to continue to be brisk this fiscal year. Please take a look at the graph on the right.
We have the changes in the number of new registrations at doda Agent. Just like the corporate demand, there is a big decline in fiscal year ended March 2021, but recovered in fiscal year ended March 2022, exceeding the level of fiscal 2019 before COVID-19. As such, demand is increasing in both corporate and job seekers, enabling Career SBU to drive growth of the group overall amidst favorable business environment.
We have the financial forecast of the first half, the second half, and the full year. We are expecting increase in sales and profits for the fiscal year ending March 2023 with net sales of JPY 1,165 billion, operating profit of JPY 52 billion. In the following pages, we have the financial forecasts by SBU. Please refer to them at your leisure.
I will now explain the progress of the Mid-term Management Plan 2023. In 2022, we already achieved the level presented in the Mid-term Management Plan announced in August 2020 and thus set new numerical targets which are described in the presentation this time. We expect sales of JPY 1,165 billion, operating profit of JPY 52 billion, EBITDA JPY 74.2 billion, net profit JPY 29.5 billion, and adjusted EPS of JPY 161.46.
Now, we are following the Mid-term Management Plan for the qualitative part, including increase social values. This slide shows the progress summary of Mid-term Management Plan, including increased social values and increased economic values. As a major theme of the Mid-term Management Plan, we are to improve the social values along with economic values.
We are upholding a major theme of Work and Smile. The important point is how we are able to realize this and contribute. As is described in the integrated report, we are taking initiatives to improve and to achieve the goals. For example, we have a fun index at Staffing SBU or a career ownership index at Career SBU. We will also set up work engagement index and track them as is described in the integrated report. We will proactively disclose information as a part of our ESG initiative.
We are also proactive and progressing with Gender Diversity Committee and sustainability initiatives. As you already know, improving economic values is important and as one of the measures to improve corporate value, we are using ROIC. Minimum of 10% was decided, but we have already achieved 14.2%, exceeding the minimum.
In order to build an SBU structure, we are aware that we need to work on delegation of authority and enhancement of governance. As such, we set up Corporate Governance Committee to decide on the to-be governance and our style and have come to a stage to roll it out. In the current mid-term management plan, Professional Outsourcing is designated to drive growth.
Thus, we will further enhance hiring and continue to explore M&A opportunities. One more point that is extremely important is the usage of technology. Each SBU is increasing the number of engineers implementing services that are feasible. We have two axes in place. One is improving operational efficiency, and the other is improving user convenience.
We are trying to roll out the future vision of work initiative, a cross-functional platform covering the whole of the group, so that people can work in a way they desire and can envision their own future. As the first step, we launched a beta version of PERSOL MIRAIZ, a smartphone application. As this is a beta version, we plan to absorb as much user comments as possible so that we will be able to constantly make improvements.
We established Gender Diversity and Sustainability Committee, so I would like to explain a bit more in detail. The utmost priority of gender diversity is to support and promote women's participation. To that end, we are holding Gender Diversity Committee to convey feedback of women's voices to the management and to implement measures.
By the end of 2030, we set a goal to have 37% of our management be women, which is the ratio of women working within our group. We set this goal so that we will be able to operate the company management with the same gender ratio as the population at our group. Many of the participants at Gender Diversity Committee are women, and the chair is also a female manager.
What initiatives should be taken to realize this goal? How can we realize this? Are discussed with many women participants in order to absorb their real opinions. One more point is that sustainability is becoming more and more important in the world nowadays. We newly established Sustainability Committee as well.
Members of the committee include executive officer rank of each business, outside directors, and outside experts to ensure broad engagement so that we can operate in a unified way as a group. To ensure the operation of this committee, we set up Sustainability Promotion Office. This slide shows the trend of ROIC.
We are managing the business with the intention to improve economic values, and we are promoting this by having discussions at the board meetings as well. ROIC last fiscal year was 14.2%, and we believe we can maintain this level this fiscal year as well. Last of all, we are planning to announce the midterm business plan of the Asia Pacific SBU, which you are probably highly interested in this August, when we announce the Q1 results.
We are already taking many initiatives, and we will be sharing them with you on this occasion for your better understanding. As for the next mid-term management plan until 2026, we are planning to announce it in May 2023 when we announce the full year financial results. We are currently making plans through active discussions about the world we want to realize towards 2030.
We'd like to show it in a way that links to the world of Work and Smile. Market environment is changing rapidly. For example, COVID-19, Ukraine, lockdown in Shanghai, curfew in Beijing, will likely impact our business to no small extent in the future. We'd like to overcome them, adapt to changes in the clients' situation and the markets, thinking about what kind of value proposition would be effective to clients. We are also thinking about how we become essential in the market.
All our employees in the group are making efforts towards this end. I'd like to ask for your continuous support. Thank you very much.