My name is Yasuda, the Group CFO. Thank you very much for your time today to watch our result announcement. We will cover the result of the second quarter or April to June 2026 throughout our presentations today. This is the agenda for today. As you can see, I will first share the key takeaways and the executive summary, followed by key initiatives section. Key initiatives for today consist of three different topics, physical AI, cybersecurity, and AI banks. Then, I will hand it over to Inagaki, our Group Executive Officer. Yes. This is the key takeaways and summary with three topics. First point is about an action taken by the corporate. We have embarked on a journey to become a group of businesses that will sustain for hundreds of years to come.
As I had explained during the last call, all the requirements to be listed at Tokyo Stock Exchange have been fulfilled, supported by different initiatives such as by selling GMO Internet 4784 shares. In June, we had also announced a new funding for share buyback. The fund is set at JPY 30 billion, the biggest shareholder return in the history of our group, supported by sales of 4784. Next one is financial performance. Business profit for Q2 was JPY 15.5 billion, or 2.5% better than last year. Operating profit also was JPY 15.5 billion. Helped by strong rock-solid recurring revenue, infrastructure broke the record again in six straight quarters. But the margin grew only slightly, offset by weaker performance of FX and cryptoasset, one-time cost in different segments, investment for new businesses, and tax expense for GMO Internet share transactions.
Such businesses as GMO Aozora Net Bank and GMO Financial Holdings are helping growing our entire business as customer deposits more on their accounts. Ever since the interest rates finally came back. Finally, on physical AI, we see 2026 as the first year for humanoid as our new growth driver. We are shifting our focus from establishing top of mind to a new phase where we will start accelerating the implementation in the real world. This is a summary of the results. Business and operating profits grew only slightly due to the temporary reasons mentioned a few minutes ago, but the net profit saw two-digit growth. One of the major drivers for that came from equity share of GMO Aozora Net Bank. This is year-to-date for the first half with different numbers here, as you can see. Infrastructures and finance both broke the record. Both of them did.
We have managed to deliver quite high profit for the first half. Next one is about summary slide by segment. The column in the right shows the top management assessment as usual for this quarter as well as for the last quarter. First, infrastructure was very good. They broke the record in six straight quarters. The operating companies such as GMO Payment Gateway and GMO Internet drove the performances. GPU Cloud is shifting from early investment phase from last year to revenue contribution phase. We have always wanted to build rock-solid recurring revenue by establishing strong number one essential services that you cannot live without. We hope we demonstrate that with the result. Security, the next, was very good with more revenue, with less profit. Threats from cyberattacks are increasing, and our cybersecurity business remain very strong.
But we saw one-time impact in crypto security due to timing, and early investment for Brand Security made the margin smaller. But the timing is not going to be an issue in full year. And early investment, this is also a great sign of taking important actions for the future growth. Therefore, we decided to give double circles for it. Ads and media performed average. Different opcos are still in different stages in their solutions. Recurring business with high profit are doing well, but transaction business performed weaker, partly due to the strong demand last year. We will continue to push more recurring businesses. Finance was good with bigger revenue, with smaller margin. CFD has been growing to become the second income pillar, with substantial contribution driven by more transactions originated from high-margin products. And positive interest rates helped earnings and overall performances as well.
FX, on the other hand, saw reductions in transaction volume and earnings, mainly due to the market conditions. Business profit, as a result, was smaller than the last year. Crypto assets did not perform well. Both top and bottom lines fell and accounted for loss. We are still pushing for streaming operating structure, but cost optimization came short of paying for the fixed cost as market continued to perform slow. This is a visual representation of performances by segment in comparison from the same quarter last year with different factors. The left-hand side is net sales, and the right-hand side is business profit. Net sales saw a nice growth led by infrastructure. Business profit, on the other hand, was led by growth in infrastructure, but securities, finance, ad media, crypto assets, and others all saw small setbacks.
Together with one-time impact from tax expenses for the GMO Internet share transaction, it ended up in marginal growth. But if you take out the one-time cost, you can see the foundational strength is still here as we have been building it over many years. Next section is about key topics. I will go through three topics: physical AI, securities, and AI banks, in that order. The first topic is about physical AI. We see 2026 as the dawn of humanoid. We will help implement humanoid in the real world and make physical AI as a new growth driver. Our focus will shift from top-of-mind play to a new phase where we will start implementing solutions in the real world.
I want to share a few examples in the following slides to explain what we are doing at our group to shape a world where humanoid are adopted on a regular basis. But to explain our role, let me tell you about from perspective our business model. We are not simply selling humanoid as a physical product. We will be providing recurring solutions such as telecom, cybersecurity, maintenance, operation, and others. We will, in a way, act like a trading house for humanoid who can provide solutions end-to-end, from onboarding to actual uses. We will be building recurring revenue for physical AI, too, to make it much bigger than selling hardware. These are just reminders from previous announcements after establishment of GMO AI.
We started off with a humanoid dispatch service in April last year, and ever since then, we are expanding our activities in scale and scope, whether they are a proof-of-concept project with Shell at an airport or a proprietary project called GMO Robots or GMO Humanoid Lab as an R&D center to gain top of mind as a brand. These are examples from our R&D center called GMO Humanoid Lab. If you want a robot to learn a new action, you have to have GPUs to process massive amount of computations. We are using our strong services called GPU Cloud in our R&D project. Aside from making robots learn new actions, we are running hackathons as well, where our engineers get together to deepen their expertise. Simulations alone cannot replicate nuanced differences of unexpected moves in a real environment.
We believe it is critical that robots take actions and repeat trial and errors in a physical space to gain the accuracy required for commercial applications. I'd like to share some of our new initiatives from this slide. Physical AI is now expanding to defense and security domains. We have announced a contract with Japan Ground Self-Defense Force to run a proof of concept to test security robot system implementation in June. We are testing their performances in real environment at multiple stations nationwide. We are managing the entire process of designing and developing quadrupedal robots made in Japan, all the way to validation before implementations. This will realize 24/7 security posture with much less resources. Instead of people of uniform, robots can do those tasks for them.
Because we have societal challenges of not having enough people, this can be a great solution, and this is, in a way, our way of assisting national security. Yes, we are making more products to be available. We have launched GMO Humanoid.shop in April, where you can find humanoid or module products from leading OEMs around the world. This is called GMO Humanoid.shop. We are making it easier for our customers to choose and implement the right machines fit for their purposes. This is a new alliance. Partnership with different manufacturers are critical in enabling wide availability of our platform in the previous slide. This is one of the biggest examples, where we have signed an agreement with Unitree Robotics in June to be their official domestic distributor.
Just as an overview of Unitree, they have started their development of quadrupedal robots in 2016 and became number one in the world in bipedal robots shipment volume in 2025. They are rapidly expanding as their humanoid revenue grew recently by 8x compared with last year. They are currently preparing for an IPO, and market cap is expected to top JPY 1 trillion, has been projected. This could mean, in a way, that the market is reacting quite positively for their judgment to have a partnership with us. One anecdote that is similar to our actions here goes back to, I guess, 2008, for example. When SoftBank Group Corp became the very first operator to sell iPhone in Japan, they were the first to sell the hardware in Japan, very first in Japan. In a sense, our actions here have something in common, just as an image. Yes.
Next, we can simply not ignore cybersecurity while humanoids are commercially implemented in the world. The U.S. and other regulators overseas are discussing about safety with robot applications. We believe not using it where there are risks is not the right approach, but our stance is to, let's understand the risks appropriately and take actions against them. We announced GMO Safe recently. This is, in a sense, a security package that robots can wear. We can assess risks, design an operating model that is safe, and monitor operations for our customers. These three steps will continuously ensure customers from onboarding to operations. We have been operating internet infrastructure for over 30 years, and cybersecurity is our expertise. Converging these two capabilities is our unique strength. We are helping broad implementation of physical AI from the ground up.
We wanted to show you what I have been talking about in a single slide. They are not standalone services. They are pieces of bigger dynamics to help build a market in which humanoids get implemented, connecting supply and demand. Not too many companies in Japan can set up all five of them. This comprehensiveness will make us accelerate commercial implementations of humanoid as a group. Finally, this is an event where you can find more information. On September 15th, we are hosting the fourth GMO conference, Physical AI 2026, as one of the largest events of this kind. You will get to learn more about leading examples of what's happening in physical AI in details. We hope to see you also, the investors, to be there too. Next topic is cybersecurity. We have announced a strategy partnership agreement with Anthropic in July.
We will be providing more services powered by Claude, so our customers can access, for example, more sophisticated security diagnosis or implementation of physical AI. We will also implement Claude Enterprise internally to bring efficiencies across the group. We will be adopting more AI solutions to deliver the goal of becoming the best group company, shaping the future with AI and robotics. Our technical capabilities were proven in a global setting, too. DEF CON is the most prestigious hacker convention in the world. This is called DEF CON, and our team won the number one title in the world. This is the championship we wanted desperately after the second place titles in three straight years. More than 200 white hackers in our group are developing their expertise in real practices. Their capabilities are benefiting our solutions in vulnerability testing or product development cycle.
The next one is about AI banking vision. GMO Aozora Net Bank has turned profitable with a strategy to focus only on corporate customers. Number of corporate customers, which can drive our growth as the foundation, is steadily growing, too. The AI banking vision is the next step in our evolution to leverage the growth in the customer base.
Becoming a bank that continues to be chosen by both our customers and AI. This is the overarching theme underlying our plan to implement AI agents across three domains. The first is the AI bank for customers. A dedicated AI agent provides personalized services tailored to each individual based on their industry and usage patterns. The second is AI transformation of the bank itself. This is not just about improving efficiency. It is an initiative to restructure all business operations using AI agents and to restructure the organization itself. With 400 employees, we aim to increase productivity 100 times compared to the current levels. The third is AI bank for AI. We aim to create an environment where AI agents can autonomously utilize financial functions with the goal of becoming the entity AI chooses to use.
It will serve as a key growth engine for the group as a next generation tech bank. Finally, here is an overview of our network infrastructure and security products. To date, we have built up a solid recurring revenue, primarily through our infrastructure business. Going forward, we will build a security and physical AI we have explained so far as our new solid recurring revenue base. We will develop them into a mid to long-term growth driver. Now, Inagaki will take over the presentation.
I am Inagaki, responsible for group finance and IR. I will cover segment performance and shareholder returns. Let me start with a group overview. These are key product lineup of the group. All these products are developed and operated in-house. We are making progress in offering services for AI industry as well. Customer base combining infrastructure, security, finance, and crypto assets exceed 23.6 million.
This is quarterly revenue trend by segment. Both infrastructure and security are primarily driven by highly predictable recurring revenue and continue to grow as their customer bases expand. With the widespread adoption of AI, the volume of information and transactions on the internet is expected to continue to grow. We will continue to build a solid recurring revenue for our services to ensure more sustainable growth. This is quarterly business profit trend by segment. We are not changing our approach to build rock-solid recurring revenue from infrastructure and security, while adding highly profitable flow-based businesses on top. This time, due to the temporary factors explained by Yasuda, growth and business profit has remained in the single digits. Excluding temporary factors, our structural strengths remain intact. Next is performance by business. This is internet infrastructure quarterly revenue by sub-segment.
Q2 revenue renewed its record high due to accumulation of solid recurring revenue. Within the growing e-commerce and cashless payment markets, GMO Payment Gateway's payment service, shown in light blue, continues to achieve sustainable growth that exceeds the overall market growth rate. In addition, premium price products for enterprise customers performed very well, whether they are from cloud rental service in dark blue, GPU Cloud by GMO Internet, or CloudCREW by GMO GlobalSign Holdings. Furthermore, the provider business at the bottom in gray have been experiencing a net decline in the number of customers, but it shifted to a net increase starting at the end of March, and revenue has also been growing. Business profit also set a big growth, new record high. In addition to the continued growth in payment, this was driven by GPU Cloud achieving profitability on a quarterly basis.
Existing businesses such as domain and provider also remain strong. Here is some additional information regarding GMO Internet strategic product, GPU Cloud. Sales of the B300 GPU server are strong. Against the backdrop of robust demand, we have decided to invest a total of JPY 17 billion for the current fiscal year. We will continue to make flexible investment decisions in response to demand going forward. This is internet security and quarterly revenue trend by segment. Please take a look at cybersecurity in emerald green in the middle.
Cybersecurity by GMO AI & Robotics and GMO Flatt Security continued to experience high growth, with the AI's growth driven by an increase in orders from premium price penetration tests. In encryption security, while the electronic seal service, GMO Sign, and the enhanced login authentication service, GMO Trust Login, performed well, there was a timing slippage with SSL certificates. Business profit declined.
Although cybersecurity by AI is expanding steadily, a combination of two factors led to a decline in profits. However, both factors are temporary. One is the timing shift in orders from a major customer in the encryption security sector, along with a temporary increase in development costs, primarily at our overseas locations. Another is the upfront investment in .YourBrand, a key product for Brand Security. We expect to recover from the timing shift within this year. This is online advertising and media. The trend remained roughly flat compared to the previous year. While recurring revenue products have continued to accumulate steadily, flow-based products have remained weak due to a reactionary decline from a one-time factor from the previous year and others. Business profit decreased. As mentioned in the explanation of revenue, the decline in profits due to the reactionary decline of flow-based products have also been significant.
We will continue to shift towards increasing recurring revenue and at the same time optimize costs. Next is internet finance, which marked increase in both revenue and decrease in profits. While revenue remained at a high level for the quarter, business profit fell short of the previous year. I will explain the details on the next page. This is revenue by each product. CFD activity remained at a high level. FX trading was sluggish. Stocks and other are holding up well, supported by rising finance revenue. This slide shows CFD transaction and revenue transition. We have been number one in domestic trading volume for 12 consecutive years.
While commodity markets such as crude oil remain buoyant, trading volume and revenue both declined QoQ due to a shift in the sales mix as trading in high margin commodities such as gold and silver reached exceptionally high levels in Q1 due to a one-time surge in demand. However, YoY, it has expanded significantly. This shows the relationship between FX revenue and trading volume. Volatility in the foreign exchange market declined, and both trading volume and revenue fell YoY. Nevertheless, despite the decline in trading volume, we have been able to maintain our revenue at a steady level. On the other hand, the customer base continued to expand steadily. Customer margin balance reached a record high and quarterly active users share is continuing to expand. One of the reasons for the increase in finance revenue is expansion of customer margin balance.
When the market transaction recovers, we have a structure in place to be able to secure revenue. Next, I'd like to explain GMO Aozora Net Bank, a key initiative in the group's growth strategy. As an equity method affiliate, we recognize 50% of the company's net profit as equity method investment income or loss. Quarterly earnings showed a significant increase in both revenue and profit, contributing to an improvement in consolidated net profit. Growth in transaction revenue driven by an increase in the number of corporate accounts, interest income from rising deposit balances in a world with interest rates are contributing to our financial performance. These are key KPIs, the number of business accounts, and the number of BaaS by GMO Aozora contracts. As you can see, our customer base is steadily growing thanks to our number one service.
We have a new announcement regarding the expansion of our customer base. In Tokyo Shoko Research's nationwide survey of main banks, we ranked number one in the growth rate of the number of main bank accounts for three consecutive years. Since the second-place bank recorded just under 40%, our growth rate far exceeded that. We believe this is the result of our efforts to expand services ahead of other banks, lower fees, and develop new features quickly through in-house development. We will continue to repay our customers' loyalty by providing even greater value in terms of both service convenience and price. This is deposit balance. It has accumulated to JPY 1.3 trillion. Let's take another look at the growth drivers of GMO Aozora Net Bank. In 2021, we decided to embark on a second founding focused exclusively on corporate clients.
Since then, we have steadily built a solid foundation, focusing primarily on SMEs and startups. We are number one in new corporate account openings. As the number of customers continues to grow and the volume of transactions per customer increases, deposit balances are rising, leading to a greater contribution to interest income. As a next-generation tech bank, we will continue to serve as a key growth engine for the group. This is crypto assets business. Amid a sluggish market, both revenue and profits declined. Although we are working to maintain a minimal operational structure through cost optimization, we have been unable to fully cover our fixed costs and have recorded a loss. At the same time, we are working to diversify our revenue base by strengthening our stock-type products, such as staking and crypto lending. Last of all, I will explain about shareholder returns.
First, this is our approach to enhancing corporate value. We are committed to both growth and shareholder returns. Based on our long-term plan, 55-year plan, we are aiming to grow profits by 15% or more every period. For shareholder returns, we will continue with dividends every quarter and aim for total shareholder return ratio of 50% or higher. We will also continue to explore the introduction of DOE so that we can specify a minimum dividend amount. Our basic policy on shareholder returns is total return ratio of 50%. The breakdown would be 33% of consolidated net profit as dividends and the remaining 17% through share buyback and cancellation. In principle, share buyback and cancellation will be funded by net profit as of the end of the fiscal year to be executed in the next fiscal year.
Please note that the JPY 30 billion share buyback is being carried out on an exceptional basis, prioritizing shareholder returns following the cash inflow from the sale of GMO Internet shares. We have introduced a quarterly dividend system so that we can return a share of our achievements to shareholders as quickly as possible. The dividend per share for this quarter is JPY 17.8, an increase of JPY 1 YoY. Last of all, this is the progress of share buyback. As was explained earlier, as of the end of July, we are making steady progress with the JPY 30 billion acquisition plan. This concludes the earnings call for today. Thank you for your attention. Internet for everyone.