Thank you very much for attending this meeting. Let me give you the presentation on the fourth quarter as well as full year. Page three, please. This is, sales for the fourtth quarter was down 9.2%. Operating profit down 59.3%. Down 99.2% for the sales. The third quarter was minus 4.3%, there have been a deterioration by another four percentage points. The 9.2% decline in sales is because as we are shifting to the solution-based organizations, that has impacted us negatively, which I already have explained from the previous quarters. Especially in the 4th quarter, the competition intensified with our competitors, that is the reason for the sales decline.
In terms of the actual impact is, you can see the next slide, please. The fourth quarter sales, because of the competition, is about down two percentage point. If you look at the green, orange, and dark lines. The orange one is media service sales for us, and the gray one is actually the job-to-applicant ratio, which is basically you can take it as a market growth. From the third to fourth quarter, the market sales was about two percentage point deterioration. On the other hand, for our media service sales, deterioration about four percentage point. So 5.2 to 9.2 percentage point is because of the market. Another 2% because of the competition with our peers.
For the post-solution transitions, we should be able to complete it by the end of the first half, and the second half onward, we should start to see a contribution in terms of sales. As for the competition intensifying, - 5.2 and -9.9. I think there's concerns from you that there is a large impact because of the competitions. Even if you take our regional unit sales, which didn't go through the organizational changes, if you look at the April only, it's about 3% increase. The transition of the solution system really is the reason for the decline in sales for the media service sales for us. Next is the cost structure.
In terms of the personnel cost, it's down by JPY 300 million. We have strengthened mid-career hiring. Number has increased in terms of employees. For the fourth quarter for fiscal year February 2025, we paid out special bonus. That's not in the case for this time around. Advertisement cost increased by about JPY 500 million. For Baitoru and also we are strengthening advertisement expense for the existing businesses. Next slide please. By segment, in data, media service sales was down 9.9%. If you break it down in terms of number of contract companies and unit price, contracted companies down 4% and unit price down 6.1%.
In terms of number of contracted companies, in the third quarter, year-on-year it was down 7.5%. Actually there's been an improvement. The acquisition of the customer is actually on a recovery trend. On the other hand, the third quarter year-on-year it was a +2.4%. Compared to that, for the fourth quarter, it was down 6.1%. The unit price has been deteriorating. Because of the staffing agencies and BPO companies, because their unit prices were coming down, and that is the reason why we also had to see the decline in our unit price. Next, on the DX services.
In terms of flow and stock products, this is for the hiring and HR, because we see it'll be impacted by the momentum of the hiring side, and we're seeing a decline. That's the reason why we're seeing a bit of the decline in terms of the hiring and HR regions. For MEO KOBOT and other sort of sales promotional support products, it's been growing 1.5x , 1.6x on year-on-year basis. The volume is much smaller than the hiring and HR related areas, and wasn't big enough to be able to offset for the decline. If you just look at the sales support on ARR basis, it's growing to be JPY 1.1 billion size.
Lastly, on the full year, consolidated numbers. Sales down 2.7% and operating profit down 32%. Sales down 2.7%, as mentioned, because we are transitioning to the solution based business, and that's taking longer than expected, and sales actually fell short. Because of the sales decline, our marginal profit also declined, which affected OP margin, OP as well. In the medium term, growth of the first half, we'll be executing our plans and strategies that should be implemented and then put into fruition into this fiscal year. In terms of the strategy, Mr. Tomita will explain.
Thank you so much for taking your time despite your busy schedule. This fiscal year, actually starting from March, we are entering into our 30th year. We had all hands, and we announced our theme for this year, which is gratitude. As always, we have asked Ms. Sisyu for this design, and the design is consisting of our employees. 30th year is going to be a turning point. We just want to express our gratitude to everyone who's been contributing to keep growing our business. We should repay to these people and to all of the stakeholders and the society. That's what we are aiming to achieve. We are fully determined to express our gratitude and repay to all of the stakeholders and the society and the employees. Next is about shifting towards the solution-based sales structure.
During the 29th period last year, we've been working on three major initiatives, especially ever since our establishment, we have conducted the largest ever organization reform, as you see below. Of course, we have had to hand over our customers from the previous person in charge, salesperson in charge to the new person in charge, and the number of such companies counted 41,000. Many companies have been handed over from the previous to the new salesperson, so we have to go through some negative impact. Especially, we have not been able to allocate enough time to explore new customers, develop new customers, and we were expecting that the impact should last for about six months. That's why our sales and profit have decreased significantly.
Our marginal profit ratio is high. Sales decline is going to have direct negative impact on our profit decline. The question may be, maybe we should not switch over to this new sales structure, but we are quite happy that we've made this decision and making it happening. From now on, the solution-based sales structure effect should become more and more visible. The organization has been renewed, and that's it at this moment. Each sales team is going to be a team of professional expertise, which cannot be achieved overnight. Especially the head of the each sales divisions, they themselves have not been able to become experts at this moment. They are continuously hard, studying hard to become the real experts. Shifting towards more professional sales teams, we are hearing from our customers that they are quite satisfied.
Approximately 80% of our customers are saying they are satisfied with this sales structure shift. We can feel that expectations coming from our customers are getting higher. Well, this can be related to the gratitude, we have to meet these expectations to express the gratitude as well. We're going to keep contributing to our customers. Out of the three initiatives, the second one is the Othello Project. For us entering into the spot part-time industry, there have been gray issues because the service itself is new. The service has been experiencing various problems, especially the big one was the situation because of the corporate side reason, last minute cancellation taking place, which was kind of used leverage to adjust the number of people they may want to hire. That's my personal view.
At any rate, spot workers, they were applying to get this job, but all of a sudden at the very last minute, they were being canceled. They could not work, meaning that they could not be paid. Actually, even under such a circumstance, the payment has to take place, but it was not the case. As a result, a lot of spot workers, they were economically negatively being affected. In total accumulated basis, the size of loss was very, very big. Actually, the other day, there was an article focusing on this issue. According to Yahoo News, on daily basis, more than 2,000 workers are still suffering. There are a lot of complaints being made, a lot of experiences being shared on the website. Actually, thanks to our activities, reasons for cancellations have been revisited.
The announcement was made in September by the association, and in September that month, we shared our voices because if the cancellation was coming from the corporate side reason, and if still the payment was not paid, I think we believe that that is not an acceptable situation. DIP have been applying strict rules. If corporate side is going to make cancellation for their reason, they have to be responsible. That's our DIP's view and rule. These five problems are becoming a major problem, and actually starting from September. In March, six months later, actually, the association adopted our rule. Now they are saying if cancellation is made because of the corporate side reason, companies have to be responsible. Now the association rule has been revised as well.
The next question is, already six months have passed, and there have been accumulating unpaid wages. According to legal experts, this should be considered as unpaid wage. That means that unpaid wage is accumulating, especially if there's a negative evaluation made by a company. If another company does not accept the worker because of this negative evaluation, that should not happen, but that is taking place a lot. Actually, in September and since September, major website, actually approximately 50% of cancellations coming from other companies' negative evaluation cannot be accepted. Well, that has been happening a lot. That means that accumulated unpaid wage is still accumulating. We need to make sure that the service is becoming more user-friendly, so we are operating correctly and the market itself, the unpaid wage situation should be better handled.
I believe that should be the way to provide the situation, well, solve or improve the situation for the workers. This is how the situation has been happening. Not everything has been solved at all, but there, the unpaid wages can be paid only after the first three years. The situation has to be solved as quickly as possible, which should be important for the government as well. Next, expansion of Baitoru talk. Baitoru talk is achieving a steady growth. Hoshiwara-san will give you the detail. He's the head of Baitoru talk. Baitoru talk is performing continuously well. As of today, 10,000 stores and user counts more than 100,000. Initially, this was considered as a communication tool to retain the workers.
We are hearing from the companies who are using this service that they would like to use not only Baitoru talk and DX, but DX together. We are considering additional features. The ins and outs, check-in time and check-out time, we can have access to this data, so it should be effective to understand the sales timing. It's not only about the recruitment. We can also support the workers to be retained. In that sense, we are aiming to keep evolving this service. That's it. As a third and the final project is Zero Project. This Zero Project, there are two aspects. First is about eliminating illegal part-time jobs. New Zero new call is actually related to this topic, which should improve our productivity and this Zero illegal part-time.
We held a press conference, large-scale one the other day, also right in front of Shibuya Station, we have big-size ad. We've been playing the leadership role, we've been able to get support from Shibuya Ward. We are being able to have this ad for free, also we've been able to get participants from Metropolitan Police Department, also Shibuya Ward, and the chairperson of the Shibuya shopping mall. This was quite a big-scale enlightenment initiative. Starting from April, there are a lot of new college students starting to live in Tokyo is the area where you may find a lot of illegal or part-time jobs. This illegal part-time jobs, 90% of high school students know this word.
Even if you come across with the illegal part-time job ad, actually 70% of the high school students cannot tell this is an illegal part-time job ad. Enlightenment activity should be quite important. We are visiting schools to hold enlightenment activity, there's also King of Quiz, who is University of Tokyo student. He's a talent. We are collaborating with this person to hold campaign to hold illegal part-time job quiz. At the end of the day, the purpose is to make illegal part-time job down to zero. This is another way how we are wanting to contribute to the society. We are being proactive in this initiative. Of course, we cannot list illegal part-time job ad. We are collaborating with financial institution. We are getting their support because their customers, they are already going through the screening.
These financial institutions are strengthening these customers' screening. We are working together with 45 banks in terms of number of branches, 4,351 branches. We are getting their support to go through these screenings. We are being able to sign up business matching contracts with these financial institutions. Our customers, of course, have banking accounts and banks. Now we have solution-based sales team and banks also, their mission is to cater to all of the different industries. I hear that financial institutions, their customers ask us not for financial support, but how they can secure people, workers. We can provide them solution. We are asking these financial institutions to introduce these customers to us. Actually we are getting increasing number of such introductions.
Based on this introduction, we are aiming to explore new customers that should be leading to zero new phone calls. We are being able to make a good progress. Outbound calls, of course, every day we are making a lot as of today. Actually how we make these outbound calls, we are making efforts to improve the efficiency. If there's no response, it's going to be a waste of time and it's going to be salesperson's burden. We have introduced a system through which a salesperson can only reach out to phone calls which can be responded by a potential customer. At any rate, enhanced productivity is what we are aiming to achieve through this Zero Project. Next is about enhancement of corporate branding.
At the end of last fiscal year, the new TV commercial with Mr. Shohei Ohtani we could shoot. Also, I could have an opportunity to have a conversation with him. We are sharing the video, this YouTube video. Last time we just aired the entire session. This time, we are cutting into pieces, dividing into different sectors. We are also adding our commercials. You will find multiple short version YouTubes. In total, we've been able to achieve 6.3 million views and advertising equipment value approximately JPY 400 million. The new TV commercial, we could achieve 27 million YouTube views. This is unprecedentedly high number. 27 million views we are being able to achieve. Lucky Baitoru. Our advertisement can be viewed at very impressive occasions.
At 50/50, our ad was there, also more recently, WBC, when Ohtani made the first hit, our advertisement was shown behind. When Japanese team went over to Miami, our ad was also shown. The first hit made by E Japan at the time as well, all our ad was there. 14 out of 15 home runs, our ad was being displayed. Mr. Ohtani actually told us that if we could display more ads, how his home run counts could be even higher. He told it could not be a coincidence that he made a home run, hit a home run when our ad was displayed. I just hope that this lucky Baitoru will further penetrate.
If people consider that our DIP ad is going to be lucky E advertisement, we will be very happy. I think it was last week or the week before, we also have new very big ad in Nagoya. If you viewed WBC, I think there should be a lot of such people. DIP Wow DIP i f you've had this impression, I think, well, again, we're happy. We are the king sponsor of WBC, the top sponsor of WBC. A lot of people tell us, actually 80% tell our impression improved, another 80% said our trust improved, and another close to 80% said they want to use our service. We cannot make comment on how much we made investment, but actually the effect was much bigger than our spending.
We could improve our impression, trust. Now increasing number of people are wanting to use our service. We were being very effective in this advertisement or this investment. Q4 last year, because of this initiative and actually, the advertisement, we did not only made spending in Q4, but in previous quarters as well. The amount of spending was growing. We believe that we should be able to enjoy bigger size of effect during the current fiscal year. Leveraging WBC opportunity, we could have TV commercials, we could have advertisements, we could do a lot of advertising. We are aiming to fully capture the advertising effect during the current fiscal year. The WBC sponsor being a sponsor itself cannot be the goal. We need to improve the earnings. Thanks to the initiative, that's the real goal.
All of our employees are proud of we being the major sponsor at the WBC, everyone is telling we are going to convert this advertising or investment into actual earnings. Please have high expectations. Let me talk about the 30th fiscal year initiative. This is about launch of the Zero Advertising and Promotion Costs Project. This is the third zero. Zero illegal part-time job, zero all outbound calls, this one is about Zero Advertising and Promotion Costs. "This is awesome," our employees are saying. I've been coming up with various ideas in our history, our employees, some of our employees are saying this is the most impactful one.
I believe this is a quite a unique idea because as you know, our cost, thinking about our cost item ad spend is more than JPY 10 billion every year. This is the second-largest cost item following the personal cost. We're spending JPY 10 billion for ads. How we can improve the efficiency, productivity? One of the ideas is to leverage WBC. It's about how much we spend and how much impact we can enjoy as a result. How we can mitigate ad spend is something I've been always considering, and the conclusion, or as a result, I came up with this idea. This can be possible, I believe, and this should be a valuable initiative or idea for us to make it happen. That's why we are starting to take on this initiative.
Because till now we've been centering around TV commercial, but TVs, the number of views decreasing significantly, and accordingly, TV commercial impact effect has been deteriorating. YouTube, TikTok, these social media video should be the channel we spend more ads, advertising cost. Actually, that is something we are doing. If we think about the differences between TV commercial versus social media ad, the content production cost is totally different. TV program, if we are going to produce, we have to purchase the program. We need to sponsor for the TV commercial, so the spend is going to be very, very big for one single program. We actually sponsored one special program before, but one program can cost tens of millions of JPY.
Of course, the number of viewership's big. On the other hand, YouTube video contents are created by not professionals, and various ideas can be generated depending on each target, and as a result, there are a lot of big hit channels, as you know. There are YouTubers who have more than 10 million viewers or followers, and there are a lot of programs which are viewed by so many people. If we choose YouTube or TikTok videos, rather than make spending for TV commercial, we ourselves can create the video because YouTubers, they are producing by themselves. They are being paid. They themselves are media. That can be applied to ourselves. For example, the conversation video with Mr. Otani can be a good example. The YouTube being aired and it's been equivalent to JPY 400 million ad effect. Advertisement content.
Well, everyone has experience working and some people, the purpose for part-time job may not be to earn money, but to find friends or to have experiences. There can be various aspects, and we should be able to produce contents based on these ideas. That's the idea I have come up with. Another aspect is what I call BizReel. We are already being able to shoot video for some customers. This is our business. We can charge. We are charging to create these videos, meaning that we can earn and create contents and add advertisement. This means that three goals can be achieved by one initiative. Social media should enable us to make it happen. That's about this project.
Of course, production costs. By selling and charging on a net basis, the cost can be zero or it itself can be a business allowing us to generate profit. This is about part-time job video production, part-time job video production business. This can be an advertisement. This can be a business. This can reduce our ad spend. All in all, on a net basis, it can cost zero or even we may be able to generate the profit, and this is something we are already starting. You will find on the right-hand side, SpaGo Ranger and also part-time experience. It's about creating a lot of short videos, and we'd like to show you the example. For example, the existing worker at the part-time job site can be very attractive.
Actually, there is a short video focusing on these attractive workers and the number of views exceeding 500 million. This is equivalent to having a TV commercial. It's not just about people who are searching for part-time jobs. There can be video targeting elementary school kids, the KidZania version of this video. Well, actually, it seems that a less number of elementary school kids are now wanting to become policemen. We can focus on policemen or banker or any other job, what they are doing. Actually, my kid as well, she's spending a lot of time watching YouTube. Rather than spending the same time watching how to play game, it should be worthwhile watching what kind of jobs existing in the world.
It seems that a major character called Gachapin experiencing policemen, it seems the number of viewerships is achieving very big number. There can be various ideas. There can be various contents. We're going to come up with various ideas. We're going to keep creating these videos, we are aiming to let people know. We are aiming to let elementary school kids knowing more about jobs. It should be leading to they becoming actual workers in the future. This fiscal year, we are going to shift gear to data-driven management. This is another topic I talked at the all hands meeting, till now, we've been leveraging salespeople experience or gut feeling. We've been relying a lot on each salesperson's capability or experience. That has been true, the problem is it cannot be replicated by other people.
If we can be based on data, we should be able to improve the situation. We are going to be more data-driven in the future as a result. Everything should be able to be replicated, and the goal is to improve the sales person's productivity in the AI era. By the way, data, we've been able to accumulate a lot. Now we are going to start leveraging the data in effective way and as an entire company. With that, we are aiming to improve the productivity. That's how we are shifting gear this year. In a sense, the major aggregation website, Indeed, this is a way to compete with them. I believe this is a pre-requisite for us. [uncertain] is our spot-time work competitor, so we need to compete with them as well.
We've been actually competing with them over the past 12 months or so. Now what we are finding is that there are almost no overlapping in terms of customers if we compare our customer base versus Timee customer base. Precisely speaking Well, I mean by no overlapping is that when we visit customers, we are finding that a lot of customers are saying they prefer shift part-timers, They cannot find shift part-time workers, regular part-time workers. That's why they are using spot workers. Maybe we could do better, Indeed customer base is overlapping. Our actual competitor should be Indeed. That's why this year we are going to work on initiatives to compete better with Indeed.
Earlier, we mentioned that we were affected by Indeed last year. We need to better compete with them. We know they have this cost per click. They are adopting this cost per click way. We are going to introduce this as well. It does not mean that we are going to fully shifting to this cost per click. Actually, this cost per click need is very strong. Well, there are strong needs for listing, pay-per-listing as well. We are going to keep this pay-per-listing. We are going to also add a cost per click. It's going to be hybrid model. That's still a plan at this moment.
We need to make sure that the effect of job listing is going to be negatively affected, so we are considering to introduce cost per click only for plan A. By the way, if you look at the price range, the highest price point is P, the red one, and plan A is the lowest. Only plan A we're considering to introduce cost per click. The reason is to, of course, better compete with Indeed, and thinking about the reason why we are losing is because of the number of listing, we are inferior in terms of Search Engine Optimization. If we introduce cost per click, we should be able to improve our SEO. As a result, we should be able to attract more users and grow our sales.
By introducing cost per click, the number of listing can increase dramatically because the number of listing now counts 500,000, and our existing customers, they are unlisted job because if they list job ad with us, they have to pay. There are job ads they are not asking us to list. If we can capture these opportunities, the current 500,000 can easily jump to 1 million listing. First of all, we are going to target the existing customers. We are going to capture the job ads which are not listed on our platform as of today. The number of listing as a result can be doubled, increasing from the current 500,000 to 1 million. On a midterm perspective, our competitor, Indeed, we are aiming to achieve the same number of listing compared to them.
We should be able to compete well in terms of SEO. The number of listing matters a lot. The more we list, the better SEO be, which will lead to increasing number of users that should become available. When that happens, we are latecomer, follower, of course we need to differentiate ourselves to better compete with Indeed. Thinking about what they don't have and what we have, it's about the direct sales teams. Indeed, in reality, almost 100% they are asking the distributors, agencies to sell. That's what we are hearing. Distributors, agencies are selling their job ad. Our distributors, talking about these distributors, we also have business relationships with them. Their sales network can be used by our side as well. In that sense, we can keep compete very well.
The number of direct salespeople we are hiring counts 2,300, which is not a channel Indeed can use. This should be considered as our strength. This 2,300 experienced sales reps with high loyalty, they have their customers, are going to start selling with the same conditions compared to Indeed. Cost per click is attractive product, this attractiveness we are going to leverage more, we are going to leverage our direct salespeople. In reality, the cost, if you compare the cost between direct sales versus distributors or agencies, you may think that the distributor's cost is lower, but actually direct salespeople, our cost is about half compared to distributors. Cost-wise, leveraging the direct sales makes a lot of sense. Sales capability, we have control over them.
They are our direct employees, so we can ask them to work on initiatives in a timely manner. For example, to sell video, that's something we can do. This is a product to improve the advertising effect, so I find it quite interesting. Thinking about cost per click effect, another impact we can expect is appointment acquisition should become much easier. Also sales conversion should be improving, which has been a strength enjoyed by Indeed. Because there's no click, there's no pay required. After follow activity, burden should become much less. Accordingly, salesperson's psychological burden will improve significantly because cost per click. Of course, salespeople are going to be responsible to enjoy as high click number as possible. Actually, our salespeople has very strong responsibility, which is our strength.
This has been leading to higher turnover because they feel strong responsibility. If they cannot achieve good numbers, they've been feeling big responsibility. Now, with this cost per click, we should be able to lower the psychological burden and enhance the productivity. We do not need to keep asking salespeople to keep visiting the same customers. We're expecting the productivity to improve a lot. Last week we held a boot camp in Atami. Very precious, 532 new grads, new employees are now highly motivated. After a while, some people just burn out and leaving our company. Of course, we are wanting to mitigate such a situation. Anytime we hire a new grad, we feel strong responsibility. That's why we are fully contributed.
We are fully determined to educate them well, train them well, and reduce the turnover. We held this ceremony to welcome these new grads. I'd like to hand it over back to Arai-san.
Let me talk about the full year earnings forecast for this year. In terms of sales, year-on-year basis,- 2.5% to +5%. That's JPY 53.4 billion to JPY 57.5 billion. Operating profit between JPY 5 billion to JPY 10 billion. Because we're moving to the hybrid strategy with listing fee and CPC, and also solutions structure transition, these impact will be impacting the sales. In addition to the continuation of upfront investment, these are baked into our forecast numbers. We are showing you how we see the result for the first half and the second half.
Last year, we had an upfront investment on Spot Baitoru JPY 2.8 billion, we had about JPY 5.8 billion downward pressure from the upfront investment, that sales was weak, the operating profit was JPY 9.1 billion. Upfront investment will be seeing fruit, we should be able to say about JPY 17 billion. For the profit outlook for this year, last year, April, we said that we set about JPY 17 billion, we weren't able to achieve that number. We feel deeply apologize for not being able to do so. We'll continue with the upfront investment and one-off impact, we have not changed the outlook of underlying profit of JPY 17 billion.
In terms of upfront investment, we've increased about 200 more new grad. Overall upfront investment, we will see just a small decline. As for the one-off, as we go moving to a solution structure transition, a negative impact will consist and also introduction of CPC. Obviously, we will try not to decrease the profit, but there's potential for us to record smaller profit. That's been baked in about JPY 7 billion-JPY 12 billion, and those will be a negative impact. The profit outlook for this year is between JPY 5 billion-JPY 10 billion. In the medium term outlook, as Tomita said, with the listing fee and CPC hybrid strategy, we will be not relying on this number of salespeople.
We have the Zero Advertising and Promotion Costs Project and percentage of personnel costs and advertisement costs will be coming down as a percentage of sales. In five years' time, we should be able to transform the earning structure, aiming for a 70% OP margin. Please look forward to our structure. On page 29, we're seeing the cost approach. The high growth with less number of people. We will be hiring less new grad. Advertisement. Overall, year-over-year, it will be negative in terms of the cost. In terms of sales cost, it's really mostly it's system development. We've seen the depreciation cost increasing, but leveraging AI, we are actually increasing development of the systems. Depreciation costs will be coming down, or the gap will be narrower.
Lastly, on shareholder returns. Dividend year-end was JPY 48, as promised. In principle, we take a progressive dividend. We saw a decline in profit, we have not cut dividend. Looking forward into medium term in order to see the sales growth and profit, we will have about JPY 17.7 billion cash. We would like to pay one year more for both the interim dividend as year-end dividend. The growth investment may depress immediate profit outlook, we want to make sure that the shareholder feel comfortable to continue to hold our shares. In terms of the shareholder benefit, there's a new design, Shohei Ohtani QUO card. This will be given out to the existing shareholders. That is all from me.