This is Nakata, the President of Yamaha Corporation. Thank you very much for sparing your precious time today to attend our results briefing. I would also like to extend my deepest appreciation to your continued support. I'd like to start a briefing on the full year results of FY March 2023. I'd like to explain using the presentation slides, please turn to page one for the highlights. Throughout FY March 2023, we achieved year-on-year increase in both the revenue and profits. The revenue was impacted by the semiconductor procurement difficulties, the decreased demand for entry-level models, and the turmoil caused by COVID cases in China. It increased due to the price optimization and the depreciation of yen. The core operating profit was also affected by various cost rise, it increased due to the price optimization, in addition to the exchange rate impact.
As for the outlook for FY March 2024, while taking into account various uncertainties, we are expecting a good market recovery in Europe and China, where we struggled very much in the previous year, as well as the easing of supply shortages. We therefore forecast both the revenue and profit to increase year-on-year. Along with the increased revenue, we are expecting to achieve a record high core operating profit. Accordingly, we are planning to provide JPY 74 dividend per share. Now, let me explain further details of the performance. Page three shows the results of FY March 2023, As you see, we achieved increase in both the revenue and profits. However, when the exchange rate impact was excluded, the revenue growth was almost flat. The next page shows the core operating profit analysis.
In a year-on-year comparison, the impact of exchange rates and the increase in sales and production, model mix, and price optimization contributed positively. On the other hand, the increase of various costs were substantial at nearly JPY 8 billion in total. In fact, we barely managed to offset the cost increase by the favorable exchange rates and price optimization, and achieved the year-on-year increase of the profit. Moreover, in a comparison against the previous projection, which was JPY 48 billion, the SG&A turned out to be higher by about JPY 2 billion. That pushed down the profit. The revenue and gross profit were almost in line with our forecast. The SG&A was a bit higher than we thought. This is mostly due to the expenses relating to the acquisition of Cordoba and the raise of salary and eligible month for the bonus.
The next page shows the results of each business segment. The musical instruments achieve the results that you see here. Most of all, the piano business in China struggled severely. That affected the overall performance of the musical instruments segment. Meanwhile, in the audio equipment segment, the semiconductor supply shortage issue was mitigated very much. That led to the increase in both the revenue and profit. The industrial machinery and components, IMC business and others, enjoyed a good business expansion of electronic devices and a remarkable growth of golf products. The results were great. Next, I'd like to explain the outlook for FY March 2024. The revenue is projected to increase by 4.1% or JPY 18.6 billion year-on-year. The core operating profit is expected to improve dramatically by JPY 10.1 billion to JPY 56 billion.
The net profit, after all the P&L calculations, is expected to be JPY 42 billion. The exchange rate assumptions are as shown here at the bottom. One US dollar is estimated to be JPY 130, with the yen slightly appreciated, and one euro is estimated to be JPY 140, which is about the same as the previous year. The next page shows the core operating profit analysis of the forecast. As you can see here, we're continually foreseeing negative impacts from the rising labor cost as well as the energy prices and procurement cost. Such factors are included in the forecast. However, they will seemingly be offset by the ocean freight charge improvement. In fact, the cost increase will be actually offset by the continued price optimization.
The decline in ocean freight charges were certainly helpless. SG&A expenses will be heavy on the other hand. Mainly due to the normalization of business activities and the investments in digital transformation, we are planning to spend JPY 5.7 billion, so the SG&A will push down the profit. By the way, this is also including the SG&A of Cordoba. In the end, since the increase in sales and production will give us much higher marginal profit, the core operating profit will rise to JPY 56 billion. The breakdown of the forecast by each business segment is shown in the next page. The musical instruments and audio equipment are expected to achieve increase in the revenue and profits.
As for IMC business and others, since the golf products achieved extraordinary growth in the previous year and it peaked out, we are projecting a slight decline in the revenue and profit. Still yet, the core operating profit ratio will be continually higher than 10%. From here on, I'd like to give you the details of each business segment, starting from the musical instrument segment. As you can see here, in FY March 2023, the piano business in China suffered from a great damage due to the COVID-related lockdowns, and that affected the overall segment performances. On the other hand, the wind, strings, and percussion instruments performed very well, especially in North America, and it had offset some of the negatives. As for this fiscal year, we are expecting a good recovery in China, as you can see from the figures shown here.
To elaborate a bit more, as shown here, the pianos struggled very much and declined 16% year-on-year. Meanwhile, the wind, string, and percussion instruments grew 23% and enjoyed a great profit improvement. The regional breakdown is shown on the next page. In FY March 2023, the sales in North America grew very well while Europe and China struggled. Especially in China, the sales dropped 20% year-on-year, and namely, the piano sales dropped more than 30% due to the dramatically declined demand. However, this fiscal year, we are expecting good recovery in both Europe and China, so the year-on-year growth will be greater than the rest of the world. Moreover, the other regions achieved 3% growth in FY March 2023, but this included Russia. If you excluded Russia, the growth rate was actually double digit.
This fiscal year, we are continually expecting high growth of 8%. Next is audio equipment segment. Impact of semiconductor procurement difficulties was eased by the second half of the last fiscal year, especially the recovery in the PA equipment drove the overall segment improvement. The AV products continually faced the semiconductor supply issue and saw sluggish sales of entry-level models, the revenue declined sharply. The ICT revenue increased significantly due to the strong sales of network devices. The core operating profit recovered from the bottom that was marked in FY March 2022. In FY March 2024, since the PA equipment and ICT equipment that are highly profitable are likely to grow well, we can expect further drastic growth of the profit. Per major product category, the deeply struggling AV products dropped 18% year-on-year.
Meanwhile, the PA equipment and the ICT equipment grew steadily. There's one thing to note about this audio equipment segment. Starting from this fiscal year, we decided to change the segment breakdown. Instead of the AV products, PA equipment, and ICT equipment, we are going to reorganize the segment into two sub-segments: consumer products and B2B products. The biggest change will be in the PA equipment, which will be split into consumer products and B2B products. There are further minor rearrangements in the new segmentation, the key point is the PA splitting into two. This fiscal year's forecast is divided into the consumer products and the B2B products. The sales growth of consumer products is expected to be great because there was a big drop in the previous year, and it will recover.
The B2B products growth may seem to slow down, but that is because the business had achieved great sales growth in the previous year, and we are expecting good performances to continue. As for the regional breakdown, the audio equipment in FY March 2023 saw a big drop in China year-on-year. North America and Europe also achieved slightly negative growth. This fiscal year, we are expecting recovery in all of these regions. Regarding the revenue of the IMC business and the others segment, with the increased adoption of automotive sound systems by automakers, the sales of electronic devices increased. The golf product sales rose significantly. As for this fiscal year's forecast, the revenue growth seems to be flat, but that is because the golf product's special demand has peaked out, and we expect the sales to decline.
In the meantime, we are expecting further expansion of automotive sound systems. That was all for the performances of each business segment. Now I'd like to refer to the other financial figures. Here is the balance sheet. As of the end of March 2023, the balance of cash and cash equivalents dropped very much year-on-year. This is partially because the inventory increased, and also because we paid the corporate tax for the proceeds from selling Yamaha Motor shares. On the other hand, the inventories increased. This is a continued challenge for us, and we would like to lower the balance throughout this fiscal year. As for the capital expenditure, it was JPY 20.5 billion in FY March 2023. This is because we minimized the CapEx under the pandemic in FY March 2022, and we went back to spending a bit more.
In fact, we are going to invest even more in FY March 2024 because there are many areas that requires the expenditure, including the headquarter building in Japan and the office in the Greater Tokyo area that will start the operations, but this will only be a one-off increase of CapEx. Meanwhile, the R&D expenses have stayed and will stay around the same level as usual years. In the current midterm plan, we have laid great emphasis on the non-financial targets as well. Let me touch on the progress. The non-financial targets are set to further strengthen the business foundation, set sustainability as a source of value, and enable Yamaha colleagues to be more valued, more engaged, and more committed. Under these three pillars, respective themes are set specifically with these nine indicators.
To strengthen the business foundation, we have an indicator to connect more with the customers. To this end, we nearly launched Yamaha Music ID and set a midterm target to achieve five million IDs. During the first year, we already achieved half of the target, which was a remarkable progress. The launch of new concept products are also progressing well in line with the plan. On the other hand, the development of production infrastructure had been affected by the prolonged COVID impact in China. Due to various restrictions, we are still far from the target. Still, yet, we made some progress. As for the sustainability efforts, in fact, we have made greater progress in some of the areas, but the sustainable timber usage ratio was affected by the change in the model mix, so we have not achieved much numerical results to mention yet.
The initiatives to realize a greater usage are in place and making steady progress. As for enabling of Yamaha colleagues, we have already achieved the target for the female manager ratio. Although the initiatives to improve the indicators for job satisfaction and workplace environment are carried out, it seems to require a bit more time until the improvements are clearly reflected in the survey results. Further details of achievements are shown on the following pages. When you have a time later, please check them out. In addition to the summary of each topic, we have also included the URL links to access the detailed information. The next page shows some of the new products that we launched. It is similar for the sustainability initiatives, we are making a steady progress.
We are especially keen about promoting instrumental music education in emerging countries and have made a remarkable progress far exceeding the plan. This is the final theme to enable Yamaha colleagues to be more engaged. Regarding the financial targets, the achievements in the first year of the midterm was not exactly satisfactory for us, but we would like to steer and strive harder throughout this fiscal year and on to achieve the target KPIs without fail. As for the external evaluation, Yamaha has been selected for all six ESG indices for Japan equities adopted by the GPIF. We were also chosen once again as one of the Best Japan Brands. We were ranked the 28th as we did in the previous year, and the brand value grew by 11% year-on-year.
Finally, regarding the shareholder returns, as I said earlier, since our revenues are expected to rise, we are planning to provide 74 JPY dividend per share this fiscal year. When we realize the planned profit, the payout ratio will be about 30%. As the target total return ratio for cumulative three years is 50%, we started to buy back our shares from the previous fiscal year, and it will hopefully be completed by the end of the first half of this fiscal year. On the final page of the appendix, we describe the details of the sub-segment changes in the audio equipment segment that I mentioned earlier, along with a diagram. I hope this will facilitate your understanding. That is all from myself on the explanation of the results and the forecast. Thank you very much.