Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Lytham Partners Fall 2026 Investor Conference. My name is Joe Dorame, Managing Partner at Lytham Partners. I would like to welcome SBC Medical Group, which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker SBC. Today, I will be moderating a fireside chat with Stephen Rodgers, Global Head of Planning and Strategy, and Hikaru Fukui, head of investor relations. Let's get started. Welcome, Stephen and Hikaru.
Great. Thanks for having us, Joe.
All right. To begin, please provide an overview of SBC Medical and what makes the company unique.
Yeah. Thank you very much. We are a medical service organization, managing the aesthetic medical group, largest aesthetic medical group in Japan. We opened the first clinic in 2000, and over 26 years, we are steadily expanding our network. And now, our network is more than 280 and serving 6.9 million patients on annual basis.
One of our strength points is a high repeat rate. Once the customer visits our clinic, many customers visit our clinic continuously. This supports our steady growth. Also, I think that our platform is very efficient and we cover the largest network with a very limited staff and assets. This is also a strength point. Recently, we are utilizing AI to strengthen our platform. This is also a very interesting point.
That's helpful. Thank you. What are the primary growth drivers you're focused on, and how do they translate into near-term execution priorities?
Yeah. Thank you very much. We consider at this moment that our core businesses are Japanese aesthetic medical businesses, including Aesthetic Dermatology and Aesthetic Surgery. I think that this Japanese aesthetic medical, Aesthetic Dermatology area continue to be our core businesses. But at the same time, we consider the longevity is a very good opportunity for us. In order to respond to this market, now we are trying to expand our non-aesthetic area as well, including dentistry, orthopedics, eye care treatment, or reproductive treatments or something like that. Also, we consider that we can leverage our capability internationally, including United States and Southeast Asia. I hope these businesses could be our driver going forward.
That's a good clarification for investors. You have talked about AI. How does AI actually lead to revenue and EPS growth for the company?
Yeah. Thank you very much. For us, AI is not only about cutting cost, it is also about growth. There are three areas where AI can help us. First, it can improve our customer experience. We already have an AI chatbot, and we are developing AI tools for our call center, customer support, and more personalized services. This can help us serve more customers and increase revenue. Second, AI can help us grow our clinic network. For example, we can use data and AI to choose new clinic locations and share our know-how across the group. This helps us open and operate clinics more efficiently. Third, AI helps us grow without adding the same level of cost. As our support to clinic became more variable, we can also increase our service fee. We have already announced about $ 15 million of annual service fee increase.
Importantly, these services require very little additional cost, so a larger part of that additional revenue can flow directly to profit and EPS. That is why we see AI as both a growth driver and margin driver.
Good to hear. How large can non-aesthetic healthcare become?
Yeah. We see a very large opportunity. Today, about 84% of our transaction value comes from aesthetic, and only about 16% comes from non-aesthetic healthcare. More importantly, we do not have to build this business from zero. Over 26 years, we have built a strong operational model in aesthetic, including marketing, customer acquisition, clinic operations, data, and AI. We can use the same model in other areas of healthcare. Our first step is to improve the performance of existing clinics. We want to increase the number of patients and improve our revenue per clinic. At the same time, we will expand our network through M&A. We are not setting a specific target of the mix today. Aesthetic will remain very important, but over time, we expect non-aesthetic healthcare to become a much larger part of SBC and an important second growth engine.
That's worth highlighting for investors. How do you view your overseas business today, especially the U.S. and Southeast Asia?
Hey, thanks, Joe. SBC is definitely more than a Japanese company. We're very global. Right now we've got a partnership in the U.S. as part of our U.S. growth expansion, with a company called OrangeTwist, which is a luxury med spa clinic group with 24 locations across six states here in the U.S. We see them as our primary growth engine into the aesthetic space in America. When we partnered with them, they had 18 clinics. Now they've grown to 24. We're excited about continuing to fuel that growth. Hopefully you'll be seeing OrangeTwist around your neighborhood soon. We've been helping them refine and upgrade their menu treatments and customer experience. We've got Clint Carnell, the CEO, who used to be at HydraFacial leading. A lot of exciting things on that space, so we'll continue to support that.
We're also looking at continuing to leverage our SBC brands that we have in Japan. We have 20 different brands that target specific demographic groups. Sometimes that message gets lost, but we have clinics specifically for men called the Gorilla Clinic, clinics specifically for females, our Ladies Clinic, all kinds of clinics that we have that really target unique different segments of the market. We feel like some of these could resonate really well in the U.S. So we've been working with OrangeTwist to figure out which one of those could really complement what they're doing, and also we could build together here. So you'll probably see some cool potential pilot clinics over the next year as well, in the U.S. We're also looking at, you mentioned Southeast Asia. We have 21 clinics in Singapore, clinics in Vietnam, and also in Thailand.
The Japan brand resonates really well over in that region, just because of the emphasis on safety, quality, compliance. People inherently trust Japanese companies more.
We are continuing to look at acquisitions and growth in that region as well. Aesthetics is continuing to grow there, so we feel excited about that. I would say U.S. is definitely our primary focus.
That is great and very helpful.
Yeah.
What does longevity mean for SBC, and why do you believe SBC can win in this market?
Yeah, thanks. I personally really love longevity. I am wanting to live as long and healthy as I possibly can. In the U.S., you are seeing the longevity market has really exploded over the last few years. You are also seeing this convergence of aesthetic medicine, wellness, longevity, kind of all come together, to create a unique clinic experience in the U.S. One of the things we are looking at is who are the key players and differentiators in the U.S. market that we can partner with, similar to OrangeTwist. We have been looking at that as well. Who are we going to be partnering with? Then leveraging that for Japan. Japan does not have a strong longevity market yet. It is still pretty nascent. We feel like SBC, with our 280 clinics, are really uniquely positioned to capture that market.
We can already use our existing clinic base to implement longevity treatments, as well as creating new longevity clinics by themselves. We feel like we are in a really good position to get first mover advantage in Japan, and then also partner with U.S. companies to fuel their growth here, similar to OrangeTwist.
Great points. How should investors think about the margin profile of the business and its key drivers?
Yeah. Thank you very much. As I mentioned at the beginning of this session, we are basically the medical service organizations. We are very asset-light businesses, and we manage a very wide range of medical corporations with limited asset and with limited chain. I think the most important KPI is, first one is number of locations. If we can successfully expand our network widely, I think that our margin should be hiked. Also the revenue per clinic is also, I think, important. If we enhance our service level to the medical corporations, then medical corporation can get more revenue based on our services. Probably we can increase our service fee to the medical corporations. We are pursuing the both expanding network and increase the revenue per clinic.
It is a great takeaway for investors. Last question. With $184 million of cash, how do you plan to increase shareholder value, and why should investors look at SBC today?
Yeah. Thank you very much. Our first priority is growth. We have a strong cash position, and we plan to use the cash carefully for both organic growth and M&A. We have a long track record of growing businesses after bringing them into SBC Group. We believe M&A can be an important part of our future growth, especially as we expand into more areas of healthcare. At the same time, our goal is to grow EPS steadily. Our business has a high level of recurring revenue and strong margins. As we grow the clinic network, increase service fee, and we use AI to make the platform more scalable, we believe we can continue to grow earnings. The other important point is market awareness. SBC is still not very well known in the U.S. capital market. That is why we are actively meeting investors and increasing our IR activity.
Our initial shareholder base has already grown significantly over the past year, but we believe there is still a lot of room to improve our awareness. We strengthened our foundation in 2025. Domestic growth is now re-accelerating. AI is creating new revenue and profit opportunities. We are building a second growth engine in non-aesthetic healthcare, and we are also starting to see progress overseas. We believe this is a beginning of the next stage of growth for SBC.
Great. Thank you for your time today. We really appreciate it. I believe this has been a helpful discussion, and thanks to everyone for watching. If you have any questions or would like to schedule a meeting with SBC Medical, send me an email at dorame@lythampartners.com. Thank you and have a great day.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.