First of all, on January 1st, 2024, the Noto Peninsula earthquake occurred. I would like to express our heartfelt condolences to those who lost their lives in that earthquake. Also, I would like to express our deepest sympathies to all those affected by the disaster. In order to contribute to the relief efforts and disaster victims for the reconstruction of the affected areas, the company has decided to donate a total of JPY 10 million to Peace Winds Japan. We sincerely pray for the swift recovery of the disaster-affected areas. Well, we started 2024. I look forward to your continued support again this year. First of all, I would like to talk about the activities towards enhancing our corporate value.
This, this whole year's theme is Think Big. Truly, we have an asset that is most suitable for enhancing that corporate value. I don't need to explain him, but you know very well, Mr. Shohei Ohtani, and he is probably the most famous Japanese in the history. For us, this will be a huge transformation for us. This time, Mr. Shohei Ohtani had been appointed as our brand ambassador. On the internet, some people say that, "Why DIP?" From our perspective, it's one of the dreams that we had for a long time. Well, ever since he joined the Major Leagues. I had this dream of him becoming our brand ambassador, and I was able to make this dream come true.
The reason why we had him appointed was that our company name, DIP, Dream, Idea, Passion, this is very appealing to him and our philosophy. The activities that we conducted during COVID, and also, the improving the environment for the workers, and also, reducing the bias in employment. All those activities have been recognized by him. He had kindly signed the contract of becoming an ambassador for our company. What we were very surprised of was that after WBC, there was something like the Ohtani fever. There was a huge boom after the WBC. After the WBC, we were the first corporate to sign a contract.
At this point, no other company has made an announcement for signing a contract, which is a great honor for us. When we shot the commercial, well, although he had very limited time, we were able to have a discussion with him. For the first time, he had allowed us to do a one-on-one discussion as a brand ambassador. I think it's probably a first time for him. We were lucky enough to have this opportunity. I think I was able to have a great discussion with him. The release was made on the 15th, and the day was actually the same day when he announced the joining of the Dodgers. It was captured by many media.
It was covered by 19 programs, they had a very long coverage. During the peak hours during the daytime, they spent more than 20 minutes for this coverage on this discussion. When you convert that into ads, the value is exceeding JPY 1.2 billion. Even aside from the commercials, I felt that had a huge value. Even in other areas, the employees and also from other people, they have given us a lot of positive comments. In the ads, taxi ads and TV commercials are going to be shown. TV commercials in the past, we had a style of showing many commercials on a spot basis. This time, as a program sponsorship, we are showing our commercials.
Also we purchase many programs and as the sponsor for those programs, we will be showing those commercials. In addition to that, we will be showing the taxi commercials from the 8th. We're have other initiatives like jacking Shibuya or jacking the stations. I think there will be more opportunities to see those commercials, so I hope you would keep an attention to them. Mr. Shohei Ohtani has become the ambassador and the contract with Mr. Shohei Ohtani. Objective was to improve the DIP's corporate value. Of course, going forward, DIP is going to transform from the recruitment ads business, and we're going to transform significantly into the AI business.
In order to do so, we want to improve the credibility of the company, as well as improve the awareness of the business, so that we make sure this AI agent will be a success. This is just one of the demonstration of our commitment. The release of the AI agent service I mentioned was going to be until the end of December last year. It was already functional, and we already use it internally. I decided that it was too early for the release yet. We have decided to postpone the release. The AI itself is a service that needs to be developed and nurtured. It's going to be difficult to introduce something that is great from day one.
Once it reaches a level that is acceptable for everybody to use, that is when I will make decision to release it. I hope you would look forward to the release. With regards to AI, well, internally, we are actively utilizing AI. The target for next fiscal year is to reduce approximately 500,000 hours. This is huge amount of hours. The labor that used to be done by human before will now be done by AI, and that is the plan that we have for next fiscal year. By doing so, we want to increase the time that is purely used for sales.
Also, we want to give more time for employees to learn, so that the time can be more effectively be used. The activities that we have introduced fiscal year is that things like the customer proposal support tool or job page improvement tools or development support tools. In many ways, we are already using AI. ChatGPT is being used by many employees every day. Yesterday, by Nikkei, there was a coverage around the illegal part-time job screen AI, and this was developed. This is to reduce the time that's required for doing assessments on the ads. We are also working with the police to reduce the victims that have been impacted by illegal part-time jobs.
Well, there are some criminals that are very close to victims, so we want to try and reduce such people as well. Also we want to be actively be involved in working on eliminating illegal part-time job. Last time, I mentioned that we're going to hold a conference. This is under the theme of Human Capital Management Changing with AI. The conference was called Labor Force Solution Conference dip 2023, and this was held on October 24th. We had more than 200 untapped client companies placing orders with us. So, this had a very big impact. Including online, we have more than 3,600 companies participating.
We did a survey. 93% of the participants responded very good or good. So, the conference was a very successful with a high satisfaction. This is available on YouTube. If you haven't watched it, I hope you would go on and watch this. Matsuo San, Professor Matsuo, who is involved in the dip AI-Agent , was also available to give us a presentation, and he delivered a very good presentation. Well, in terms of ESG management. In the TV commercials, we have been communicating that we should reduce the bias in the employment and we should give opportunities to everybody. Especially around our female executives, there has been a lot of discussion.
In FY 2023, within the female director ratio ranking, the top 500 companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market, we were ranked number one, and this is very big honor. To be honest, now there are more external directors, and so I would like to develop female executives who can become board members internally, so that we can demonstrate the leadership in promoting female executives. That will be all the presentation I have from my side. Thank you very much.
Hello, I'm Shidachi, COO. I'm going to explain the consolidated third quarter financial results. Page 13, please. This is the result. Sales were up by 6.3% year-over-year to JPY 13.7 billion. Operating income declined year-on-year by 3.3% to JPY 3.5 billion. Sales growth slowed more than expected, and as a result, operating income decreased Y-o-Y. Sales growth slowed because due to the deterioration in the call center and clerical job advertisement market, the sales to human resource companies such as BPO and temp staff agency were uphill. On top of that, market of food and beverage sector has been recovering, but speed of recovery is slower than expected, which also impacted our business results. I will elaborate more on this on the slide for full year forecast revision. Next, SG&A.
Management of advertising and sales promotion expenses has been efficient, and its ratio to sales declined from 20.8% in the third quarter of the previous fiscal year to 18.2% in the third quarter of current fiscal year, which is 2.6 percent point decline. Labor cost ratio increased to 34.6% from 30.6% of the previous year. It was up by 4 percent point. This is mainly because of 612 new graduates who joined the company last April. Composition rate of junior staff with lower productivity is getting higher. As they work with us longer, individual productivity would improve. Please think of this hiring as upfront investment.
We assume new graduates who joined the company in this current fiscal year will have more productivity and will be able to generate annual sales of more than JPY 10 billion in fiscal year ending February 2026. We will continue to foster them in steady manner to realize this figure. Now, that is consolidated financial results. Let's move on to the full year forecasts. We have revised the full year forecast downward. Revised sales forecast is JPY 53.2 billion, which is JPY 3.1 billion less than initial forecast. Revised operating income is JPY 11.9 billion, which is JPY 2.6 billion less than initial forecast. Initial forecast of ROE was around 23%, but in the light of this revision, it is expected to be 21.5%.
By segment, we revised upward the forecast of DX business, while revised downward the forecast of personnel recruiting services business. I will explain the background, this downward revision on the next slide. There are two factors behind the revision of the next sales. As I explained, as the background to the weak third quarter sales, the first point is that due to the rapid deterioration in the call center and clerical job advertisement market in the second half, sales to temp staff agencies and BPOs declined. This is the result of the absence of so-called COVID-19 special demand, such as call center operations for vaccination. After COVID was classified in the 5th class, and our client companies significantly reduced their recruitment budget to secure their own profit. That is our understanding.
Second point is that despite the continuous recovery trend in food and beverage sector, the recovery pace has been slower than anticipated. I will elaborate more on this later on another slide. Regarding the background to the downward revision of the operating income, in addition to the market environment related factors that I have just mentioned, we made an aggressive investment in corporate advertising for the release of AI- Agent. As you can see in the bar graph, revised advertising and promotion expenses declined compared to previous fiscal year or initial forecast. Which means efficient management of promotions has been kept, and investment in advertisement for existing service is suppressed much more than initial forecast and well controlled. Regarding the market, let's take a look at this graph. This is the new active job opening to applicants ratio year-on-year for part-time jobs.
Since August, market has been deteriorating. This is, I think, well, expressing our situation in labor's market. When we focus on the food and beverage sector, let's take a look at this data, which is provided by the Japan Foodservice Association. This shows the changes in sales and number of customers at food service operators compared to pre-pandemic level. People tend to think that food and beverage sectors are enjoying the customer traffic same as pre-pandemic days. As a matter of fact, sales have surpassed pre-pandemic level, thanks to the raising prices. Customer count has not yet returned to the pre-pandemic level. Having said that, the traffic recovery is continuing and this moderate recovery will continue. In midterm perspective, we believe that the market is moderately growing. Next, by client category.
As you can see on this slide, sales to small and medium and large companies, large client companies, were weaker than initial assumption, but we achieved high growth rate. On the other hand, sales to human resource companies such as temporary staff agency and BPO, and sales to agencies declined year-on-year. As I stated earlier, due to the rapid deterioration in the call center demand related to vaccination of COVID-19 and clerical job advertisement market in the second half, sales to human resource companies declined. Regarding agencies, sales decreased due to reduction of sales force at agencies because of COVID-19, and this number hasn't recovered yet. We have taken measures to improve share among agencies, we would like to correct this situation as soon as possible. Now, our midterm management plan, dip 2030.
The factors related to the downward revision, such as deterioration of job advertising market, these have been incorporated, so there is no numerical change in targets. Recently, thanks to other corporate companies featuring Ohtani and other efforts, sales growth rate has turned upward. That is how we feel. I believe we have already bottomed out. Having said that, orders received in January will be recorded at sales in February or later. Please bear in mind that positive impact on the fourth quarter is expected to be limited. That's all about the forecast, full year forecast. Next, let's move on to the business overview and progress in the DX business. Slide page 24 to 27 are about the overviews of DX businesses. This is the sales of DX business. The sales was up by 23% year-on-year.
Particularly, sales expanded strongly in stock products. That is because of the good progress in sales expansion of customer attraction KOBOT for MEO in sales promotion domain, on top of the sales KOBOT in HR and recruiting domain. Next is the number of companies subject to monthly billing grew. It was up by 20%. It is a nice growth. Next KPI. With an increase in the number of companies subject to monthly billing, we continuously increased monthly sales. Regarding the number of companies, sales expansion of product in sales promotion domain has been strong, such as customer attraction KOBOT for MEO. We were able to add more than 600 companies from the previous quarter. As a result, the number of new customers with lower contract price increased. Because of this mix, our ARPU slightly declined.
We will strive for increase of clients in sales promotion domain so that the entire number would be improving. Now, the priority measures of DX business. By implementing new sales promotion, utilizing corporate advertisement featuring Ohtani, and by webinars, we will aim to acquire new potential customers. Other measures were explained previously, and we will continue those other measures. Next is business plan for this fiscal year. As we have explained in the past, initial plan was conservative. This is the business plan. We realized this, and we, because it was conservative, so this time we revised them upward. That's all about DX business. Next, progress in the personnel recruiting service business. The sales trend, it was up by 4.5% to JPY 12.1 billion.
The breakdown, the media and permanent placement service. Media service was up by 4.7%. Permanent placement service was up by 3% year-on-year. First, media service. The sales of media service was up by 4.7% to JPY 11.7 billion. As I explained on the slide of new job opening to applicants ratio, we assume market growth rate will be negative. Although our growth rate is slowing down along with the slowdown of the market, our market share continues to extend. This is the number of contracted companies. It was up by 7.5%. It is a steady increase. Next is the contract unit price trend. Contract unit price per customer declined year-on-year.
We were able to accelerate the increase of the number of contracted company in the third quarter compared to the second quarter, and as a result, small and mid-sized clients with lower unit price increased. This client mix drove down the total unit price. In addition, sales to temp staff agency and BPO companies with higher unit price has been weak. These are the reasons behind this decline. From this page, I will explain KPIs relating to users. First, average hourly wages for job listing on Baitoru stays at the highest level, leaving other media far behind. In this quarter, natural traffic to Baitoru exceeded that of competitor for the first time and we achieved number one. Natural traffic means the number of times a user visited the Baitoru site through a genuine search on the web, excluding advertisement.
From user side, we have become number one. I think this indicated that. Let's talk about app downloads and MAU. We are continuing to be number one in both. Regarding the application received, the number of application received stays at the highest level on record, exceeding the pre-COVID-19 level. This is the priority measures. In the fourth quarter, on top of the existing measures, we improved the customer acquisition efficiency by introducing order forecasting tools. We would like to promote a role-playing for sales proposal utilizing ChatGPT. We conduct new sales promotion leveraging Ohtani's corporate advertisement, which leads to the increase of the sales. That's all about media service. Let's move on to permanent placement service.
This business sales was up by 3.0% to JPY 440 million. The priority measures of permanent placement service, in the same way as media service, we promote role-playing for career advice utilizing AI to strengthening new graduates and career advisors' education. On top of that, we will strengthen customer development in the central Tokyo to increase our business. Not only media service, but Ohtani's advertisement is acting as positive element for permanent placement service too. We would like to use that corporate advertisement for permanent placement service. This is the business plan for this fiscal year.
As I explained on the slide about the revision of the forecast, with the change of the market environment as a major factor, we revised downward the sales and segment profit of personnel recruiting services business. That's all from me. Thank you very much.
Well, with regards to the year-end dividend forecast, it will be the same as the initial forecast, and it will be JPY 48. There will be no change in paying out the dividend. The total payout ratio is 97% for this fiscal year. With regards to the shareholder benefit program, well, we had very strong request for that, and so therefore, the QUO CARD featuring Shohei Ohtani will be provided. I mean, I saw some posting talking about the benefits going to be.