Theme for this fiscal year is GO MAJOR. We have new business, new initiatives. We are going to seriously work on these initiatives. That's why we chose this theme, GO MAJOR, for this year. First GO MAJOR is Spot Baitoru. Starting from October last year, we have entered into the spot part-time job market. We'd like to discuss Q4 last year performance and Q1 this year's performance. The number of job posting increased by 60%. Number of workers increased by 130%. This page is about Spot Baitoru promotion. The other day, Snow Man, who is our CM brand icons, they have actually experienced Spot Baitoru, and actually they could receive good bonus, good job bonus. The number of view reached 4.55 million over the first four days. The content was quite popular and well accepted.
Other than that, at terminal stations, we've been having transportation advertisements. A lot of people have been posting this ad to their social media. In the spot part-time job market, because this is a new market, the rules have not been necessarily catching up with what is ongoing, or I may say some people are not necessarily following the rules. Corporate side, if on a very last minute, like on the same day or previous day, they cancel the job opportunity, it seems such cases are taking place a lot. Talking about ourselves, DIP, till we actually entered into this market, we were not necessarily being able to understand, have good understanding on what was going on. A lot of cancellations actually we found that were taking place, so we took action immediately.
We revised the contract format, and we are clearly saying that if corporate side is going to cancel, 100% cancellation fee is going to be charged. If there's any special reason, say weather related or having said weather very, natural disaster related weather like or earthquake, if that is the reason, or if the corporate side that they were asking, searching for qualified person, but they found that the worker was not qualified. If that was the case, it could be regarded as exception. However, if these are not the cases, 100% cancellation fees have to be paid if the corporate is going to make last-minute cancellation. Our contract now clearly state that is going to be required. Prior, we were not being able to catch up.
For the prior cases already taking place, if we find that corporate side was already making last-minute cancellation, then based on our user-first policy, we are paying, making these payments for the workers who experienced these cancellations. We actually already completed all of these payments in May this year. We believe this is an industry issue, so the industry has to improve the business practice. That's why on The Nikkei and The Asahi Shimbun and The Chunichi Shimbun, we've been using two pages to publish advertising expressing our ongoing full commitment to provide user-first services. The employment contract, once that's made, the corporate side has to make the payment. Worker side has a right to claim for this fee for the first three years in principle. That's what is written in article of the Labor Standards Act. Corporate side as well.
This should be considered as a big potential risk because later they may be claimed for three-year equivalent unpaid last-minute cancellation fee. You have to be strict. Corporate side also has to be strict. That's what we are expressing. The spot part-time job, which is quite convenient, has to further improve the service quality. The whole industry has to improve the business practice to make sure we provide appropriate services to the customers and the users. In that sense, we DIP. We do have long-term career in this industry, we should be wanting to show the good examples to the whole industry. Next topic is dip AI. We've been starting to leverage AI early, and we're using AI technologies to provide a job search e-service using AI technologies.
By keep connecting with our users and customers, meaning there is a cycle starting from job selection, job posting, and using AI technologies, the interview date and time can be set up, and also shift management can be conducted using Baitoru talk. We have a system to be able to provide these services. By the way, Baitoru talk, we are still under test period, but this new Baitoru talk is being used. When this page was created, as many as 800 companies were already using. We are targeting to achieve 2 million. We believe this can be a good momentum for us to further expand the number of users. GO MAJOR number two, this fiscal year, the very big topic is starting from June 1st, we have shifted our organization structure to solution organization model.
It's been 29 years since our establishment, and this is going to be the first ever biggest organizational change. The number of customers we have is a lot, so it's a very big deal to switch over to new sales organization. It's been hard work to actually make it happen, but our employees and our customers are quite motivated to make it happen. The organization, we've been able to hear a lot of voices from our employees. We are only partially introducing these voices on this page. I have received close to 1,000 voices from our employees. They are quite passionate messages. I can truly feel their strong motivation, and we are also feeling very high expectation coming from the customer side.
The reason why we have decided to switch over to this new sales organization, which is solution organization, is because our retention, sorry, turnover became higher. I always ask other business owner, "What is the challenge you are facing with?" Quite frequently, especially after the pandemic, a lot of business owners have been telling me that the quality of new grads have become different. Specifically speaking, they are saying that the new grads nowadays, their resilience level has become lower. Turnover, churn has become higher. The reason should be, for example, because during the pandemic, these university students, they could not have opportunity to do part-time jobs, or company side, they could not be well-prepared to accept these new grads. There can be other reasons as well. Of course, even at DIP, we believe that there are things we can improve.
Generally speaking, new grads' quality has become different. In that sense, we are going to hire more mid-careers. This year, our target is 100, and we are making a good progress. Approaching to the next fiscal year, assuming some of our people will be leaving. Salespeople, the number of sales headcounts going to be very important for us because this is going to be converting into our sales. The number of salespeople matters a lot. In that sense, we are aiming to increase in these careers. Earlier, I discussed how we are using AI technologies for our external communication. On this page, we are discussing how we are leveraging AI technologies internally. We've been reporting that we've been able to reduce hundreds of thousands of hours of working hours.
As other KPIs, we have number of sales presentation, order success ratio, and unit price per order. We've been able to see improvements among these KPIs as well. Together with focusing on solution organization, we are aiming to keep increasing all of the three KPIs I mentioned right now. That's it.
Hi, my name is Masatsugu Shidachi, let me explain about the Q1 of fiscal year ending February 26th. This is the consolidated results for the Q1 . Sales were up 3.3% to JPY 15.7 billion. Last year, the Q4 sales growth was 1.5%, we were able to increase the sales growth rate. Operating income was down 16.1% to JPY 3.3 billion. The decline was due to the advertising promotions as well as system development costs on Spot Baitoru, which amounted to JPY 1.05 billion upfront investment. If we exclude these upfront investment, then operating profit would be 10% increase year-on-year, indicating steady profit growth in existing business.
For the personal recruit service business, compared to last year, was down. That is because Spot Baitoru P&L is included from the Q3 of the previous fiscal year. This is a sales trend for media service compared to the market. It is basically correlating with the market, which is a new active job openings-to-applicants ratio, was down 3.0% in the Q1 , indicating continual gradual recovery. By industry, light work, logistics, and service are on the rise in quarter. In addition, sales growth rate for media service increased to 3.4% in Q1 compared to 0.9% increase in Q4 of the previous year, achieving higher sales growth. The main, major client companies and human resource companies, we are actually getting a market share from competing media.
Is on SG&A. First, personnel expense. The number of employee decreased by 5% year-on-year, but sales growth increased by 3%, which means that higher productivity per employee level. This increase in productivity led to a 2.8 percentage point decrease in the personnel expense ratio. On advertising and promotion expenses. Because increased investment in Spot Baitoru, in addition to existing service, the A&P expense ratio increased by 6.8 percentage point. Other cost increases is primarily due to the rent cost increase resulting from consolidating offices in the Tokyo metropolitan area into the headquarter. The ratio to sales remains largely unchanged from the previous quarter. There are no changes to the forecast disclosed at the time of the full year earnings announced in April.
As explained back in April, due to upfront investment in Spot Baitoru and other initiatives, we plan for a decline in OP in the current fiscal year. For the next fiscal year, we are focusing operating income JPY 17 billion, which would be the record high profit level. Next page on the media service business. The media service sales increased by 3.4% growth, and I'm gonna break that down into by companies and unit prices. First, number of contracted companies decreased by 2.7% year-on-year. This is due to decrease in number of media sales personnel compared to the previous year. In the H2 , we would have the number of employees which will exceed the previous level. We aim for number of contracted companies increase versus last year.
Unit price increased by 6.1% year-on-year. This is acceleration from 3.8% increase from previous quarter. This is because we are gaining market share from the competing media, particularly among large client companies and human resources. Next are the user KPIs. Both app downloads and MAU are growing steadily. The media and agency service combined, that is entire personnel recruiting service business, was up 3.1% year-on-year for the Q1 . The progress for the personnel recruiting service business strategy has been explained in detail by Mr. Tomita, I will omit that explanation. The plan for this year for the personnel recruiting service business are no change, I'll skip on this page as well. On the DX business. This is the KOBOT series product lineup.
There are no changes, no updates, so I will omit this, and let's go into the sales. This is the sales for the Q1 for DX, up 5% year-over-year. Last year, sales growth stagnated, so in this Q1 , it turned to an upward trend. This is due to increased sales of products in the recruitment and human resource areas accompanying the expansion of media service sales, as well as steady expansion of sales of products in the sales promotion area. This is the number of companies subject to monthly billing, and this has remained the same level as last year. KPIs for DX business. Number of companies and ARPU. On Q-on-Q basis, we saw an increase. Number of companies increase is driven by MEO KOBOT, is a driver.
For ARPU, MEO KOBOT, increase in the number of locations used per company is increasing. That is the reason. As for the progress of DX business strategy, in the recruitment human resources area, we plan to add spot job advertisement posting feature to Baitoru talk in September. We're currently exploring the possibility of launching a subscription service for dip AI within this year, so please stay tuned. There are no changes in terms of DX business plan for this fiscal year, so I will skip on that. Shareholder return. This fiscal year is the investment year, so we are expecting the income to decrease. However, we are expecting to maintain the dividend. The dividend absolute value should be remaining the same as last year, meaning payout ratio is likely to be 62%.
On a full year basis, dividend is expected to be JPY 95. The breakdown is JPY 47 interim dividend and JPY 48 year-end dividend. That's it. On April 9th, we held ceremony to welcome new grads. We showed them a video, movie telling what kind of growth story you can follow. We also had messages from previous year new grads for this year's new grads. This year, we have welcomed 300 new grads. These new grads, how they can grow and can be more successful is something you should be able to get if you can take a look at this video. Please take a look.