It is time to begin the ESG briefing by AGC. [Foreign language] IR [Foreign language]. My name is Tamaki via IR. Master of the ceremony today, thank you for this opportunity. Let me introduce today's presenters. Representative Director, Executive Vice President, CTO, Kurata. Chikako Ogawa. [Foreign language] General Manager of Sustainability Division, Corporate Planning General Division, Yuki Ihara. [Foreign language]. Today we will give a presentation with regard to value creation model and management capital, and it will be followed by a Q&A session. [Foreign language] We scheduled to finish at 5:00 P.M. Thanks for your cooperation in advance. Kurata, the floor is yours.
Yes, this is Kurata, the CTO. Thank you for this opportunity. Value creation model and management capital is the title of our briefing today. This is the agenda. I'll be following the items shown on this agenda slide. I will begin with the overview of our business segments. As you can see in the pie chart, Includes architecture glass, automotive, and this is about 45% of the sales: glass-related business. Then 20% is electronics, approximately. Chemicals accounts for 25%, life science and ceramics about 10% each. Glass business is about half, and including high value added, we have electronics performance essentials and also life science segments. Our portfolio is very broad. On this slide, you can see our regional segments.
Our business spans over 30 countries and regions. Our business is global, and we conduct business in those areas and also manufacture in some of these regions as well: Europe, Japan, Asia, and the Americas. As you can see in the boxes below, we conduct a whole variety of different businesses in these regions.
We have just under 54,000 group employees. Conducting global business. This slide shows evolution of products and services. A quick history of AGC. In 1907, the founder, Toshiya Iwasaki, founded Asahi Glass. The business actually started with architectural glass. Glass manufacturing was very difficult at the time.
He struggled. During this time, the First World War broke out, and soda ash as well, which is a new ingredient, and also bricks for the furnace and ceramics could not be imported anymore. Instead of giving up on manufacturing glass, he decided to start manufacturing glass by themselves. Soda ash was involved, and this is why we entered into the chemical business. We also started making our own bricks, which translated into the ceramics business. We are still working on these same technologies.
After that, we had motorization, digital communication expanded, TV models changed over time, and the camera became digitalized. Semiconductors saw huge advancement, and more recently, we are seeing GenAI. Each era had different requirements, and we continue to provide materials and solutions to meet the needs of each era, as indicated in the history of our products and the company. We have been operating for close to 150 years so far.
Now I would like to take some time to explain our group philosophy. As I have explained, Toshiya Iwasaki struggled a lot during the foundation of this company, but his aspiration was that he wanted to contribute to the development of society through domestic production of that glass because it was mostly manufactured outside of Japan at that time.
He went through a lot of challenges. For example, in order to manufacture bricks and also deal with chemicals, he faced a multitude of challenges, and his aspiration is still carrying on in this organization. As you can see on the right-hand side, we have a spirit: never take the easy way out, but confront difficulties. Each employee at AGC has this spirit, this challenging spirit. At the time of foundation, we were trying to domesticate the Black glass for architectural purposes. Now we do global business, and our purpose now is AGC, an everyday essential part of our world.
Our shared values. Is shared across the whole organization. Innovation and operational excellence, sustainability for the planet, one team with diversity and integrity, and trust. These are our shared values. Look beyond AGC is always looking beyond what we see now. This is our corporate philosophy. Next, I would like to talk about the value creation model of AGC.
This is how it's depicted. On the far left, we have changing external environment. As I have just explained, each era has a different need for materials, products, and the external environment continuously changes. On the far right-hand side, you can see our purpose. AGC, an everyday essential part of our world. This is the meaning of existence. Connecting these two, we have the long-term business strategy in order to achieve look beyond. We have the management that we implement and execute, and we call this value creation model of AGC Group. Today, I would like to take time to explain each step of this value creation model to you. We shift from left to right. We start from the left. First of all, we have long-term social issues or material issues. This is the first thing that we need to define.
AGC Group's long-term social issues, materiality, and our view is explained on this slide. As you can see at the bottom half of the slide, it's separated into two. One is major risks, key risks, social issues to be solved through sound corporate activities.
In addition to risks, there are also major opportunities, social issues to be solved through products and technologies. We have identified 10 risks and opportunities. For this purpose. Some of them are risks and opportunities. Addressing climate change, using resources effectively, we have to lower the risks, but also our products could offer solutions to address these issues as well. At the top, we have three key risks, major risks. We will do our best to minimize these risks and also to maximize the five opportunities. Shown at the bottom of the slide, this is an opportunity to address these issues. These are our sustainability objectives. This is actually reflected in our management strategy. Next model i s about the business activities mainly. About the business activities, let me explain the following. This is the extraction of the previous slide. This shows our technological platform, our technology platforms. I will explain the details later. We'll combine the management foundation with a technology platform, and we have a spiral on top. One of the parts of the spiral is in purple.
The research needs and social issues focusing on the future. The light blue is to develop the unique materials and solutions that utilize group technologies to solve social issues together with our customers. With our management resources, we will try to solve those challenges. By going through this loop or cycle, we will commercialize products to offer. That is the business activities. There are three social values. Of course, we have to fulfill those values. Those three social values are focused on the major opportunities to realize the sustainable global environment, that is the blue planet. To lower the environmental burden is one of these. The second is innovation, creation of an innovative future society. We want to create values. Then well-being, contribution, and try to provide the products necessary for the daily life in a stable manner.
Those are the business and the products that we would like to offer. We will bring this into improving the value. As we satisfy the three social values, we will try to pursue economic value. This is the value creation spiral. Generating social value and economic value. By doing so, we would like to improve the corporate value. That would enhance our management capital. Then it will be utilized for our business activities. This is the spiral cycle that we try to realize. Those are the six management capitals: financial capital, manufacturer's capital, intellectual capital, human capital, social and relationship capital, and the natural capital. To maximize our corporate value, we will be enhancing those. Today, especially, I'd like to talk about the intellectual capital and human capital. Sharing with you some details.
Intellectual capital first. Our strength. What are our strengths? As the time changes, we have been evolving our technologies, especially in organics. Glass and ceramics have evolved, and we developed this. That is on the right-hand side. Those are the representative products that we have. In organic materials, we have extended the chemical chain, and now we have gone to the pharmaceutical and agrochemical intermediates. Also, recently, we have combined this with the biotechnology. Very important is that even if we have the materials, we have to be able to manufacture. Manufacturing technology, process engineering, technology engineering, and also analysis and simulation technology, DX that we have been emphasizing. Those are the technical background of our materials and solutions. Our business technology platform, let me go further into the details. We have been building this for the past 115 years. Core technology includes the glass materials and others.
By adding those to the materials, we want to manufacture products. The basic technologies are shown at the bottom, and we have to have all of them. We would like to evolve and develop those as time changes. There are three arrows, and there's a loop. First of all, we have a methodology called the business and technology outlook. We analyze macro trend and select seven key technology fields and focus areas. We look into marketability, social issues, and sustainability. Identify the technologies. To develop s ometimes we identify collaboration partners. We do this every year, trying to visualize what may happen in the future. Key technology fields and focus areas have been identified like this. There are seven key technology fields. The top half of the slide is the next growth drivers. There are four items here. Below that, we have technologies that support or enable those things. There are three items here. This is where we are allocating our management and development resources. I will not go into too much details, but on the horizontal axis,
We can see the timeline up to 2040. The vertical line is different items in focus areas. This moves very fast. The target is about 10 years. The foundation technologies have a longer time span, about 20 years. This is how we identify the different items where we want to deepen our development. With regard to R&D, I would like to show you the concepts and initiatives that support this activity. These are the three key axes: one, sustainability management. CO2 reduction and supply chain burden reduction will be pursued as part of sustainability management. We want to accelerate DX, which has become essential for companies in order to bring higher value-added tasks. We are also focused on open innovation. With regard to promotion of sustainable management and GHG reduction, I would like to explain about the furnace. For food glass, you need to apply a lot of heat to melt down sand. Up until 2019, a lot of heavy oil was used. It was c hanged to d ifferent types of fuel. Electric booster is a methodology that can be applied to apply heat to melt. Instead of using natural gas, you could use ammonia or other types of w e can also recycle, collect used glass from our customers, and we melt. We will be combining all of these different technologies in order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Based on this understanding, we're developing various technologies. Not just reducing our own CO2, but also in order to reduce the CO2 for the whole planet, we are contributing through our products. For example, through heat insulating glass. There is a vacuum, dual glass, and other types. This can help lower the burden of heating and cooling at home. In Japan, solar panels don't have a lot of space or place to be installed. BIPV, building-integrated photovoltaics glass, is another type of product that we can provide. I'm sure that use air con and air conditioning, refrigerants should be more environmentally friendly. We are also contributing through polymer electrolytes for fuel cells as well. More efficient semiconductor. Smaller but higher memory density semiconductor. Again, this is another area we're making contributions.
These are three examples for the cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing. Serious vary. For the finest pitch, these materials are used for flattening the surface. This is a strategic product of ours. We're talking about several single-digit nanometers. For that, we provide UV photomask blanks. On the right-hand side, you can see with higher density, we achieve the limit and the package is now attracting attention. Multi-layered package would require glass core. Also, silica and fluoropolymer will be used. Not only electrical, but also optical communication will be important. We provide optical wave guide to the market. We are developing new product. Moving on to DX. This can be used in various ways. On the left-hand side, you can see one use case: utilization of digital twin environments in glass melting furnaces. Glass is melted at about 1,500 degrees in the furnace. You cannot open up the furnace and see what's going on, but you can use an online simulator to operate the plant.
This is a digital twin that can also help optimize the plant on the right-hand side. Reducing front windshield quality inspection process time. If there is a defect in the windshield, the windshield will break, leading to a major traffic accident. We used to spend 30,000 hours to inspect the finish of the glass. Now we have machine learning, measurement equipment, and AI. Combining all of these technologies, we can reduce this number of hours of inspection to close to zero. Safer operation, higher productivity, and higher profitability at the same time. On the left-hand side, you can see how we can help sales activities. AR/VR technology can be utilized to show the customer the glass as if it's in front of them. We can just provide a sample and bring it to them. On the right-hand side, you can see a group of buildings along Hudson River.
We got this business because the customer could identify the right material very quickly and order the material very quickly. The customer could open the building because of this speed. That's added value for the customers. This can be enabled by DX. On the right-hand side, we see material informatics. Instead of doing multiple physical experiments, you can use AI to identify the right material for evaluation assessment in order to minimize that lead time. Another key point is open innovation.
The solutions that will require some partnership, not just on our own. AGC Yokohama Technical Center was opened. In 2021, materials process and facility equipment design, everything can be done. This was integrated. An open innovation organization was created. With this, with the external partners and academia, customers can get together so that we can quickly provide solutions. This is the opening of the Yokohama Technical Center. We have five sites: Japan, Shanghai, Singapore, Europe, and Silicon Valley. We have a new business and technology exploration hub. This shows the three directions of the R&D. There are three points that we focus upon. One is to utilize the existing capabilities to enter into new markets. Those are the new businesses. Second is the new generation and new product development within the existing businesses. Then production and basic technology innovation. Those are the three.
It's one to two to one in terms of percentage. We would like to have a well-balanced ratio among those three. Especially, we are focused on the core technologies. We are not going to develop entirely new ones in the uncharted territory, but try to focus and leverage on our existing IP. I talked about the R&D. This shows the number of the patents. The patents are extremely important.
Now, usually, we have applied for the patents to protect technologies. In our case, in addition to protection, we also need to be more aggressive. We have to be strategic. The wide-ranging patents are the ones that we want to apply. We are talking about the materials. It's not only for one purpose, but for multiple applications. When we provide the technology, we can expect a rising licensing revenue. You want to be defensive as well as offensive and fully utilize our intellectual property. I very much focus on the IP. On the left, we are showing the number of the patent application. It shows 2001 as 1.0. With the changes of the products and technologies, we increase the number of the patent application and so forth. There's a fluctuation. Right now, we are accumulating the new patents for the future. That would lead to strategic businesses. As for the licensing revenue, every year, it's on the rise, as you can see in the graph on the right.
That concludes the explanation about the intellectual capital. Now, I'd like to focus on the management capital. I would invite Ms. Ihara to present.
Yes, this is Ihara speaking. I'd like to talk about the human capital, as well as the technical and the DX personnel and how we are trying to develop them. Here is the AGC people driving our growth. At the bottom, AGC Group culture is shown. The good corporate culture is shown here: good open communication, taking on challenges, and encouraging initiative. This is the good corporate culture. Continuously, we have been enhancing and improving this. We will continue these efforts. Based on this culture, diverse talent, we try to utilize them and try to make sure that the individuals will be able to leverage their capabilities and the individuals can grow on their own. We want to have an environment to enable that. That would lead to higher engagement, and there will be a chemical reaction of knowledge and stronger onsite capabilities. As it was mentioned, the purpose...
With our materials and technology, we want to support people's lives in the world. That is our purpose. We want to utilize that, and that will lead to higher corporate value that would attract more capable talent. They can, again, grow as individuals and then increase engagement. We can go through this loop. This is our way of thinking in human capital development. That is AGC people driving our growth.
This is the human capital initiatives. There are many of them. I'd like to give you some examples. Based upon the framework, we are taking initiatives. On the right-hand side, AGC sees the four pillars of the material management plan. It shows evolution of ambidextrous strategy, deepening of sustainability management, promotion of value creation DX, and strengthening of the management foundation. Those are the major pillars. In order to realize them, the important human capital strategies, there are a few of them. First, strengthen the next generation of the management candidates. Second, the improvement of employee engagement. Two, secure talent to support business portfolio transformation. Next slide, please.
Here is to identify the next generation management talent. This shows the decision-making body. To identify next generation management for different grades or for different years of service, we create the talent pool. Every year, we discuss this coming from the different divisions, and we try to certify them. In the HR committee, we discuss this, the evaluation, and then make decisions every year. We repeat this every year. As you can see on the left-hand side, there is a young potential talent and the group management talent candidates. The higher grade talent pool is created. On top of that, we have key management positions. The two bottom ones will be discussed in the HR committee.
When they are approved to have a wide range of experiences and to become the key management position personnel. Today, we'll focus on the technical human capital. Concerning that, the corporate R&D experience and also the development experience at the divisions, both of those experiences are important. We come up with different career paths in the development plan and create the job rotation for each individual.
In some cases, maybe some people are better off experiencing working as a manager. Business side experience is also included in some of the people. Those people going through the wide-ranging experiences will develop themselves into the potential top management and key management. For example, the successor development of the executive officers and successors, the first generation, second generation, we will have a list of those names. When you are in such a talent pool, the nominating committee will talk about the progress of the development. Here again, whether the candidates have had the wide-ranging experiences suitable for becoming the key management positions, how to create such opportunities, or w e think it's important, for example, to have an experience of the Western type of management and at which timing should we provide opportunity to learn about that. This nominating committee will review that. About the technical talent, multiple business units, whether they have had the experiences in the multiple units or experience in the Western type of management become very important.
This is the optimization of the talent portfolio. This is also the technical talent. We create the technical talent database internally. The basic attributes, career information, and skill, how many skills that they have, and the themes of the researches, what kind of researches that they have experiences on. We create the database. As Kurata-san explained, business and technology outlook, this is reviewed every year. What is necessary for the future technological development? Where are the skill gaps? We try to pinpoint that. If there is a gap, we try to find someone externally. We also have reskilling opportunities so they can have a wider range of skill experiences. By using this database, the company's divisions and corporate research labs, when there is a shortage of the talent or when there is excessive talent, we try to complement the talent.
The development and securing the talent, and also to make the allocation of the talent in an appropriate manner is done in this effort. Here is for the technical talent and PhD holders. We are trying to increase the percentage of them. Right now, technical development, about 30% have the PhD.
Sometimes we employ them as new graduates or a midterm career. After joining AGC, using the internal system, some of them will be able to acquire a PhD. It's a mixture of this. We are trying to expand the number of the PhD holders. Those people are working with academia globally, getting the new knowledge, or getting involved in the new development using their networks, creating the next generation businesses and to secure the competitive edge. Next page, please. Here is the DX personnel talent. Since 2020, we have been working on this. DX talent development, we have a program. Every year, we have our targets, and we have been making very steady progress. 2025 targets, we have already mostly completed those targets, achieving those targets. Right now, toward 2030, next targets are being set. The unique to AGC is it's not just the DX technical skills.
Of course, we need them, but it's not only that. In addition, the business process knowledge, for example, development, manufacturing, sales, logistics, regular business process knowledge. Having the technology skill.
Understanding the business side as well as the data management, I think the dual skill is important. Understanding the front line and to try to promote the DX, which is really helpful at the front line, we are enhancing this talent and we will continue to do so to increase the dual skill talent. That's all the slides that I prepared. There are other technical skill enhancement initiatives that we have. For example, registering your skill, you can use the skill map and you can have cross-functional activities based on the certain skill. You can come up with a team of people and improve your skills. There's such group. That is being done very actively. To deepen your skill is one thing, but also the skills that you don't have. If you're interested in one particular skill, you can widen your skill. You can do the reskilling.
That's a way of registration. Deepening or widening, reskilling, that is also something that we have in our platform. Middle management movement is actually very important. In order to cause change in the intellectual capacity, we need to understand what kind of skills people want to deepen and what kind of skills they have now. There has to be a broad understanding, so people can be developed or teams can be formulated to promote development. In other words, middle management has to be very functional before we see a good chemical reaction of an intellectual aspect.
For the middle management, we are really conducting dialogue meetings about the talent development. Also, facilitation training for middle management is being conducted. How to draw out the actual views and voices of people. We are strengthening training for middle management as well.
Cross-functional effort to enhance skills. Once this mechanism is in place, employees feel that they can actually grow working at AGC. This is important because when you feel that you are growing, that actually has the strongest correlation with the engagement score.
In order to heighten the employees' engagement, we want to continue to implement activities in order for them to feel that they can grow with AGC. It will take a long time. Just because you feel like you're growing, engagement score doesn't go up immediately. You need to experience the growth over long term, and then we will begin to see the impact. It will be a slow change. We believe that this initiative is extremely important. I hope that we will also take a long-term view on this. That's all from me. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much indeed. We would like to move on to Q&A. If you have a question, please press the Q&A button and enter your question.
We will start with a question that we received in advance. The first question is, what is the synergy between glass and chemicals? Can we take this opportunity to understand that? Once again, Kurata will respond to this question. Glass and chemicals.
Chemicals actually can be functional as material or glass. It can be compounded as well. For example, glass has transparency and also rigidity. It's different from film. It's rigid. In that aspect, it can be very functional. When you add the chemical aspect, both organic and inorganic, on this slide, we're talking about organic. You can use the chemicals to process the surface of the glass to add additional functionalities. We can provide this kind of product that has compounded features. If it's just a simple material, usually it's one plus one equals two. Sometimes it can be 10 or 100. We can find combinations that will exponentially increase the functionality. High functionality can be achieved through this type of technology. We have a glass technology and organic chemicals technology that we have built over a very long time. Now we can exert new strength because there is synergy between the two.
Next question. There are many focused areas. Among them, which do you think is most promising or the area that you invest more resources in? Kurata-san will answer this question. Yes?
Development itself, of course, we have to work on the existing products. We cannot take it easy on that. If you ask me, the ones that we are focused upon are close to the strategic areas. Four areas are shown here. If you look at the breakdown, those are the areas we want to grow. In the future, there could be some changes. Of course, existing businesses could change. Automotive glass, the next mobility will have a different perspective. In energy, what we have, alkaline electrolyte is one thing. There could be new electrolyte. The technological changes and the growing areas, we want to identify them and then select them as a focus area. That is shown here. We are investing our resources for those. I'm talking about the wide-ranging ones. The seven key technology fields are the areas that we are trying to improve or emphasize. 。
Thank you. Moving on to the next question. When you explained about intellectual capital patent, I saw that the patent count increased from 2019. The licensing revenue also increased. This was interesting information. What was the trigger? Where do you see this growth? In which specific field or segment?
We have also received a similar question about patent. Which business currently has the highest number of patent applications? Both of these questions will be answered by Kurata.
Both defense and offense are important, as I said. When changes happen frequently and quickly, the number of patents will increase in that field. Also, growth area where new products appear one after the other. More than half of revenue should come from the strategic business: electronics, mobility, performance chemicals, life science. These are the areas that we are really focusing on in terms of creating patents for both defense and offense. Strategic patents can be issued. We changed the reward system for the patent.
In 2011, some of the patents or technologies could be used by other companies. That is the basis of giving the reward for that as well. We changed the system. The internal system has been updated, and strategic segment as well as future products are the areas where we see a large number of patents being filed.
Next question? About the glass core. Substrate NEG, for example, is working on the development. What are the strengths of AGC? Could you talk about the strengths of AGC? Kurata-san will answer this question.
About the glass core, if you can look at this slide, it's not just a glass substrate. On top, we have to make the grooves or the holes and so forth on top of the motherboard. Our strength, there are three strengths. One is the glass material itself can be worked on, so something that is suitable for the chips or for the wiring. We can create the glass that is suitable for each layer and doing the processing. I talked about organic and inorganic. Processing technology, we have two of those. In that sense, the best suitable materials can be chosen and do the processing and then completed.
Then it can be fed back to the materials and processing. That is the first and second strength. The third strength is that we try to make this forecast. Fifteen years ago, we have been developing this technology. Evaluation technology has been enhanced, which will lead to better quality, productivity, and mass production. That is also something that we have been working on. We have a long history of development. That is another strength that we have. In that sense, I don't know about the other companies, but we have those three strengths to try to succeed in this business. Thank you.
Next question. sustainable' The successes are progressing. What is the update of the current situation? What kind of initiatives are being undertaken for this purpose? Yuki Ihara will respond to this question.
Thank you for the question. A succession program is being implemented steadily. There is no end to human resource development, talent development, and therefore, we want to strengthen this further. As I've explained in my earlier slide, we want employees to experience multiple different businesses and broaden the scope of their experience or experience managing overseas Western companies. We are steadily increasing the pool of these successes, though we still have a long way to go to where we want to be. We are discussing this every year and also considering the cost constraint. We have to think about the sequence, who should have this experience this year. That means that we cannot increase the number of successes quickly, dramatically. We are implementing assignments and tasks in order to make this happen steadily over time.
One related question. In the presentation or your answer to the question, you talked about the Western type of management experiences. The importance of that was talked about. Are the female employees included? Could you tell us how many of them and what is the percentage of the female workers? Successor development to enhance the talent pool, the female talent pool, is important. Also, non-Japanese talent pool to improve it is extremely important too. We are working on that. As you asked about the female employee, of course, there are female employees who are having such experiences. We still have not sufficient female employees. I cannot really mention the percentage or the number right now. The information that is made public, it's only 6% in terms of the manager. That is the female manager. Even if we have 6% in the talent pool, it's still single digit.
The number of female, the percentage is still low. It's not zero. Gradually, we are increasing. For the women, as well as the minority or non-Japanese, we can increase the talent pool for the future management.
Next question. Polymer. I'm developing an alternative successor of this. In that case, which type of product? Can you please explain? This is going to be answered by Kurata.
Strategic business includes performance chemicals, and we are providing features, functionalities. For polymers, we have hydro ability and also resistance against chemicals. There are various functionalities, and we know how our customers use these products and what their needs are. Wherever we have strength and where polymer chemicals can replace something, we try to focus on that. Polymer chemicals has a high functionality. Sometimes it's difficult to replace. If the customer needs is over a long term, then we are considering replacing polymer chemicals. I think that's it. Thank you.
Next question about the human capital. I think to have the middle management, it's important to have an exchange of the chemical reaction, the intellectual chemical reaction. Were there any triggers? Are there any stories that you can share with us about the chemical reaction of knowledge? Ihara-san and Kurata-san will both respond to this question. First, Ihara-san, could you start?
Specific questions, I'm sure Kurata-san should have them rather than myself. The trigger or how we started to do this? Let me see. The development, technological development is not something that you can do alone. It's not something that you can do with only your team. We need a kind of a catalyst. There's a middle management. The researcher, for example, might have some challenges or difficulties. How can we stimulate them to have better research? In the research lab, there's one topic and another topic. If you combine them, what can you do? I think that the middle management needs to do a good job so that we can create three or five from one. If it's closed or siloed, one becomes 0.8 or 0.5. How can we create the chemical reaction? We need a catalyst. We need a good work of the middle management so that the efforts of the researchers can bear fruit. Engagement, a survey in the comments. We did receive such comments.
Qualitative comments, we tried to pick them up so that we thought that it's important to take the approach to the middle management. That is something that we noticed from the free comment of the engagement survey.
Ihara-san talked about as HR. Until last year, she was in charge of HR. Engagement improvement is something that she was engaged with. That's why she answered in such a way. About the middle management and the importance in the R&D or as a business as a whole, maybe he can make some additional comments. For middle management, as a basic technology and also at the forefront of the business in many cases. At the forefront, the middle management. Unless the middle management moves, the company doesn't move. The PhD holders, we are trying to increase, and they are capable of setting up their own issues and challenges. They have a wider perspective. We have a very high expectation from the middle management. They understand the technological potential, and they can find out about the front line. We want to make it possible for the middle management to freely take advantage of their capabilities. Thank you very much.
It's time, so we would like to close the Q&A session. There were some more questions that we were unable to respond to, which will be answered by our IR team later on. The phone number is 03-3218-5096 if you have any additional questions. When you close the Zoom screen, there is going to be a questionnaire. Please respond to the questionnaire to help us improve our future IR activities. That concludes our ESG briefing. Thank you very much for joining us despite your very busy schedule. Thank you.