Welcome to the Recruit Holdings FY 2021 earnings conference call. This call is a simultaneous translation of the original call in Japanese, and translation is provided for the convenience of investors only. Today, we have a prepared remark regarding our business strategy and its progress by Hisayuki Idekoba, President and CEO, Ayano Senaha, Managing Corporate Executive Officer and COO, Yoshihiro Kitamura, Managing Corporate Executive Officer and Head of the New Solutions Business, followed by the full year result for FY 2021 and the guidance for FY 2022 by Junichi Arai, Executive Officer, Corporate Planning Division. The presentation we use today is available on our IR website. Please refer to the highlights on the earnings release and FAQ, also available on our IR website. Now I'll turn the call over to Idekoba.
Hi, I'm Hisayuki Idekoba. Most people call me Deko. The past year will forever be marked in human history. We saw the ongoing fight against COVID-19, the reopening of the economy leading to competition for talent, record inflation, international conflicts. As we look forward, I believe that we will continue to face unique situations and an environment that remains unpredictable. That said, our revenue and adjusted EBITDA for FY 2021 were our highest ever. With the outbreak of COVID-19 and global lockdowns at the start of FY 2020, our revenue declined, and we quickly cut costs in response. However, the global economy, especially in the U.S., rebounded in the summer of 2021, and our HR tech revenue quickly recovered. Our investments, including our hiring, did not keep up with the rebound. As a result, adjusted EBITDA was higher than planned.
Looking back, considering the many opportunities for innovation that lie ahead, we should have maintained our investments in hiring tech talent to support our long-term growth. For FY 2022, we forecast another year of record high revenue and adjusted EBITDA. This year, we plan to invest an incremental JPY 100 billion in the HR Tech SBU and plan to hire close to 4,000 people. As a result of this and other investments, we expect adjusted EBITDA to slightly exceed FY 2021. We intend to invest aggressively in the long-term opportunity, adjusting to economic conditions as needed. The long-term opportunity is defined by our mission, opportunities for life, faster, simpler, and closer to you. Our focus on connecting people and companies more easily and quickly. Our mission is carried out through three business strategies, simplify hiring, help businesses work smarter, and prosper together.
We would like to explain these three strategies in more detail. I will begin with simplify hiring, the strategy of making it easy to get a new job or to make a hire. We envision a world where getting a job is as easy as pushing a button. This vision will be accomplished by evolving AI and automation. As you have seen in the news, AI is advancing at a remarkable pace and seems to be integrating more and more into our daily lives. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, people were predicting a dystopian future in which many human jobs will be taken away by robots. For decades, people have feared the evolution of AI and automation and its impact on jobs performed by humans, but we're more optimistic. Let me tell you why. Let's look at an example from the U.S. airline industry.
In the past, airline ticket reservations had to be made by phone or in person. These days, it is common to make reservations online. As a result, employment in this industry has changed dramatically. In the 1970s, reservation agents made up about 20% of airline industry jobs. As the number of travelers increased and as technology became more widely used, the percent of reservation agent jobs went down while the percent of customer service jobs went up. Overall, during this time, employment in the U.S. airline industry has grown and is expected to continue to grow. With technological disruption, jobs will be lost, jobs will change, and many new jobs will be created. In fact, many companies that successfully integrate AI and automation into their operations are able to improve productivity, increase revenue, and create new job opportunities to support their evolving business.
We do not believe there will be widespread unemployment in the next 30 years. It is hard to predict what will happen after that. What we do know is that over the next 2 to 3 decades, there will be a shortage of workers, including essential workers such as truck drivers and nurses. The reason for the shortage is the aging workforce and new views on work-life balance. Rather than worrying about AI and robots taking jobs from people, it is extremely important for people to be open to new ways of working as our society drastically evolves. We believe society will benefit more because of the collaboration between AI and humans, not just humans working alone. With this future in mind, we believe our efforts to simplify hiring are becoming more and more important around the world.
The way I think about making job search and recruiting easier and more convenient is like having a personal advisor assigned to every person in the workforce. People often say, "I don't think my current job is right for me, but should I quit?" What if they had someone who knew their interests, skills, and more? This person could suggest, "There's a company that would like to hire you, and they are offering a better salary and benefits." People looking for something different would have more courage to take on new opportunities. We have not yet made it that easy to get a new job or to make a hire, but we are starting to see results. Through our efforts, the number of measured hires per minute on the platforms in the HR Tech SBU has more than doubled since before COVID-19 to an average of 20 hires per minute.
Looking across all of our SBUs, not just HR Tech SBU, we see an opportunity to utilize technology and matching beyond just job advertising to all of the HR matching market, which is estimated at $236 billion. Take, for example, the temporary staffing and placement businesses today. Workers in these businesses spend a lot of time doing manual tasks such as checking resumes and scheduling interviews. We can make this process better with technology. We have been testing a collaboration between our staffing SBU and the HR Tech SBU with Indeed Flex, a technology-driven temporary staffing solution. This collaboration helped Indeed Flex more than triple its revenue year over year. Going forward, we will continue to challenge ourselves and look for new ways to disrupt the temporary staffing business using technology.
In the Media & Solutions SBU, as a pilot, we have been working on combining the placement business in Japan with Indeed's matching technology. This pilot has shown a significant increase in the number of interviews between candidates and companies. By streamlining many of these manual processes with technology, those involved in hiring will be able to spend more time on the many tasks that only humans can do. It's our responsibility to evolve HR matching across all SBUs, and as a result, make it easy for everyone to find jobs. Thank you. Now I will pass to Yoshi.
I am Yoshihiro Kitamura, Head of Media & Solutions Business. I would like to share with you an update on our progress to help businesses work smarter. Do you know how many operational processes are required to operate a store? Although there are differences between stores that provide services and stores that sell products, restaurants and beauty salons, for example, require at least 50 operational processes to operate. Of these, 30%-70% of the time spent by owners and staff is on back-office operations such as hiring, shift and labor management, marketing activities, store maintenance, and sales and expenditure management, which do not directly involve customers. It is inefficient and difficult to manage as each of these processes and data are typically disconnected, often managed in separate systems or even paper-based. Aggregating these paper-based data and analyses are manual and inefficient.
Those back-office operations, which take time and effort, are a psychological obstacle for many business owners. For many years, we have been providing HR and marketing platforms to small businesses through SUUMO, Hot Pepper Beauty, Rikunabi, Townwork, and so on. Through our strong customer relationships, we have seen our business clients struggle to deal with the challenges of operating a business and wondered how we could help them solve these problems. This is how Air BusinessTools were born. Air BusinessTools is a bundled suite of SaaS solutions that digitally connects dispersed and analog business processes. With Air ID, by connecting the data of separate operational areas, business clients can use multiple apps and web services to operate more efficiently and improve productivity. I'd like to introduce one example of our client experiences.
At a restaurant that values customer service, due to the lack of staff during the pandemic, staff could not fully respond to customers' requests, with customers waiting a long time to order and not receiving the expected level of service. The customer complaints became a major issue. In order to solve this problem, the restaurant began using AirREGI Order, a self-ordering system. As customers place orders on their smartphones, there's no waiting time, no loss of opportunity, and as a result, the average sale per customer has increased. In addition, three people can now handle the work that previously required five people. By making orders digital, order mistakes have been reduced. It has become possible to spend three times as much time on customer service as before, and the quality of customer service has improved significantly. Going forward, we also aim to further expand into financial services.
For example, we launched AirCASH in April, allowing business clients to receive cash in exchange for their expected AirPAY accounts receivables made through AirPAY. This allows businesses that have immediate cash needs to support and grow their business to make needed investments. We estimate that there may be roughly 2.9 million business locations and stores in Japan at which operational support SaaS solutions such as AirREGI and AirPAY can be used. Now we also are aiming at another big market, financial services for SMEs. We will communicate more about this opportunity and our business transformation in the future. Building an ecosystem that supports all aspects of a business operation, including financial services, is our long-term strategy, and we believe that the strategy will take some time to monetize. While building the ecosystems, the number of registered SaaS solution accounts in Japan is the most important KPI.
In order to increase the number of accounts, we will focus on expanding the range of SaaS solution offerings and proactive marketing activities. In FY 2021, we launched AirWORK ATS, a recruitment management tool, and AirWALLET, an app for individual users to manage digital accounts and payments in which COIN+ is embedded. AirPAY continues to be a driver of the increase in the number of accounts with 281,000 accounts at the end of March 2022, 33.6% growth year-over-year. The number of AirWORK ATS registered accounts at the end of March 2022 reached more than 380,000, an increase of over 100% year-over-year, progressing on track with our plans. Opportunity for life.
The ecosystem that we are aiming for supports all aspects of business operations, including financial services, and will solve problems that business clients are facing. We believe that this is what we should do to help businesses work smarter to improve performance and productivity of clients' businesses. We hope to lead the improvement of productivity and the economic revitalization of all of Japan by supporting the business operations and business creation that each individual envisions. In order to do so, we will continue to provide better solutions and work hard to build an ecosystem that helps achieve this. I will now pass to Senaha.
Hi, I'm Ayano Senaha, CEO and director of the board of Recruit Holdings. I would like to speak about Prosper Together, the third pillar of our corporate strategy introduced last year. This pillar leverages Recruit's strength to drive sustainable growth, creating shared prosperity for all stakeholders. Delivering social value has been a part of our DNA since the foundation of the company in 1960. Last year, as we were building our new management team, we decided to take a step further to do more for our future. With Recruit Group growing to become a global HR matching business leader, we felt strongly that we must use our increasing influence and capabilities to achieve a greater social impact. As such, we established clear, measurable goals in environmental, social, and governance categories within an ambitious time frame.
Firstly, our social impact goal is to shorten the time it takes to get hired by half by 2030, and we aim to do so through making job matching significantly faster. Nearly 40% of people could fall into poverty if they do not have an income for three months. Having a job is one of the most important facets of life for many people. Therefore, speed matters when it comes to getting a job. Over the past year, we've worked to better define job search duration on Indeed. Based on data of those who got jobs on Indeed, while it varies between individuals, we found that currently it takes approximately 15 weeks until most job seekers get hired.
In addition, in a global labor force survey conducted across 30 countries, nearly half of the respondents reported that their job search duration was longer than the amount of time that they could cover their personal expenses. Going forward, we'll continue to advance our products to support job seekers by, for example, identifying those who are urgently seeking jobs and proactively supporting them. Job seekers from underrepresented or vulnerable groups face barriers when searching for and securing a job. These barriers are difficult to remove through improving matching efficiency alone. This is why we're also committed to helping 30 million job seekers facing barriers to get hired. For example, having a criminal record. In the United States, more than 70 million people, or one-third of adult population, have a criminal record, and the unemployment rate among this population is about five times above the average.
However, if people with criminal records can find a job within two months of being released, the likelihood of returning to prison drops significantly. We have started new projects to help people with criminal records get jobs and are already seeing progress. Criminal record is one of many barriers that need to be addressed. Going forward, we'll continue to identify and break barriers to promote inclusive hiring. Our third and fourth goals focus on gender parity, and we're starting from within. Value creation produced by empowered employees is a management priority. We can only continue to innovate by betting on the ideas that arise from a diverse employee base.
To support this, we'll aim to achieve gender parity at all levels, and we have made much progress in 2021. For example, the number of women in senior management positions consisting of CEOs of our major subsidiaries and executives of each SBU increased from 10% to 21%. Also, in the boardroom, all proposed candidates for election at annual meeting of shareholders in June. Once approved, women will account for 27%, up from 20% in the previous year. Moving forward, it will become ever more challenging to move the needle towards parity, but we'll continue to drive forward with our three-year target developed by each SBU. Our fifth and final sustainability goal focuses on climate action. We expect to have achieved our short-term goal of reaching carbon neutrality across our own business activities in 2021.
We are accelerating our path to achieve carbon neutrality across our entire value chain by 2030 by having set a three-year reduction target that aligns with an international framework. In addition, the three-year targets focused on climate action and greater diversity will bear incentive goals effective 2022 for the company's executives who lead action in each of its ESG themes. Honestly speaking, these are all very lofty goals, and it won't be easy, but together, we can make it. We look forward to sharing this journey with you. Now I will pass to Jun Arai.
Hi, I'm Junichi Arai. Today, I'm pleased to present our consolidated financial results for FY 2021 and guidance for FY 2022. All comparisons in my remarks will be year-over-year, unless otherwise noted. Revenue from our HR matching businesses is subject to rapid changes in business clients' hiring demand and job seekers' activities, which may both be impacted by many factors, including changes in global economic conditions. In a rapidly changing online business environment, our financial performance is subject to a number of factors and uncertainties, making it increasingly difficult to provide a financial forecast. Our FY 2022 guidance is based upon assumption that business clients' hiring activities will not diminish significantly due to a rapid deterioration of the economic environment in the global HR matching market.
Regarding our guidance assumption for the business environment in Japan, we assume that potential re-implementation of various COVID-19-related restrictions or changes in global economic trends will not impact business clients' activities significantly. Here's our progress over the past three years on consolidated revenues, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS. Beginning with FY 2022, we have changed the adjustment items for adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS, which better allow them to be globally comparable financial indicators. We are now including share-based payment expenses as an adjustment item for adjusted EBITDA, and we are excluding amortization of intangibles from business combinations for adjusted EPS. In FY 2019, the last pre-pandemic fiscal year, consolidated revenue reached almost JPY 2.4 trillion, led by 30% revenue growth in HR technology, with a consolidated adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.6%. Our progress in FY 2020 was disrupted by the pandemic.
During the first half of the year, all segments were significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we managed operating expenses strategically and flexibly. However, during the second half of the year, HR technology rapidly recovered. In FY 2021, significant growth in HR technology continued, leading to strong financial performance. FY 2022 is a year in which we will continue to generate strong cash flow and aggressively make upfront investment as a next step toward achieving long-term growth. Next, I will get into more detail about FY 2021 actual result. Consolidated revenue reached a record high of JPY 2.87 trillion, an increase of 26.5%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 98.4% to JPY 479.3 billion based upon our prior definition, without adjusting for share-based payment expenses.
This was also the highest ever and exceeded the upper end of our guidance of JPY 470 billion. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 16.7%. This performance was led by HR Technologies' significant revenue growth of 91.6% on a US dollar basis and a significant increase in adjusted EBITDA by 338.9% due to the continued overheated hiring competition in the HR matching market, especially in the United States throughout the year. Adjusted EPS based upon our prior definition, including adjustment for amortization of PPA, was JPY 196.67. Dividend per share for the second half of FY 2021 is JPY 10.5, resulting in JPY 21.0 for the full year.
After using JPY 121.6 billion of cash for the self-tender offer in February, net cash as of the end of March 2022 was JPY 608.9 billion. I will now provide the consolidated guidance and the outlook for each segment for FY 2022. Revenue in all three segments is expected to increase, and a consolidated revenue guidance for approximately JPY 3.3 trillion is based upon the outlook for each segment. Cash flow from operating activities will increase, reflecting revenue growth, while strategic investment of approximately JPY 140 billion are expected to increase expenses in FY 2022. As a result, consolidated adjusted EBITDA, adjusted for JPY 77.5 billion of a share-based payment expenses, including the HR technology share-based compensation program, is expected to be approximately JPY 520 billion.
Adjusted EPS is expected to be JPY 170.65. Annual dividends per share for FY 2022 are planned to be JPY 22, a JPY 1 increase compared to the previous year. In the case of sharp economic downturn, we are prepared to quickly implement cost control measures strategically as we did in the first half of FY 2020. Now I will go through each segment. In FY 2021, HR Technology revenue on a US dollar basis increased significantly, up 91.6% to $7.6 billion, reflecting a prolonged period of elevating hiring activities globally. Revenue growth was primarily the result of a significant increase in the number of paying clients and in the number of jobs advertised on Indeed and Glassdoor.
Revenue in the States increased 88.5%, and revenue outside of the States increased 101.6%. In FY 2021, advertising revenue per sponsored job in the States increased approximately 16% compared to FY 2020. Adjusted EBITDA margin based upon a prior definition was 34%, driven by the increase in revenue, and 37.5% with adjustment for share-based payment expenses. In FY 2022, assuming a limited increase in the number of sponsored job advertisements, we expect to increase revenue per sponsored job advertisement as we deliver more values to job seekers and employers by making the hiring and recruiting processes more efficient. As a result, revenue in HR technology on a US dollar basis is expected to increase approximately 10%-20% compared to the previous year.
Achieving this outlook would result in a three-year US dollar-based CAGR of approximately 29%-33%, and we expect the revenue to reach over JPY 1 trillion in FY 2022. Revenue from Indeed Flex, a technology-driven temporary staffing online platform service within HR Technology, is expected to be approximately 2%-3% of total HR Technology revenue in FY 2022. In FY 2022, we expect HR Technology revenue growth to decelerate throughout the fiscal year. As Deko explained earlier, HR Technology plans to significantly increase the number of employees by approximately 30% from just over 13,000 at the end of FY 2021, resulting in increase in employee benefit expenses. Along with increased advertising expenses, this investment will result in a year-over-year increase of approximately JPY 100 billion of SG&A expenses, excluding share-based payment expenses.
Additionally, including the start-up costs for Indeed Flex, adjusted EBITDA margin for FY 2022 is expected to be approximately 30% based upon the new definition. Moving to Media & Solutions. Revenue excluding the rent assistance program for FY 2021 was JPY 658.6 billion, an increase of 11.1%. That 15.6% adjusted EBITDA margin was similar to the previous year, and adjusted EBITDA was JPY 102.4 billion based upon a prior definition. Housing and real estate and beauty, which together accounts for more than 50% of revenue in Marketing Solutions and HR Solutions, were the primary drivers of revenue growth. For FY 2022, revenue in Media & Solutions is expected to recover approximately to the pre-pandemic level of FY 2019.
A steady increase in housing and real estate and beauty is expected to continue, while travel and dining are now expected to recover to pre-pandemic level. Therefore, revenue in Marketing Solutions is expected to increase approximately 9%-14%. In HR Solutions, we expect a recovery in the part-time job advertisement service and growth in the placement service as a result of a recovery in hiring demand by business clients, particularly in the restaurant sector. Revenue is expected to increase approximately 16%-23%. In FY 2022, adjusted EBITDA margin has the potential to be approximately 20% due to the increased revenue. However, we expect it to be approximately 15% due to the strategic investments for JPY 40 billion for FY 2022.
These strategic investments are specifically JPY 30 billion in marketing to strengthen HR Solutions, to execute our simplified hiring strategy, and to reinforce and execute the long-term strategy of SaaS solutions, and approximate JPY 10 billion to upgrade the technology infrastructure and core systems of the Media & Solutions SBU. The current outlook doesn't take into account the potential impact of any new Go To campaign. For staffing, revenue for FY 2021 was JPY 1.37 trillion. An increase of 15%, primarily due to a 23% increase in revenues in Europe, U.S. and Australia. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 6.8% based upon the prior definition.
For FY 2022, revenue in Japan is expected to increase approximately 9%-12%, while revenue in Europe, US, and Australia is expected to increase approximately 5.5%-7%, as the temporary demand related to the pandemic is expected to ease in FY 2022. By continuing to promote operational efficiencies, adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be approximately 6%. There are no changes to our capital allocation policy. We prioritize investment for execution of our long-term strategy, such as a strategic investment of JPY 140 billion planned for FY 2022. Dividends for FY 2022 are planned in accordance with our policy, continuous payment of stable per-share dividends. Regarding strategic M&A, we will carry out acquisitions that will contribute to executing long-term strategy at appropriate valuations.
After considering all these factors, finally, we will consider and execute our share repurchase program flexibly in consideration of our cash balance and our share price, as we executed the self-tender offer in February this year. This concludes my presentation. Thank you.
We operate in the HR matching market, which is heavily dependent on changes in the macroeconomic environment, and we operate internet businesses, an environment that changes rapidly and constantly. Our focus is always on maximizing the enterprise value by executing our long-term business strategy rather than short-term profitability. We are grateful for the understanding and support of our shareholders and capital market participants and all of our stakeholders. Thank you for your attention.
J.P. Morgan Securities, Mori-san, please go ahead.
Thank you for allowing this opportunity. I have two questions. My first question is Idekoba-san, and second question to Kitamura-san. First is HR technology. Under COVID, what kind of share expansion did you experience? If you could share with me the information again. The sponsored job ad per case. In the FAQ, you showed us the information. Based on that, the last year's result grew by 16%. I think it was a 70% growth in terms of number. The number of accounts and the revenue per job ad, how did you outperform your projection? Revenue per job ad. Long-term upside potential. How do you see the long-term upside potential? That is my first question. Second question is about Air BusinessTools. AirPAY penetration. Your 2.9 million TAM.
Currently you stand at around 10%. The penetration, how do you evaluate your current penetration? You may have slowed down a bit due to COVID, but given the current circumstances, do you think it is sufficient, this current pace, or do you want to pick up the pace and accelerate further? PayPay, although a little different, had been consumer-centered but is now having a business version start up. There are players that are making big investments. If you have to compete head on, what do you think you need to do? Thank you. Two questions.
Today, Mr. Hisayuki Idekoba and Mr. Junichi Arai will answer these questions, just so that you know.
Okay.
First, HR tech, the market under COVID.
A third party conducted a survey, and according to that, HR matching market, the overall market grew by 33% year-on-year, and job ad and the talent sourcing tool grew by 36% year-on-year. That is according to the third party survey. Our gross revenue growth is over 100%. Our market share has increased, we think. Now, medium to long-term growth per job ad. As I alluded to earlier, ultimately speaking, revenue, it's not so much the revenue per job, it's the revenue per hire. That is how we have to evolve going forward. For the sake of calculation, this is two-stage calculation, but this time revenue grew. Because the unit price per job ad increased, but also the number of jobs increased. The increase in the number of jobs is...
The number of jobs per customer increased, and the number of clients also increased. Business clients increased. How many business clients successfully hired? Of course, there were corporate clients who failed in hiring. The job ad, it's advertisement. It's not gamble. I wouldn't say gamble, but it is, payment for posting. As HR tech, we take pay per performance method, and that is our value. We want the payments to be in accordance with the performance, and therefore CPC, cost per click, payment per click to CPQA. That to ensure that the applicants are qualified, so pay when you are comfortable with the quality of the applicants. This is what we want to do and achieve.
The payment for a successful hire will be the direct hire placement, the 25%-35% billing for the annual income. In terms of this, per job ad, this is an advertisement style concept. In terms of revenue per hire, we are only billing less than 1% of the salary. We want to raise this to 2%-3%. How will this per job number be converted? For the job failure, it will not be billed. Therefore, on average, will this go up or down? We think it will go up. Will it double or triple? Depends on the number of hire. In the medium term hire or qualified application, at least. A person who the companies are willing to pay for.
We want to come close to the cost in that area and increase this 1% to 2%-3% of the annual salary. This is how we would like to improve ourselves. Next is Air BusinessTools penetration and our current view on the penetration. On a year-on-year basis, we saw more than 30% growth. Of course, under COVID, we slowed down, but still this is the result. Now, expecting the recovery from COVID going forward. Dining or travel. While they slowed down, we still had 30% growth year-on-year, so this was a good, reasonable growth. Going forward, rather than growing on the short term, depending on the campaign, there are companies that are showing some short-term growth, but other players, but we want to focus on growing in the medium to long term.
We will take steady steps to achieve that. PayPay is now launching a business service for businesses and other players. Few players are now launching their service for businesses. I understand that.
For now, according to our survey or our hearing from the front line, I do not hear that those players are increasing their market share. Our strength is not spending large marketing cost. We not aerial fight, if you will. We want a ground fight or working hand-in-hand with our clients closely. Thank you very much. Kato-san from CLSA Securities, please. This is Kato. Can you hear my voice? Thank you very much for this opportunity. I have two questions. First of all, in HR tech, the global matching market, this is also related to Mori-san's question, but I would like to ask about the competition here. Together with LinkedIn revenue, 70% of $26 billion is accounted for, and there's a 10% increase every year.
Indeed and LinkedIn, do you expect the two players to be the dominant players going forward? Do you see revenue ramping up in other emerging markets? Are you expecting new players in the competition, whether it is a traditional service providers or is it going to be an emerging type of companies? The second question is also related to HR technology. Within HR tech, in these traditional advertising income, how much does it account for? Also, in the next three to five years period, how are you going to evolve that? Other than advertising, what kind of revenue do you expect, and do you have any numerical targets? Thank you. Regarding your first question.
Out of the JPY 26 trillion, I believe you said that we and LinkedIn account for 70% together, but I believe that is not true. The two companies do have a high market share in the job advertisement market, but am I understanding your question right? Yes. Conventionally or over the past 3-5 years, what we've been saying is that from job advertisement, hiring tools market, we would like to expand into other markets. That has been our challenge over the past five years. We included this in our disclosures this time. Domestic hiring placement service, including RECRUIT AGENT, such companies hiring operation. Well, 30% or 35% of the first year salary is how we bill for the services. Recruiters, the so-called recruiters, have been manually working on matching in these businesses.
We are trying to evolve this using AI algorithm. We have been testing that over the past six months. As for the number of interviews, we've seen significant increase. What I'm trying to deliver here is that the HR matching market or hiring tools market or job advertisement is rather a minority. It is accounting for a small proportion. Our placement service market is actually double the size of that. How we bill the clients is quite different here. When hire is made, if we bill for every hire, we will have better monetization. From customers' point of view, there will be no waste of cost for for hiring activity that may not be successful. However, there is something in the middle as well.
Maybe we can ask clients to pay if they believe that the applicant, the candidate is reasonable for them to target at. With that kind of change, we would like to go into the placement market or corporate clients' HR operations, which is mostly manual today, could be shifted to a new digital form in order for us to increase our revenue. That is what we envision. It is not that we aim for extremely high market share only in the job advertisement market. In these online job advertisement percentage in terms of revenue, it accounts for about 90% of the total revenue, which is basically the majority of their revenue today.
How we are going to transition from here is how we recognize revenue may change, and we have been testing different options. In 3-5 years, we do not have any clear numerical target as to what a percentage we would like to achieve. However, we are seeing increase in the number of clients. If we can ask them to pay for the service if we find a reasonable applicant. We are still not sure whether we can call that a job advertisement business. Perhaps it is close to booking for travel and restaurants, which is paying per performance type of mechanism rather than advertisement revenue. Maybe it will be called matching revenue. Various monetization options will be explored going forward. Thank you. What about your competitor?
Where do you expect your competitor from? As of today, to be honest, well, globally speaking, mainly in Europe, we still see traditional job board business models. Therefore, I believe in many countries, we can generate revenue in this area. But in terms of new business models, who could be our competitors, as of today, we do not see any potential competitors, but do you have any particular competitor in your mind? No. I was just asking out of curiosity. Thank you. That is all. Thank you very much.
SMBC Nikko Securities, Mr. Maeda, please. Yes. One question on Media & Solutions. Earlier in the presentation, you showed us the ecosystem. Currently, how is this working? Each media advertisement sales, they collaborate, link with each other to scale up the revenue? Is it still in the development phase and still take time for monetization? Or is it already producing significant results and impact? As the advertisement media in advertisement media revenue, I think is big, but SaaS, when do you think you can say you've transformed, SaaS? Around where, when do we can expect that?
Thank you for the question. M&S, SaaS. Existing advertisement sales and the linkage there. As monetization change, when can we say we have successfully transformed to a SaaS business model? I understand that was your question. This is a difficult question to answer. First, the existing SaaS business or the current advertisement business and SaaS linkage, collaboration. This depends on domain. It differs from domain to domain. For example, in dining or beauty, the SMEs, each individual customers are small. AirPAY usage is high in this area. It's increasing. Now, if you look at AirPAY alone, hotels. Hotels and Japanese inns have introduced considerably. We cannot say that a great number of customers are using it, not just yet.
Hotels and Japanese inns, we are trying to come up with a separate SaaS solution. Hotels and Japanese inns have their unique original website. That booking system, we are offering our SaaS system in their booking site so that they can use it. It's a different kind of support, and we monitor that. It's difficult to say how much linkage there is between SaaS and the advertisement revenue because the area is very broad. Simply put, the advertisement domain and booking transaction domain. In terms of affinity, transaction type area is closer to SaaS type business model. That is our take. When can we say we successfully transform to SaaS business? Currently, the number of customers with the advertisement style and the SaaS type.
Number of customers with SaaS is more. In terms of that revenue amount, we have more advertisement type customers. In terms of ARR, if we calculate using value, SaaS sales. If SaaS sales account for 30%-40%, then we can say we are starting to transform successfully to SaaS type business model, but we are not there yet. Does this answer your question? Yes. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm conscious of the time. We can take one more question. Asay ama-san from UBS Securities, please.
Thank you for this opportunity. I have two questions. Both are related to HR technology. First is related to hiring. Can you recap the hiring situation in FY 2021? You mentioned there are 13,000 hires, but what was the progress against target? In FY 2022, I believe you're forecasting 30% increase in the headcount. I would like to ask this question in order to confirm the accuracy of this target. The second question is related to corporate clients shift to CPQA model. What kind of technological breakthrough do you think you will need to achieve that? Thousands of applications are being processed automatically, sounds pretty difficult. Is this really achievable?
This is a solution where clients assess candidates, and from the viewpoint of neutrality, is it going to be difficult for you to provide as a service? Thank you for your questions. First of all, a 30% increase in headcount for this fiscal year. Well, last previous fiscal year was concentrated in the second half. Especially after October, hiring activities accelerated. When we look at the number of recruitment per month, it continued to increase every month. As a result, the number of headcount increase was close to 3,000. In that sense, in February and March, the progress of hiring has been larger. To put it simple, if you imagine sales, having 100 clients to 200 clients.
That is the kind of change the sales reps have been experiencing, even with the same headcount. Therefore, we have been quickly picking up the numbers of sales reps. Therefore, actually, we have fewer hiring plan in the second half of the year. When we look at the current progress, at a quite high probability, we're confident that we can achieve 30% increase. Especially in the U.S., high commission is paid for the salespeople. So if the economic situation deteriorates, I'm afraid that the situation might change. At least for now, that is the situation. Secondly, introducing CPQA for corporate clients. Well, large corporate enterprise clients are already using a SaaS-based platform for some of the services. Why is that?
There have been a lot of clients struggling to hire people. As soon as the candidates flow into the platform, they disappear. They have that kind of experience. Utilizing Indeed IP, if they can use their assessment, they can enjoy higher yield, and they have learned that from the past experience. If they have a clear target of hiring, a lot of clients choose to use our platform. In terms of CPQA, if they have 1,000 open jobs, if they really want to secure hiring for the 50 jobs out of 1,000, they can pay for that 5%. Even when they say open jobs, it doesn't mean that they would like to hire anyone.
They're looking for a very attractive talent, but at the same time, they have open jobs where they're willing to hire essentially anyone. The situation varies, but the platform is already used by many clients. A lot of SaaS solutions are going to be using API in connection. For various HR tasks, we have been working with clients hand in hand to test integration or to discuss integration. This is based on requests from enterprise clients. In a long-term perspective, we believe this is going to continue as a trend. I hope that satisfies your question. That was very clear. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much.
We apologize that we were unable to address all the questions, but we would like to conclude today's earnings call. With regards to the long-term strategy, Help Businesses Work Smarter and Prosper Together, we're planning to hold a 1-hour presentation and Q&A session at a later date. Prosper Together will be facilitated by Senaha at 5 P.M. Tuesday, June twenty-eighth, and Help Businesses Work Smarter will be facilitated by Kitamura at 4 P.M. Tuesday, July twelfth. The details are going to be provided on our IR website. Thank you very much for attending today once again. This concludes today's earnings call.