Thank you very much for waiting. We will now begin SoftBank Corp.'s investor briefing for the fiscal year ended March 31st, 2026. First, I would like to introduce today's participants. Mr. Akiyama, Senior Vice President and CFO, Head of Finance Unit. Mr. Yuki, Head of Corporate Planning. Mr. Sasaki, Head of FP&A Corporate Planning. Mr. Onoguchi, Head of Accounting and Finance. Mr. Kawamura, Head of Financial Strategy. Today's session is also being broadcast live via the internet. Now, I would like to invite Mr. Akiyama to present SoftBank's consolidated financial results.
Thank you very much for your coming today. From this time, I will be the main speaker and some participants on the stage also have changed from the previous session. I would like to introduce myself since this is my very first time.
In 1995, I joined Japan Telecom, was responsible for launching new businesses and the related initiatives. When the SoftBank purchased Japan Telecom, I've been working since 2004. I've been in this industry for 30 years and for SoftBank almost 20 years. As you can see, as my career, my major area is in finance. Since 2023, I've been in the Strategic Finance division. As my life work, moving forward, I would like to pursue this career. Thank you. Now I would like to explain. There are four points as executive summaries. First, FY 2025 consolidated results. We were able to achieve full year forecast by balancing growth investments in the AI and other areas with revenue and profit growth. Second, we announced medium-term management plan. Driven by AI businesses, we aim for record profits and continuous dividend increases.
Third, capital allocation policy. We would like to strengthen operating cash flow generation while maintaining disciplined growth investments and strengthening the shareholder returns. Fourth, consolidated forecast for FY 2026. We would like to target profit growth across all segments with enterprise and financial segments as core drivers. First topic, FY 2025 consolidated results. This is the overall view. Revenue and profit increased, exceeded all forecasts. I'll explain the breakdown after this. First, revenue. We increased in all segments, hitting a record high of JPY 7 trillion. Especially financial and distribution recorded two digital result growth. In the media and EC, due to the ASKUL incident, even though excluding this revenue, increased. Suggested EBITDA achieved full year forecast with record high. By segment, I will touch upon when I talk about operating income. Here is the operating income.
As you can see, Media and EC segment, other than this four segments increased and achieved full year forecast. Financial segment doubled. Media and EC decreased. Excluding ASKUL. We maintained the profit. Now I would like to touch upon by segment. First, revenue. Mobile revenue, which is our core, continued to grow. Sales of goods and others recorded double-digit increase. Next is the Consumer segment mobile revenue trend. As you can see, since FY 2023, third quarter, mobile revenue continued to grow year-on-year on an underlying basis. There are two main factors. One is that customer acquisition measures were taken due to that impact. The next is the access charge was implemented, so JPY 5.7 billion was excluded. With excluding these two factors.
As you can see here on the right side in the colored chart, over the past 2.5 Years maintained year-on-year growth. Next, the segment income for consumer segment. We had profit increase achieving full year forecast, especially mobile revenue increase contributed to its growth. Sales of goods and just others. JPY 47.7 billion was recorded due to the unit price improvement and electricity decrease in sales, improvement in procurement cost. Profit declined due to one-time downturn in Q4. Due to this one-time factor, for the year, it's about so we've achieved a gross profit. Sales commissions and sales promotion expenses increased mainly due to expenses for device purchase support program and amortization expenses to capitalize sales commissions. Others, due to the inflation increased and network maintenance costs.
This is an one time factor. We had this impact in the segment income in the presentation by the president earlier. The top line will increase due to the price increase, but due to this, as for the segment forecast, we would like to, we expect to the stable growth. Next is Enterprise segment. Revenue and profit both increased and achieved a full year forecast. Revenue exceeded JPY 1 trillion, especially business solutions and others. Revenue rose 13.2% year-on-year. Here is the business solution and others as revenue. Especially re-recurring revenue is where we focus on and this achieved double digit growth, rose by 10% year-on-year. Next, Media and EC segment. Due to the ransomware attack on ASKUL.
We overcame this and all segment revenue increased. On the right side shows the segment income. This time we have two factors. One is the one-time factors. The second left. Some remeasurement gain on step acquisition. The other one is impact by ransom attack on ASKUL. These two factors are very unique, therefore, we highlight it. We can see other business income. Next, Financial segment. Revenue expanded steadily, and the segment income doubled, driven by contribution from PayPay consolidated. As you know, PayPay was listed on Nasdaq March 2026. PayPay continues to be a consolidated subsidiary of the company after the IPO. Distribution segment and others. Distribution revenue and profits increased, and revenue exceeded JPY 1 trillion with a steady growth in ICT products and enterprises. Others on the right-hand side show
Impact from R&D investment. Now net income. We hit record high, achieved full year forecast, and grew by 4.7% year-on-year. Operating income growth drive this net income. The tax effect of PayPay was reflected here. CapEx, what we'd like you to pay attention to is consumer enterprise, which is at the bottom of the bar. The full year forecast was JPY 340 billion, and we hit in line with the forecast. Others in the bar, most of them is investment in AI, so let me touch upon that more in detail on the next slide. Status of investment in AI computing infrastructure and AI data centers. For the last three years we invested about JPY 200 billion investment.
After FY 2026 and onwards, we continue that investment, but also we want to enter into monetization of AI. This slide shows primary free cash flow. We steadily generated a high level of primary free cash flow. Since we announced end of the year result, we created this waterfall chart. Even after paying dividend, we generated -JPY 98.1 billion of free cash flow. Using this capacity, we will invest for financial improvement and future growth. Net interest-bearing debts and net debt ratio is here. Net interest-bearing debt decreased by JPY 60 billion year. Net leverage ratio declined to 2.2%. That means we have more capacity to finance. Balance sheet. Total assets grew by JPY 2.4 trillion. JPY 18.5 trillion of total equity.
We accumulated JPY 214 billion of total equity. Equity ratio was 16% or 1% lower than the previous year. Not only having total equity increase, we have a bigger pie, if you will, to calculate balance sheet. Financial has more impact on balance sheet, so we created balance sheet excluding financial business, as you can see on the right-hand side. Excluding financial domain, shareholder equity ratio was 19.0%. We will continue disclosing this balance sheet excluding financial domain as well. Let me move on to operating data or KPI. The smartphone mobile subscribers grew year-on-year, hitting 32 million at the end of this fiscal year.
Short-term churn, we feel impact from that, so smartphone churn rate increased by 0.16% year-on-year, reflecting continued impact of higher early churn, and we are looking at the churn rate around 1.7 or 71%. Next, I want to talk about net additions. It declined year-on-year following a shift in our acquisition strategy toward focusing on long-term users. We would like to focus on smartphone churn rate reduction and control over acquisition costs. Next, I want to talk about ARPU. Excluding retrospective adjustment of access charges, ARPU increased by JPY 20.
Consumer ARPU continued to increase. We recently announced the new price plan. As for ARPU for 2026, we expect that it will increase by the yen. The next is broadband, and e lectricity, and both subscribers continue to increase. Next, Media and EC. Both EC transaction value and to group total advertising revenue expanded. Since fourth quarter, ASKUL also recovered. Therefore, EC transaction value returned to positive. Next is PayPay. PayPay standalone users increased steadily. Number of payments significantly outpaced the user growth. It rose in payments per person. This is also PayPay. PayPay consolidated. The left side, as you can see, its GMV continued to outpace 20% growth. On the right side, PayPay Bank's deposits and loan balances showed a steady growth.
This is SB Payment Service. Payment Service exceeded previous midterm plans business target of JPY 10 trillion in GMV, and it continued, as you can see on the right side, especially driven by non-telecom, double-digit growth was achieved. This is ESG-related topics. I would like to take some time later on to go through. In the fiscal year 2025, the previous midterm management plans completed. Here is the review. We revised upward twice and ultimately exceeded. Here is the business target and its results, especially in blue, we were able to achieve one year ahead of schedule. As you can see, number 1, end consumer revenue increased for three consecutive years.
As primary cash flow, we were able to have good control over it, and we achieved the midterm plan targets and delivered high level of dividends for three years. This is the TSR for the past three years. Nearly 55% increase during the midterm plan period. Now let me talk about new midterm management plan. We continue to focus on both mid-term to long-term growth and shareholder returns. This shows financial targets. We aim to achieve record high operating income and net income continuously. For operating income, we want to hit JPY 1.7 trillion, and for net income, we want to hit JPY 700 billion in the five years' time. With regards to shareholder returns, we aim for continuous dividend increases in line with profit growth.
For the fiscal year, we want to provide JPY 8.8 per share dividend. Going forward, as you can see on the right-hand side, in line with the profit growth, we want to return back to shareholders accordingly. Summary of financial targets, revenue, operating income, net income, we want to hit record high all, in all areas. New midterm management plan, enterprise segment should be a leader, a growth driver, and AI is entering into monetization phase. Enterprise segment is going to include AI. In enterprise segment, we restructured a subsegment.
Especially cloud and AI is the growth driver, and we want to make sure that you can pay more close attention to cloud and AI. In midterm plan, business targets are shown here for Enterprise. We want to double cloud and AI revenue by FY 2030 versus FY 2025. Also, we want to double segment income by FY 2030 versus FY 2025. Other business targets for respective segments are shown on this slide. Now let me talk about the capital allocation policy. Again, we want to deliver both growth and returns. We disclose this capital allocation idea to let you know how we want to achieve both. First, we want to generate operating cash flow exceeding telecom-related CapEx and enhance shareholder returns. Also, we want to execute a strategy investment while balancing financial soundness and capital efficiency.
Net leverage ratio is one of the index to see the financial soundness. Mid to times range of net leverage ratio is assumption here. With that, we have a capacity of about JPY 1 trillion for investment. With this investment, we want to achieve further growth. Let me talk more about assumptions of capital allocation, about operating income, dividend. As you can see on the left-hand of the slide, we want to achieve record high performance to return back to shareholders. Also, maintain adjusted net leverage ratio in the mid-t wo t imes range is for our financial soundness. Also, we want to maintain consolidated adjusted ROE at around 20%. Average ROE of Japanese companies are lower in general. Again, we want to deliver high equity spread as much as possible.
You can see comparison between FY 2023 to 2025 total and FY 2026 to 2028 total. By monetizing AI, we want to invest more and we should be able to invest more, and we should be able to return back to shareholders. Last but not the least, consolidated forecast for FY 2026. We want to aim to achieve record high earnings and increase dividends in line with earnings growth. We want to balance growth in existing businesses and monetization of AI-related businesses with the continued growth investment in new businesses, including AI, aiming to achieve revenue and profit growth. Our dividend per share is JPY 8.80, like I said earlier. By segment, we forecast our operating income like this. Consumer, while we see increase of sales-related costs, but we can expect a increase of income by revised price.
In enterprise segment, again, AI and cloud should be a driver for growth. In financial segment, we want to expand payment function. Again, enterprise and financial should be a growth driver. Other segments, we also want to increase growth in income. Like Miyakawa-san explained earlier today, for the first half of this fiscal year, we expect growth in revenue, the loss of, or decline of profit. For the last part of this year, we should expect both revenue and profit growth. Again, in the first half, absence of one-time gains and increase of sales commissions have an impact on profit in the first half.
Price revisions effect should be stronger and there should be no one-time factors and impact of sales commission and sales promotion expenses. Those are the key factors for profit growth that we expect in latter half of FY 2026. Again, in the first half of FY 2026, we may be a little bit worried about performance, but for the full year, we should be able to hit both revenue and profit growth. That's all for myself, and I'd like to take your questions going forward.
Thank you. We will now move on to the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question via Zoom, please follow the instructions provided in advance and use the Raise Hand function. After joining Zoom, please turn off the live stream on the website to prevent audio feedback. Each participant is limited to two questions. Thank you for your understanding. If you have a question, please raise your hand from the venue. Tokunaga from Daiwa Securities.
Mr. Akiyama, thank you so much for your presentation, and also continue to increase the profit and dividend.
Thank you so much.
First question. JPY 1.7 trillion and increased by JPY 600 billion in profit. Enterprise doubled, so JPY 200 billion. The remaining will be covered by consumer, financial and others. The consumer, due to the price, increase, it will also contribute and the media and EC, if they achieve JPY 100 billion, it should be able to achieve that profit target though. Would you be able to explain your plan for other segments?
As for the midterm, management plan, the breakdown of the segment. As for the enterprise segment will be a main driver and a profit margin would be higher due to the AI-related businesses. As for the consumer segment, due to the new price plan and ARPU also will increase, as I explained earlier, due to the cost increase. There will be some impact on the cost increase. Consumers growth will be a bit stable. Media and EC will continue a stable growth. The financial segment, the payment, is doing well and the finance area is highly expected for a further growth. PayPay and LY, they are both listed companies, therefore I cannot make solid comments here. Appreciate your understanding.
Thank you for your answers. This fiscal year, a 6% increase, it could be a little bit lower. What is the reason for this rather lower increase? The guidance is just conservative, you think?
As for the enterprise segment, especially AI-related business would be a major driver for growth. This will actually reflect on the actual profit in the next couple of years. That's why. The second question is about the enterprise business. One, the 20% increase in income. I think this guidance is very aggressive, I think. What is the reason for that? The second is about GPU pricing. A GPU price change is fluctuating. Due to the AI-related business. Now AI is under the enterprise segment, that would lead to the positive impact to the profit.
Is it going to account for like 50% of the entire enterprise business?
I cannot give you the detailed breakdown.
What about FY 2027 onwards? Is it because of the Crystal intelligence or? What is other factors?
Well, GPU's actual operation will start. Also Crystal intelligence will be also more actively sold. That would be the major factors as well.
Any other question from the venue? If not, let me take question from Kikuchi-san, SMBC Nikko Securities on the Zoom.
I have two questions. Growth rate of it, operating income and net income, difference between them. In mid-term management plan, operating income increased by JPY 660 billion or so, net income increased only by JPY 150 billion. For the fiscal year FY 2026, do you expect increase of operating income or net income growth rate is smaller than the operating income? Miyakawa-san earlier said that you took conservative view, I wonder something like increase of financial cost or maybe off balance in mid-term. I wonder if you expect more income attributable to third parties as opposed to operating a parent company. I wonder if there are any other reasons why you are very conservative and cautious about net income.
You questioned about the difference between operating income growth and net income growth. I believe that you understand some factor is related to our structure, like a PayPay which is listed and we don't expect a huge contribution from them in terms of a consolidated bottom line. SB OAI, for example, we don't own 100%, so income from SB OAI should be attributable to third parties and also impact from interest rate can be expected as well. For FY 2025 and FY 2026. In FY 2025, we had some positive impact from tax effects, which is not there in FY 2026. There are some uncertainties. If you hit operating income, you usually expect a substantial net income as well. Don't you think so?
Well, we have set some assumption for calculation and obviously increase in bottom line is very important, so we try to increase that income as well as operating income as well.
Thank you. Next question is about first half of this year and second half of this year. One time profit that took place last year is not gonna be there, you said, and also increase of sales and general expenses, l ike Docomo and KDDI, they did impairment loss of JPY 50 billion of acquisition cost. I think we already did impairment loss in last year or some years ago. How much impairment loss you expected to recognize if you do?
Talking about one-time impact. The valuation gain of LY was one-time factor. If you take a look at slide 13, we disclose that on the slide.
LY alone?
Yes. Revaluation of LY, excuse me, was in the last year, but not expected this year. Talking about sales and general expenses. Acquisition cost, capitalized acquisition cost that is, has to be amortized. Also support program, provision for support program of device purchase support program is also impact. Talking about amortization of a capitalized acquisition cost, since last half of last year, we revised or changed our acquisition policy or acquisition strategy. We need to recognize amortization in the last years. Going forward, we should expect lower amortization cost. In the first half, excuse me, we may need to suffer from amortization cost impairment, Last half, we should expect lower amortization cost of acquisition cost in the last years.
Device purchase support program you mentioned in the first half year, bigger than last year and smaller than last year in the last half of this fiscal year. Going forward, FY 2027 and further away, of course, it depending on upgrade of users. Should we expect lower cost to support device purchase? Is it going to be a hit this year, but next year and onwards it's going to go down?
Yes, you are correct. We should expect some improvement next year and onwards. Impact from the acquisition cost. Rather than impairment loss recognition like co-competitors did, is it issue of balance between impairment loss which we didn't do every year we perform impairment test. For this fiscal year, we didn't see any reason why we needed to do impairment loss. Impact that I'm talking about is amortization.
How much would it be?
In terms of acquisition cost and support program, we refrain from disclosing concrete numbers. I think maybe JPY 20 billion, JPY 30 billion. Well, JPY 20 billion, JPY 30 billion respectively. Respectively for our support program and acquisition cost.
Next, we would like to take a question also from Zoom. Masuno-san from Nomura Securities.
I have two questions. One is about the consumer business. ARPU will be up by JPY 160, which is the same as I expected for over 12 months. 41 million times, the major line will be about to JPY 80 billion increase in the revenue at the JPY 9 billion up in profit. Are you going to spend JPY 70 billion all? Just before you mentioned like JPY 20 billion-JPY 30 billion for each. What you are planning to spend the remaining of the JPY 70 billion? I believe that each will increase by JPY 10 billion per. Next fiscal year and there will be some impact of the price increase. Is my understanding correct that the next fiscal year, the consumer income will increase?
As for the incentives, in FY 2024 and 2025 when the acquisition measurements were focused on, that impact will be reflected and also stable in fiscal year 2027 onwards. As for Tokusapo, the impact by Tokusapo will be also stable in 2027 and onwards. There are some factors due to the cost increase. As for the overall segment, we can still expect to have a steady growth. As you said, it will be stable means that in the next fiscal year onwards, now is a little too high, therefore it will be a little bit lower. The provision of the Tokusapo cost and so on. You are talking about the fiscal 2027.
Yes, slightly decreased. The second question, the others segment. The recent fiscal year was in negative figure, why the negative figure expand even further? Is that because of AI related businesses?
I don't see any other businesses which will face bigger negative figures than the AI businesses. I think AI businesses is the one to offset the negative figured business areas. Even you have some buffer. You always mention like JPY 100 billion. Last year you also mentioned JPY 100 billion as buffer. Regarding the others. Until last fiscal year. Some areas that we invested for development will shift to monetization phase. Other than AI, such as HAPS related research and development cost is also included here. Having said that, it's not all ready for commercialization.
Even though we still have some buffer, as we move forward with our businesses, there may be some we will be using, but some will not be used. About JPY 100 billion of buffer is something that we can use for the future. We would like to maintain this much as buffer for the future development.
Regarding the storage battery. You are collaborating with others, that's why this business is not going to face the big negative figure. Is that correct?
Yes.
Thank you.
Next question is Mr. Okumura from Okasan Securities.
Question or two questions about mid-term management plan. First, enterprise and the revenue of cloud AI should be doubled you said. As a service, AI data center, sovereign cloud, and Crystal intelligence. I think depending on the services, when you can expect revenue or profit is different. Again, which of the segments that you expect a revenue earlier than others, for example, to hit the JPY 200 billion?
I think your question about the growth and/or growth speed of cloud AI. As you said, we want to leverage GPUs that we have been building up. Crystal Intelligence are expected growth driver. FY 2027, somebody asked about the gap of income between FY 2026 and 2027. We will begin monetization phase in FY 2026. It'll be up and running in full scale in FY 2027. That's our assumption.
Crystal Intelligence, for example, I think usage fee is JPY 30 billion or something. I wonder if that's an assumption or, again, how much contribution expect from different sub-segments.
For Crystal intelligence In the midterm management plan, we see Crystal intelligence conservatively. You don't expect the huge contribution from Crystal intelligence in the midterm business plan.
Next is about the dividend. It's great that you plan to increase dividend in the long run. EPS, how did you calculate EPS in terms of relation to net income?
Dividend ratio is, it looks downward trend, but I don't know how did you calculate that earnings per share. As you can see, payout ratio is a little bit going down. As we mentioned in the capital allocation section, we want to achieve both growth and return. That's the balance what we looked at in calculating and expecting EPS. Payout ratio, what would be the ideal payout ratio is something that we still have discussion internally. In FY 2030, I think this kind of balance should be good, as you see on the slide. Balance between EPS and net income.
Depending on cash flow, is it possible that you pay dividend more than shown here?
Your question is if we have more cash, are we prepared to pay more dividend? Yes. For example, even though net income is JPY 700 billion, you may pay dividend as much as JPY 10, or those numbers you've shown on the slide were fixed. Well, in theory, if there's nothing to invest, we should return to shareholders. As you can see, we want to continue investment for future growth. I don't think that we have a huge bandwidth to increase dividend if we don't have enough net income.
Thank you very much. If you have any questions, please raise your hand from the venue or press the Raise Your Hand button on Zoom. This concludes the Q&A session. That concludes today's investor briefing for the fiscal year ended March 31st 2026. A recording of today's session will be made available on demand on our website at a later time. Thank you very much for joining us today for the fiscal year ended March 31st 2026.