I am Wada from PERSOL HOLDINGS. Thank you very much for joining us today at our first-quarter earnings call. These are the contents for today. Starting from this time, we have added an executive summary at the beginning. In addition to the key points of our financial results, we would also like to explain our AI strategy based on the Mid-term Management Plan fiscal 2028 announced in May. Since AI is a key theme for us this fiscal year, we intend to provide you with a thorough update on our progress and our approach each quarter. Let me start with the executive summary. In Q1, both revenue and profit increased year-on-year, marking a strong start. Revenue increased 13.5% year-on-year to JPY 424 billion. Adjusted EBITDA grew 21.6% year-on-year to JPY 26.4 billion.
We are steadily making progress towards the Mid-term Management Plan in the first year, although there are differences among SBUs. Next, I will explain the AI strategy highlights. We truly believe that these changes in AI present an opportunity for growth. We believe that as AI advances, certain routine tasks will naturally become more efficient and market structures will undergo significant changes. In particular, routine tasks, especially those in administrative roles, may gradually decline over the medium to long term, and we fully acknowledge this reality and are committed to addressing it head-on. However, we do not view AI as a risk of market contraction. Rather, we see it as a major growth opportunity for us that will significantly accelerate workforce mobility. We believe that the widespread adoption of AI will first lead to the optimization of workforce allocation within companies and the promotion of internal transfers.
However, for roles that cannot be fully covered by these measures or for personnel transfers required for new businesses with specific skill sets, we believe they will inevitably lead to transfers across company boundaries. These trends are now inevitable, and we believe it is our role as an HR services company to support these individual moves and thereby underpin the significant mobility of the workforce. Labor shortages are expected to reach around 3.84 million people in 2035. For companies, the key management challenges will be how to secure this limited talent pool, how to place them in the most suitable positions, and how to boost their productivity. As a result, it goes without saying that job role transitions will increase, driving growing demand for talent redeployment among companies.
We believe that not only the matching services we provide, but also our support for creating new value and driving transformation will become increasingly important. In this environment, our strengths are that we possess one of the largest registries of talent data in Japan and that we have extensive customer base. Above all, we believe our strength lies in our ability to combine the human insights, our proprietary data and AI, all made possible by our long-standing track record in matching, along with the background data we possess. Another point is that in the AI and human resources business, we have incorporated Gojob, a French company with cutting-edge global technology into our group, and we recognize that our ability to develop business initiatives leveraging its technologies and expertise is a major strength.
It goes without saying that to truly make effective use of AI, it is essential to leverage track record such as a vast amount of personnel data, corporate data, accurate data, and matching data. We are confident that our strength, built on years of accumulating proprietary data and fostering relationships of trust with our customers, cannot be easily replicated. We believe our competitive advantage lies in providing added value, not merely by supplying personnel, but by connecting the right people with the right jobs, thereby supporting corporate transformation. We are, of course, actively working to use AI to improve productivity in our own sales efforts as well as in internal operations, matching, and candidate management. By streamlining our own operations, we will further boost internal productivity and redeploy the personnel freed up by these efficiency gains to areas that generate higher added value, thereby driving business growth and improving profitability.
Another area where we intend to accelerate our efforts is the expansion into frontline worker domain, where AI substitution risk is low. We view markets such as construction, manufacturing, logistics, and transportation, where structural labor shortages are expected to persist as growth markets, and we intend to capture new market opportunities by applying Gojob's business model to address needs we have not been able to meet until now. We are planning to make investments of JPY 19 billion cumulative over a three-year period with the intention to improve productivity as well as lead to more value add. As a result, our current estimates indicate that we expect to generate returns ranging from JPY 33 to 43 billion. We invest these gains into further AI investments, talent investments, and investments in new growth areas.
Our financial foundation, which enables us to continue investing in AI, is one of our company's key strengths in the AI era. Our view on AI is that it is not something that will replace our operations, but rather a source of our competitive advantage. By fully leveraging AI as a strategic tool, we intend to position it as one of our key growth drivers. We believe that identifying the new demand generated by AI and leveraging it to drive growth will become our key AI strategy moving forward. To make this a reality, I believe that Gojob, the French AI-driven staffing company we acquired in October 2025, will play a crucial role. Since Gojob was built around AI from the beginning, its operation is almost fully automated, from dialogue with candidates to identifying potential matches 24/7. Gojob is already achieving growth through the use of AI.
We believe that by adapting this model for Japan and integrating it into our own business, we can accelerate the growth trajectory of the entire group. We believe that the most distinctive feature of Gojob is, above all, our frequent, proactive, and ongoing communication with candidates, whether through social media, email, or apps like LINE in Japan to build relationships and provide the right opportunities to the right people at the right time, precisely when they are most eager to accept them. This allows for proposals based on the latest data, enabling decision-making with the updated data. What makes Gojob's model so exceptional is that while technology handles everything up to the matching and the flow of that process, people step in at stages where human involvement is truly necessary, the moments that require genuine follow-up to ensure strong engagement.
We believe that by effectively integrating human and AI, we are able to offer models of exceptionally high quality that achieve significantly higher satisfaction and repeat rates compared to our competitors, and this is a crucial point. We are currently performing PoC of this model within the group Staffing subsidiary in Japan. We are targeting inactive staff we have not been able to reach out to sufficiently until today to activate them and to have AI-driven dialogue with them proactively to obtain their latest information, recent movements, changes in their mindset so that it leads to job referral. We plan to verify this entire process, fine-tune it as we go, and proceed with its rollout in Japan in stages. We intend to use this model as a key stepping stone toward accelerating matching, improving productivity, and expanding into new domains.
We plan to continue keeping you all updated on this progress as well. CFO Kemmochi will provide a detailed explanation of the financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Kemmochi-san, please.
I am Kemmochi, CFO. I will explain the fiscal 2026 Q1 financial summary. Revenue and profits at all levels increased year-on-year. Revenue increased 13.5% year-on-year to JPY 424 billion. It was mainly driven by the JPY 12.2 billion contribution from Gojob, which we acquired last year, growth of existing businesses, and foreign exchange with the appreciation of Australian dollar. Adjusted EBITDA increased 21.6% to JPY 26.4 billion due to margin improvements driven by efficiency improvement measures. We achieved increase in revenue and profit driven by both top-line growth and profitability improvements. As for progress against the full-year plan, revenue and profits at all levels outpaced the full-year forecast pace.
This is the progress rate by SBU. In Staffing and Asia Pacific SBUs, progress rates are high, partly due to the effects of productivity improvement measures. On the other hand, with regard to BPO and Technology SBUs, given the nature of their businesses, profit generation tends to be concentrated in the second half. Therefore, we currently view progress as generally in line with expectations. From here on, I will explain the financial summary by SBU. Today, I will focus on the Career SBU, Technology SBU, and the Other segment, which includes Gojob, that we have identified as growth areas in the Mid-term Management Plan fiscal 2028 announced in May. Performance in Staffing, BPO, and Asia Pacific SBUs is progressing smoothly as planned, so please refer to the following slides later. Let me start with Career SBU. Revenue declined 1.7% year-on-year, and adjusted EBITDA declined 10.5% year-on-year.
In placement, selective hiring is continuing and, as explained in May, there is continued impact following the doda and doda X ID integration, but we believe that for the most part, the impact is currently as expected. The downward impact on revenue due to the ID integration is approximately a 6% decrease for the total SBU and approximately a 9% decrease for placement revenue, including the high-income segment. On the other hand, HiPro, which is mainly side job and freelance business for professionals, maintained high growth, expanding steadily. At Career SBU, while there is impact of selective hiring trends, we anticipate market growth in the medium to long term due to increasing workforce mobility. Furthermore, demand for highly skilled talents remains strong even with selective hiring, and we are making steady progress in securing job openings.
Since the impact of the ID integration will subside in the first half of the year, we will focus on driving solid growth in the high-income segment in the second half by improving the conversion rate and strengthening our marketing efforts. We are also proceeding in stages with the implementation of AI models, which are listed as key initiatives in our Mid-term Management Plan. We will continue to improve both the customer experience and productivity while laying the groundwork for future growth. Productivity of placement improved by 2% year-on-year. We are optimizing the headcount and saw a decrease by approximately 7% year-on-year. We will continue to improve productivity and allocate headcounts based on the demand trends. Next, I will move on to Technology SBU. Revenue increased 6.6% year-on-year, and adjusted EBITDA increased 42.8% year-on-year.
While the IT/DX solutions segment continued to perform strongly, the engineering segment saw revenue growth of only 4.4% year-on-year, partly due to sluggish growth in outsourcing orders from automotive-related companies. Profit was in line with our expectations, mainly due to the resolution of the impact from prior-year intragroup project delays. As part of our Mid-term Management Plan to pursue a strategy of high growth and high profitability through outsourcing strengthening and increasing value-added services, we are also updating our Key Performance Indicators starting this fiscal year. Number of engineers increased 8.4% year-on-year in Q1, and our talent base for sustained growth is steadily expanding. As the number of engineers increased, so did the number of engineers on standby, awaiting assignment or undergoing training, which caused a decrease in sales per engineer. However, gross profit per engineer increased, driven by improved project profitability.
We have been steadily increasing the number of engineers who form the foundation of our growth and are currently working to secure outsourcing contracts and assign engineers to them. Going forward, we will use indicators such as sales and GP per engineer, in addition to headcount, to illustrate our strategies and progress regarding growth and profitability. We believe that the sources of the Technology SBU's competitive advantage lie in its recruitment strength and engineer development. PERSOL CROSS TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD., our Group company, was ranked seventh in the popularity rankings for science and engineering students graduating in 2027 among a distinguished list of companies. We will continue to invest in recruiting and talent development in the IT sector, which continues to be a growing market. Revenue of Other segment grew 87.7% year-on-year. The main contributing factor was Gojob, which we acquired last October.
Gojob maintained high revenue growth of 50.9% year-on-year on a local currency basis. Share expansion with existing customers and new customer acquisition were strong. In the next slide, I will explain why Gojob has been able to continue with such high growth and their competitive edge. Gojob's unique business model is what drives and supports its rapid growth. As explained by CEO Wada, there is a virtuous circle established. As usage increases, data will accumulate, and matching accuracy and repeat rates improve. Furthermore, since its market share in France remains at around 2% only, we believe there is still significant room for growth in that market. In addition, through the launch of this model in Japan, we will work to improve productivity across the entire Group and create new growth opportunities. We have the materials explaining our core SBUs of Staffing, BPO, and Asia/Pacific in the presentation deck.
All are progressing smoothly as planned. Please refer to them later. This concludes my explanation. Thank you very much.