Thank you very much for giving us your time desp ite your busy schedule today. For the fiscal year ending February 2024, we would now like to start the financial results announcements for the second quarte r. For this ter m, the theme is Think Big, and we have taken various activities based on this theme. We have the midterm business plan called dip 30s, and this is be ing built right now, and this will be announced in November of this year. In November, the integrated report, the first round of the integrated report, was announced for the first time last year. This year in November, the second version of the integrated report will be published.
Within that, our midterm management strategy will also be included. We're raising the hourly wage is the promotion that we have been conducting. Our employees one by one are approaching our customers, and constantly they are making down-to-earth activities to ask the increase and raise of the hourly wages. Their efforts have beared the fruit. Compared to the competitors, and when we compare the hourly wage, as you can see here, we can see a very big difference. Many customers have recognized this activity. By doing so, we were able to improve the treatment of the employees. We think we are delivering very good result.
In terms of the number of app downloads and the usage rate are doing quite well as well. Both app downloads and MAU have been doing quite well. In relations to that, we have been able to receive a record number of applications. In terms of the market share, according to our survey, has grown their share by one point. In contrast, Mynavi has dropped their share. That is what we see based on the survey that we have conducted. Right now, our market share is 26.4%, which is a very strong number.
Right now, as the second phase of our activity following the increase in hourly wage, we are conducting a large-scale promotion called dip DEI Project. Mainly, this is focusing on trying to reduce the bias around age. We have revised our sites. Instead of making the age field mandatory, we had made it voluntarily. Therefore, the age information has not become mandatory anymore. I mean, there are some customers who require this information, we're not able to take out the field completely. However, we are asking the users to enter it if they wish to. This activity has been recognized by many customers.
62% of the companies has switched to making the age field voluntarily. In TVs and newspapers and magazines, this has been covered very broadly. We want to make this a major movement. As a character for this campaign, Miki Maya is playing the role of the Division Head. Through this campaign, we are giving an update saying that the companies are taking out the age field. Baitoru, we are focusing on the diversity theme, so not just the age or gender or nationality bias is something that we want to eliminate. That way, we are broadcasting the new commercial.
As you saw here, the new TV commercials, for TV as well as online, also our YouTube channel and TikTok are areas that we're focusing on. We have 250,000 users who are registered onto our corporate channel, and the num ber of video views has exceeded 100 million. We had many users registering and also watched the videos. On October 24th, for the first time in our history, we are holding a business conference. It is called the Labor Force Solution Conference. As the theme, we are using human capital management changing with AI as the theme.
Professor Matsuo, who from the Matsuo Laboratory, who are involved in developing the AI agent, and also our outside directors, Mr. Mabuchi and Ms. Yoshimoto, will be speaking on this conference, and we will be doing a live streaming of this conference. I hope you will join. The permanent placement services will be expanded this term and to the existing media business, Baitoru NEXT, and Hatarako.net, Baitoru PRO. For the permanent placement services on Nurse de Hatarako, Kaigo de Hatarako, where all useful other nursing care recruitment commercials have been introduced. By doing so, we are focusing a lot on this area.
For the DX business, in addition to recruitment, the DX for attracting more users is another area that we're focusing on more. This is an MEO service, but through this time, we are working with Google to conduct an event co-sponsored with Google. On October 4th, we are going to co-sponsor with Meta to conduct this event. For both events, we have more par ticipation by more than 100 companies, and this is received very well. It is very well received.
This is a page that was shown in the previous earnings call as well, and we are seeing a very steady development of the product, and I would like to update you on that. AI and AI agent is a service targeting the users, but also, in terms of the usage of AI within the company, we are focusing a lot there as well. With regards to our activities, we are getting many inquiries, and it has been covered by the newspaper quite broadly. But internally, we have 250 ambassadors being assigned, and these ambassadors, AI especially for generative AI, they are in the position of promoting the usage of AI and generative AI.
In the field, we are conducting activities to promote the usage of AI in the field. Throughout Japan, we have been positioned as one of the leading companies who leverages on AI. For the sales reps, they use AI for building the draft text for job and post it. Job text is something that requires a lot of time. Being able to automate this process would contribute significantly to improve the productivity. Also, business negotiation tools would also contribute to improving the win rate as well as the process of the sales. Also for engineering positions and planning and administrative positions that we are actively driving the usage of AI.
This time, we have conducted a philosophy contest, which is a new initiative internally and m yself, a lot of the employees were very stimulated, and each employee are conducting those actions within the field, and that was a big learning for us. If we have the opportunity going forward, we would like to share that with you again. Based on the philosophy, of course, of raising the hourly wage and also eliminating the age bias is another thing. With the dream, idea, and passion of the activity to improve the society, is the philosophy that employee, each one, employees are having, and they had the opportunity to announce on that.
In terms of diversity, with regards to LGBTQ+, we have conducted a training. Our outside director, the attorney, Imazu, was invited as the lecturer to talk about the sense of value of driving diversity with the aim of integrating our views. For the directors as well as the employees, we have conducted this session. In October 2nd, we have conducted an informal ceremony for the new graduates. This year, we are hiring about half the size that we hired last year. Still, we are hiring about 303 new graduates.
As I mentioned earlier, right now, the draft creation can be done in a more productive way by using AI. We are trying to improve the productivity significantly that way. By doing so, we expect the productivity to improve. Of course, we haven't done a thorough studying of this yet, but we need to assess whether the 303 new graduates are the adequate number or not, and consider reducing the number going forward. However, for this year's new graduate hiring, we have reduced it down to half. That we can conduct a more productive way of work. By doing this, we want to find out what the appropriate number of new graduates are going forward.
This time, GPIF have recognized a new ESG indices, and that was adopted. By doing this, all the ESG index has been selected. The new ESG index that was newly selected, we have been rated as a part of group one. Thank you very much. That is all for me.
Hello, I am Shinichi. I would like to first present on the consolidated results for the 1st half of this fiscal year. I will skip on this highlight page and moving on to the consolidated results. Both sales and operating profit were in line with our initial projection. For sales, compared to the same time last year, sales increased by 9.1% to JPY 12.5 billion. Operating profit increased by 10.11% to JPY 2.8 billion. For personnel recruiting services and DX, both services enjoyed a steady growth in both sales and profit. For operating profitability, it was 23%. It is somewhat higher than the previous year. In the latter half, we're planning to increase this operating margin to around 30%.
This is because in the latter half, the 600 new graduate who joined our company will start to contribute to our sales on a full scale. Previously, our existing employees spent a lot of time on educating and guiding these new graduates, but they'll be able to secure enough time on sales negotiations, so we're hoping that we can expand our sales in the latter half together with an improvement of margin. Now onto the breakdown of the SG&A, starting with advertising cost. For advertising cost, in the previous year, we invested meaningfully on Baitoru PRO. We spent JPY 2.5 billion on an annual basis last year, but this time, it will be half to around JPY 1.2 billion.
In addition to this, we are seeing an improvement in efficiency of promotion, so advertising cost ratio will go down, or rather, has gone down by 6.6% year-over-year. We are cutting back on the advertising cost for Baitoru PRO. It is because we are running web ads for Baitoru NEXT, and Hatarako.net all together efficiently. We have received enough applications so far. In this way, we are making solid and enough investment into the four media, covering the four services altogether. Now onto labor cost or personnel cost. 612 new graduates joined our company, so labor cost increased. Labor cost ratio increased rather. However, in the latter half, we're going to expect the start of full-scale sales contribution by these people.
We are hoping that the labor cost ratio will go down to 32%-33%. As to the fiscal year that will end in February 2026, we are planning that a new graduate who have joined our company this fiscal year can generate sales of more than JPY 10 billion in this single fiscal year. We will continue to develop our new graduate employees fully. Onto the full year forecast for this fiscal year. We announced our full year forecast on the 14th of April, and there is no change since then. The way that we think about this forecast is the same, and this is the same slide as what we presented last time, so we're skipping this slide. By segment, starting with DX segment. We will share with you the content of the business and our progress.
As to the positioning of DX business, its business environment, and the characteristics of DX KOBOT series. The pages are the same as what we showed last time, I will skip explanation on this. There is a new addition to our DX product lineup. It's the SNS Booster KOBOT. This is a new product related to customer attraction. This one, MEO, was announced in Q1. This is the customer attraction using Google Maps. In addition to this MEO KOBOT or MEO KOBOT, we added SNS Booster KOBOT covering Instagram, and also, this can have a reservation button that can be directly used from map in addition to reservation function. Customer management can be supported better with this new product, and we started offering this product this month.
As our president said earlier, we made an announcement about this through webinars and others. So far we have received good customer response, we have made a good start. We are hoping that this product will be bigger in results. As to the results in the second quarter, second quarter-wise, our sales grew by 26% year-over-year. Both flow product and stock product exceeded our initial plans. For the second quarter, second quarter is an off-peak season for media services. Flow product sales somewhat slowed down. However, stock product sales grew steadily. As to the number of companies subject to monthly billing, this number increased by 20% year-over-year, showing a steady growth, which is as high as 20%.
As to KPI results for Q2, last time we made an upward revision to KPI targets, and even compared to the adjusted targets, we're making steady progress. In the latter half, we're going into the peak season of media, so we can expect the acceleration of sales in the areas of corporate recruiting and personal administration. In addition, MEO KOBOT in sales promotion areas have been used by customers for free for some. However, we are seeing that these customers who use this service for free trial are shifting to paid services, so they will start to contribute to sales. As to our focal measures of DX in Q3, the 1st one, improvement of quality for existing product, we are planning to renew the functions of the corporate recruiting page KOBOT. With this, we're going to reduce churn rate in our plan.
Other points are already explained, I am going to skip explanation on other points. As to the plan for this fiscal year, no change for sales and segment profit forecast for this year. In the last time, we explained that this forecast, this plan, is a conservative one. For KPIs, we made an upward revision, we have made solid progress in line with the revised plan. We of course are going to outperform this plan. That is it for the progress of DX business. Now, I will go into the progress state of personnel recruiting services. Starting with the sales of personnel recruiting services, this number grew by 7.2% year-over-year to JPY 11 billion. Now onto the breakdown. The media service and permanent placement services.
Media service grew by 7.6% year-over-year, and permanent placement services declined by 0.5% year-over-year. For the media services, it grew by 7.6% in sales to JPY 10.6 billion. The 7.6% growth may not be satisfactory to some of you. However, when we compare this number to market, in the part-time new job offers to seekers ratio, you can see the chart, the year-over-year job offers to seeker ratio trends. Compared to the last time, the same time last year, you can see the growth, in fact. The market in the second quarter slowed down compared to our expectation. However, DIP's sales growth rate was as high as 7.6% compared to the market growth of 0.6%.
We outperformed the market growth, and we increased our market share. Onto the number of contracted companies. We are seeing that this number is increasing steadily by 5.3%. As to unit price, the contract unit price per company grew by 2.1% year-over-year. About the DX product that was mentioned earlier, this product is, of course, launched and sold. Unit price per company grew thanks to the launch of the new product, partially. Now let me talk about the focal initiatives of the media servic e. As to the improvement of the operational efficiency, Tomita-san earlier mentioned that we automated production of job ad text that we are expecting will give a major impact on efficiency. Also, we started recording meetings with clients with minutes-taking tool.
In this way, we'll be able to visualize the conversation history, the conversation details of our sales representatives, especially the top-level sales representatives. That will be a good learning for other sales representatives. This will allow us to share good knowledge, and we are hoping that this will lead to a bottom up in terms of the quality of proposals to customers. We're starting to see the positive effect at sales department, and we're hoping that even bigger results will come out in the future. Other points have already been explained, so I am going to skip explanation. Now, onto permanent placement services. Sales of permanent placement services-wise, the sales declined by 0.5% year-over-year and ended at JPY 400 million.
The reason why it declined is because many new graduates joined and they require meaningful education cost, and they have not been able to make contribution to sales. Also, there is the launch of Nursing care de Hatarako, the new service, and we had to assign a meaningful number of personnel related to the launch of this service or the preparation for the launch of this service. These are the two major factors that have led to a decline. However, please understand that we're making a meaningful upfront investment, and we're going to see an improvement in the next fiscal year as a result. April is the peak month of this permanent placement services, so we are hoping and we are confident that thanks to this, more people will start jobs next April.
Please count on good numbers to come out next fiscal year. Onto the focal measures of permanent placement services. About development of new graduates, we have made steady progress in the development. Please expect that meaningful sales contribution will be made by these new people in the next fiscal year. Other points have already been explained in the last quarter, so I will not explain, but we will continue to firmly address these three points. Now, onto the business plan for this fiscal year. No change to the plans for sales and segment profit of personal recruiting services business on a full year. That is the end of my presentation.
With regards to the shareholder return, I would like to explain. The interim dividend, the forecast, was to be JPY 35. Last year was JPY 40, and the forecast for this year was JPY 35. We have a guidance of a payout ratio of 50%, and so, we increased the dividend by JPY 5 and raised it to JPY 40. That is all for me. The JPY 48 of the year-end dividend payout will remain the same. There is no change. Thank you. Well, on the informal oath ceremony, we have a video presenting and depicting the activities of the senior employees. Every time we show the videos. This time, I would like you to see the video.