Well, thank you very much for coming, despite your busy schedule today. This is the first quarter of financial results for the 30th fiscal year for us. For the first quarter, we have struggled a lot. In terms of sales, compared to the first quarter of last fiscal year, the sales went down by about JPY 2 billion. Operating profit, in addition to the decline in sales, the personnel cost increased by about JPY 400 million, so OP went down by JPY 2.5 billion. The reason why this happened will be explained now. Originally, the market, there are players like TOWNWORK and other players like [Aon] and Mynavi, but in the past few years, TOWNWORK and us were competing head-on with each other. In that environment, we have conducted various promotions and advertisement activities to acquire a lot of users, and the MAU difference has shrunk.
In the year ending February 2024, TOWNWORK stopped conducting ads. Actually, MAU has reversed between ourselves versus TOWNWORK, and from that perspective, we were able to conduct the business with more efficiency and better margin. Actually, in March of 2025, TOWNWORK concluded their sales. From our perspective, TOWNWORK is gone, and they are all going to be consolidated into Indeed, and that is what we were considering. Initially, we only thought that TOWNWORK restarted their ads. TOWNWORK ads started to increase. That is why we started to quickly introduce more ads in middle of May this year. In the first quarter, because we significantly increased the ads to counter against the Recruit's TOWNWORK, but still we saw many cases where the customers did not choose us. As I will explain later, starting from May, we started reinvesting in ads.
We are starting to see the users come back. Going forward, in terms of competition against Indeed, the structure is completely different. We are now conducting many developments to compete against Indeed. The competitor is again TOWNWORK. I mean, we clearly know that we are now competing against TOWNWORK again. We are going to repeat what we used to do. We know how to compete against them. The other reason why our sales went down was because of the revision of the agency fees. We have revised the agency fee significantly. Compared to the competitors, our fees used to be very high.
Agency business sales declined substantially. There were two reasons behind these hardships. Looking at this graph, you can understand the situation. 3.4%, the sales peak. TOWNWORK started the advertising, and then the impact spread on us. We felt the impact directly, and then that led to the decline of the sales. Therefore, we accelerated our advertisement from the mid of May a bit late. We are late to that. Since then, we have seen the users coming back. Since then, the number of users and sales are associated, linked. When the users number going up, then we can expect the sales going up. Second quarter and beyond that, we are planning to get back on the growth track.
Labor cost, personnel cost is on the rise because the sales persons number is on the rise, and that is what we are aiming for. The increasing personnel cost is good things. However, the cost of labor is up for sure without good investment in advertisement. We did not appropriately post advertisement looking forward the competitors, and then personnel cost was up. The new hiring is 200 more than last year. Turnover rate, we tried to decline the turnover rate, and the turnover rate is now down. The new graduates hiring is up. As a result, personnel costs increased. But in order to do the V-shape recovery, the sales force is very critical. The number of salesperson is very important. That's an upfront investment for us. Net sales down, and then the contracted company's number down too.
However, the big companies' wallet is now shrinking. Their budget is contracted. Therefore, the sales from the bigger companies or unit price of the bigger companies are down now, which is a very big problem for us. It's a hardship for us. On this page, KOBOT and other DX services, the interview KOBOT, for example, declined because of the decline in the number of contracted companies. However, the acquiring customers, KOBOT, is on the rise steadily. MEO KOBOT, MEO sales, is on the rise. July last year, the solution-based structure started. Customers' satisfaction rate was up. As a part of solution-based structure, we have partnered with ONODERA USER RUN to support the recruitment of specified skilled foreign worker placement. This is a new project. The first webinar was conducted yesterday with a lot of clients or companies attended. The number of users must be increasing.
In order to increase the traffic, we need to have more listing, the number of listing. The contracted company number is declining, but the listing should be on the rise. We need to break down the listing, like whole kitchen cleaning. Those kind of breakdown of the listing is important. The number of listing increased by 18%, and SEO improved. Tried to improve SEO and the number of users is on the rise. Other than advertising, we are trying to do more initiatives to increase the users, other than advertising. When it comes to Spot Baitoru, the sales only for spot work is difficult because the unit price is cheap. At stock products, of course, if we take time, business model would be profitable, but as of now, it's just an upfront investment. We try to do the set sales.
We buy Spot Baitoru and Baitoru, again, both. The Spot Baitoru is considered as the pilot case of Baitoru, and then more than Spot Baitoru and Baitoru, the companies using both Spot Baitoru and Baitoru has expanded to 70%, and the loss from doing only Spot Baitoru sales is declining. In order to increase the integrity of spot work industry, we have been doing many efforts. We are doing business for our workers. Spot work business should be offering the offer along with the workers. Baitoru talk is very strong.
Well, the efficiency of sales activities and also reducing the turnover. In order to achieve that, we have started the client referrals from the financial institutions, and this is progressing quite well. In a sales branch of a manufacturer, because we are seeing so many client referrals from the financial institutions, we have achieved zero cold calls. We will continue driving this collaboration with the financial institutions so that we can receive more client referrals from them. Also, we are having this battle around ads against our competitors, and we started the production of our in-house videos to eliminate the advertising and promotion costs. There are less viewers watching TV and things like YouTube and TikTok on the web. There are more users watching those social media, and the younger generations are completely switching. I mean, the younger generation are the targets of us.
Before, we used to place ads by paying onto YouTube or TikTok, but instead we are producing attractive videos ourselves so that we can naturally acquire more appeal to the client. We started this in April, but we already saw 35 million views, and that is equivalent to 1,000 GRPs on commercials on TV, and that is equivalent to one month's worth of TV commercials. We are able to acquire this many views with the production that we do ourselves. This month, we have opened up a studio in our office. We would like to continue producing more videos. The agency business sales went down, and we were looking for some talent who is very strong in the agency business.
There is this person for more than 40 years after joining Recruit, who has been working in the human resources business for a long time, and this person has been a president of a company called ADVA. Akihiro Oda has joined us as a Special Advisor. Although he is an advisor, he is coming into the office four or five days a week. He is very deeply involved in our business to try and recover the agency business. Also, he is involved in developing the sales managers in our personnel recruiting services business. We can now have brought in Mr. Oda into the business. I would like to introduce Mr. Oda.
Well, thank you very much for the kind introduction. My name is Mr. Oda. I look forward to meeting you all. I joined Recruit in 1985, and for 29 years, I have been totally focused on the HR business, and I was focused on new graduates and mid-careers in AP. I was looking after Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and involved in both indirect and direct business. With the relationship, I joined ADVA, who is an agency for HR business in 2014, and I was Vice President for six years, and I was a CEO for six years, and I had worked for a total of 12 years, and I resigned this year. Because of a relationship, in May of this year, I had this relationship with Tomita-san, and starting from June 1st, I have been appointed a Special Advisor. My mission, as was mentioned from Tomita-san, I have two mission.
One is that the agency business that serve as one of the growth strategy going forward, I am going to recover and achieve the growth of the business. That is the first mission. The second is that develop other personnel that becomes a future executives that supports the growth. I will consider how I develop the future executive. Those are the two missions. I would like to put in my utmost efforts to drive the growth of DIP. I look forward to working with you going forward. Thank you.
I would like to move on to the full year forecast. The number of users has increased. We are starting to recover. The sales are coming back as well, so we are not making any changes to the earnings forecast for this fiscal year.
Moving on to shareholder returns. We will be providing JPY 48 interim dividend. The year-end dividend is also going to be JPY 49 as planned.