CyberAgent Aktie

We would like to begin CyberAgent's FY 2026 Third Quarter Earnings Briefing. This earnings briefing is being streamed. With respect to the content we will share with you today, please refer to the disclaimer contained in the earnings briefing material.

The President and CEO, Yamauchi, will take us through the results.

This is the President, Yamauchi. I would like to take you through the FY 2026 3rd quarter results. This quarter, we performed better than we anticipated. Thus, we are announcing an upward revision to our fiscal year forecast today. We have achieved multilayer growth in the Media and IP business, mainly driven by ABEMA, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in April this year. The Advertising business has continued to book high revenue growth rate following the second quarter.

Regarding the Game business, casual games have become a global hit and thus the sales has increased year-on-year. In terms of sales, we booked record high consolidated sales for the third quarter. This is the operating profit. The total OP over the last 3 quarters have increased year-on-year. No major changes to the SG&A expenses. We added 402 brand news in April, bringing our total number of employees to 8,878 on. This is our PL and this is our balance sheet.

Next, we would like to take you through the forecast. We have forecasted that our OP, operating profit will decline year-on-year. But as of the end of the third quarter, we have, for the first time seen a growth in profit. This is the achievement rate against the new forecast. We plan to increase the dividend payout forecast as a result of the upward revision to our forecast.

Next, moving on to the Media and IP business. Sales grew steadily. ABEMA celebrated its 10th anniversary this April, and we proactively invested in content, including anniversary special programs. We are not able to steadily generate profits in the Media and IP segment. Here are some examples of our 10th anniversary programming. We plan to sustain customer interest by planning various content in the fourth quarter as well.

We are currently putting a lot of effort into producing our own original programs and our efforts have borne fruit. We have won numerous awards in Japan as well as in other markets.

From June to July, we saw contribution from our new original programs such as Kyo-Suki and Shuffle Island. Hence, our WAU surpassed 31.37 million. At the moment, we have 3 animation studios in our fall, CyPic, CA Soa and Kurm. In addition to Kagurabachi, which we introduced in the second quarter and the hit movie, Chiikawa The Movie, The Secret of the Mermaid Island produced by Cypic, we are seeing an increase in the pipeline.

Moreover, we took part in one of the largest anime events in the world organized in the U.S. in July. We felt firsthand the high expectations that global market has in our content such as Kagurabachi. We hope to continue to gain knowledge and know-how through our global marketing efforts in North America, Europe, Asia and other regions. We will continue to create original global hit content and build an end-to-end structure spanning content production through monetization.

Next, Internet Advertising business. For the Advertising business, we saw a high growth rate in the third quarter, growing by 8.9% Y-o-Y. We saw record high third quarter sales. The operating profit grew double digits Y-o-Y. We also began selling ChatGPT ads in June, but our Kiwami Forecast TD that we developed has also become compatible, further strengthening our sales activities.

Moreover, we developed ad operation AI and other AI agents dedicated to advertising distribution and operation to further improve our performance. As AI search becomes more widespread, we have endeavored to achieve higher performance in advertising. Thus, we newly established the AI search marketing division in June. We will continue to adapt with agility so that we can deliver new value to our customers.

Now moving on to the Game business. Key titles continue to perform strong and casual games have become a global hit. Thus, we saw 20% Y-o-Y growth this quarter. With respect to the OP, although there is volatility quarter-on-quarter, we significantly increased profits from the first to third quarter, booking JPY 50.9 billion.

On July 23, we began providing the title hololive Dreams, we jointly developed with COVER. It surpassed 1 million downloads on the first day and have come in at #1 in the sales rankings in all of the stores released, including Apple, Google Play and Steam.

Released simultaneously worldwide on July 9, Granblue Fantasy: Relink-Endless Ragnarok has been highly acclaimed both in Japan and overseas with both the new title and its predecessor ranking among the top-selling titles on Steam. Going forward, we will continue to maximize the longevity of our existing titles while pursuing global hit titles.

Lastly, our medium- to long-term strategy. Our key strength include ABEMA powerful user acquisition engine, one of Japan's leading Internet advertising businesses and the country's #1 smartphone game business. By leveraging the strength in combination, we will create globally competitive IP and maximize synergies across the group. This concludes my explanation. Thank you very much for listening.

This concludes CyberAgent's FY 2026 Third Quarter Earnings Briefing. Should you have any questions, please reach out to the IR team. Thank you for watching today.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

We would like to begin CyberAgent's FY 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Briefing. This session is being video streamed. With respect to the content we will be sharing with you today, please refer to the disclaimer included in the presentation material. Our President, Yamauchi will take us through the results.

This is President, Yamauchi. I would like to take you through the FY 2026 second quarter results. Overall, we had a very good result, very good quarter. We saw record high sales. And for the second quarter, we saw record high second quarter OP as well. With respect to the Media and IP business, it is doing well with Abema starting to contribute to profit. With respect to the ad business, a large client has left, but we managed to fill the gap ahead of schedule. And we have seen sales and profits increase once again, record high -- we saw record high sales and double -- we saw -- also saw double-digit growth Y-o-Y. With respect to the game business, we did very -- we did well with anniversary events and global expansion. We also saw significant increases in revenue and profit -- sales and profits.

We continue to see upward trajectory in terms of sales and record high sales during this quarter. We also saw record high OP in the past due to the unparalleled hit game, Umamusume, but we booked a record high Q2 OP this period. And this is the SG&A expenses, and we welcomed 402 new employees and the number of employees has trended on schedule. And this is the P&L. And this is the balance sheet. With respect to the forecast, as you can see, we are trending well. Overall, we have achieved the lower end of the forecast range during our first half. And we are certain we'll be able to overdeliver on our forecast. But things may be a little slower during the second half. And as it is difficult to accurately revise our forecast, we have decided to keep the current forecast.

With respect to the Media and IP business, we have continued to strengthen our foundations while increasing sales. It is doing well. With respect to the OP, Abema has started to contribute to profits as our OP has multiplied by 1.7x Y-o-Y. As part of our programming strategy, we are putting even greater efforts into our original program, and we have come to be known for creating strong original series. We aired 30-hour program to celebrate our 10th anniversary and it received over 200 million views.

As announced the other day, we will be producing the anime of Kagurabachi, a popular Weekly Shonen Jump comic, which will go on air April 2027. We will continue to establish a structure that will enable us to operate in an end-to-end business, including the creation, distribution and merchandising of original IPs and movies that will become a global hit. Next, moving on to the advertising business. We have finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel ahead of schedule after our large-scale clients departure, and we will continue to increase revenue and profits from here on. The operating profit has significantly improved as well. We will utilize our advertising effectiveness to expand our market share. And we will take advantage of our investment in AI-related advertising technologies to expand our reach.

Next, moving on to the Game business. In the second quarter, we do have many anniversaries. So the game business trended very well and we have increased profits as well. The global sales have increased by 3.5x year-on-year. We have put in place the right organization to offer existing titles over the long term, and we are developing new titles over the midterm. Advanced signup for hololive Dreams is tracking well. Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok will launch on July 9. We have high hopes for this title as the previous series sold more than 2 million units worldwide.

In terms of the mid- to long-term strategy, as each of our businesses continue to establish a stable foundation, we aim to build a Multilayer business structure centered around IT and further strengthen collaboration across our businesses. This concludes my explanation. Thank you very much.

We would like to conclude CyberAgent's FY 2026 second quarter earnings briefing. If you have any questions, please reach out to the IR team. Thank you very much for watching today.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

We would like to begin CyberAgent's FY 2026 First Quarter Earnings Briefing Session. This session is being streamed. With respect to the content we will be sharing today, please refer to the disclaimer included within the presentation material.

President, Yamauchi, will take you through our results.

My name is Yamauchi. I have become the new President in December. From this session onwards, I will be sharing our results with you.

Overall, we've done well in Q1 and FY 2026 is off to a solid start. Sales has increased by 14% and the OP has increased 2.8 fold year-on-year.

Although we have made proper investments in Media & IP, we have increased profits and this business has started to contribute to our results. We have seen significant increases in the Game business profit, thanks to the performance of existing titles as well as global business.

With respect to Advertising, in the third quarter of FY 2025, we saw 1 large client leave, and this will have impact on each quarter for 1 year. However, the situation has begun to improve in the recent months. We believe we will be able to get back on to our gross trajectory next quarter and see strong growth from the third quarter of this fiscal year.

Our first quarter tends to be weaker, but we have seen powerful growth this year. For the first quarter, we have seen record high results.

We also booked record high OP for Q1 this fiscal year.

With such a great Q1, our fiscal year looks bright.

SG&A expenses follow the typical year-on-year trend.

Here are the transcending numbers employees. We will welcome 377 new graduates in April.

Here is the P&L.

And this is our balance sheet.

We would like to move on to the FY 2026 forecast. As Fujita explained during the previous earnings briefing, the results for the Game business is difficult to forecast. So we have provided our forecast as a range.

As we've had a great start in the first quarter, the OP achievement is ahead of plans. We hope to continue to deliver solid results for the rest of the fiscal year.

Now moving on to each segment. Sales has continued to show strong growth over the long term. OP was JPY 4.9 billion for the quarter, so we have started to see decent profits. We didn't generate profits by reining in costs. We made necessary investments in content while increasing profits, so we have realized quality growth.

Until now, AbemaTV on its own was not profitable. But this quarter, it has become profitable. The fact that we were able to reach the breakeven point without balanced contraction without overdoing things, it's a good sign, and we have even higher expectations for this business. We now have 1,000 advertisers on Abema. If you look at this graph, you can see that the FY 2022 workup coverage was a turning point.

Centered around Abema, we will continue to create content and establish other monetization streams, including gamification.

Our Anime Studio, CygamesPictures will be transferring into the Media & IP segment. By consolidating our group's trend, we hope to create even better content.

Next is the Internet Ad business. As I mentioned earlier today, we have seen impact from the departure of 1 large client, and it may seem as we mentioned this in each session, but we will continue to see an impact for 1 year. This will end next quarter, and we believe things have started to look up.

Overall, we will see positive change in the next quarter, so we will get back on our growth trajectory 2 quarters from now.

With regards to the OP, we have seen positive trends over the last couple of months. We hope to further improve our profitability going forward.

In terms of new businesses, we are attempting to fully automate the creation of video ads. We are servicing every aspect of advertising using AI. We began our foray into AI quite early. Drawing on this trend, we aim to become an agency that can maximize the effectiveness of our ads.

Next, moving on to the Game business. With respect to sales, the titles we released in the previous fiscal year continued to do well. First quarter tends to be a tough quarter without many anniversaries, but we saw a dramatic increase in sales year-on-year. With the increase in sales, we saw -- we also saw a significant increase in OP.

The title you see here have in particular, enabled us to perform well in global markets. This fiscal year, there will be many noteworthy topics including anime and movies. We also have new titles planned for release, so we have high expectations for this business this year.

This is 1 of the highly expected titles. It will be released across the world simultaneously. And today, we release information about this title. GRANBLUE FANTASY: Relink sold more than 2 million copies and we will be releasing a new title of this series, GRANBLUE FANTASY: Relink - Endless Ragnarok on July 9, simultaneously around the world.

Lastly, our mid- to long-term strategy. As it has been in the past, we aim to become a highly possible company over the mid- to long term with the continuous growth of the Media & IP business with this now profitable Abema, a stable advertising business and a game business with many hit titles.

This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your kind attention.

This concludes CyberAgent's FY 2026 First Quarter Earnings Briefing Session. Should you have any questions, please contact the IR team. Thank you very much for joining us today.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

We would like to begin CyberAgent's FY 2025 Full Year Earnings Briefing. This earnings briefing is being streamed. With respect to the content we will be sharing with you today, please refer to the disclaimer contained within the presentation material.

President, Fujita will take us through the earnings results.

I'm the President, Fujita. I would like to take you through the full year earnings briefing for FY 2025. First of all, this is the overall results. So overall, this fiscal year, we did well. We did make an upward revision, but we even surpassed those upward revision, OP increased considerably and sales grew for the 28th consecutive year. Individually, media and IP business, since ABEMA was launched, we have been investing quite significantly in ABEMA.

But for the first time in 10 years, OP achieved profitability and IP business has been a focal area, but we continue -- we have continued to make investments in this area as well, and we are making progress. And with respect to the advertising business, we did see a large client leave.

However, overall, we have continued to expand this business. OP, we had a little bit of a difficulty, but we are implementing measures. And with respect to the game business, we released 7 new games this fiscal year and multiple games became a new hit.

OP grew dramatically as well due to other payment options. And this is a graph of our 28th consecutive year sales growth. So for the 25 fiscal years, ever since we went public for 28 consecutive years, we have continued to grow steadily.

And we have been -- we have booked the second highest OP this fiscal year, especially Umamusume was a huge hit, but we even recovered from the huge hit that Umamusume was in the past.

And with respect to the SG&A expenses, our performance outpaced our plans. So we did pay out a special bonus at the end of the fiscal year. These are the number of employees. We have continued to increase the number of employees as we have done in the past.

This is the P&L. We have continued to invest for ABEMA for a long time, but the profitability has improved. So net income, we are seeing a great performance in terms of net income. There's nothing noteworthy about the balance sheet.

Now I would like to take you through the FY 2026 forecast. We will be presenting an OP forecast as a range. So 2026 first quarter, November is the first quarter. The game business is doing well at the moment, but it's quite difficult to forecast a year from now.

So at the moment, we are going to present an OP range. Moving on to the individual businesses. First, starting with Media and IP business. This has continued to expand powerfully. So we have done JPY 231.5 billion.

So it's gotten to quite a sizable business. I already mentioned this during the highlights, but media and IP sector has achieved profitability after 10 years since ABEMA's launch, and we have invested quite significantly in this area, but we have booked profitability -- we have achieved profitability, and these are the results by quarter.

And if you look at the OP by quarter, this is how it looks. This is the trends in WAU. In recent months, we have focused on original programs. So our own IP has high value. Many people watch them. So we believe that the quality of our original program has continued to improve. Vardi programs this fiscal year did very well. And WAU has doubled year-over-year. So it's a huge improvement.

So time for chance and there are a couple of IPs that we have nurtured since ABEMA was launched, and they've become big hits. And also, we have new programs as well that are doing well. And we are working on dramas as well.

And we believe that the quality of each drama has become even higher, and we will be releasing a new series, Scandal Eve, and we have high expectations for this. This will be released on the 19th of next week.

And we have strengthened our Disney+, Wowow, DAZN, Green Channel and Downtown Plus as well. We've actually worked on fortifying our external partnerships to gain more membership.

And overall, Anime Studio Kurm was established in November. We have high expectations for that, and we have a very wide range lineup, a great lineup of IP studios. We wanted to establish a framework where we can come up with our own original work and monetize, but we want to, of course, use ABEMA as a central axis and continue to expand this business.

Moving on to the Internet advertising business. Internet advertising business, we did lose a large client halfway through the year. But overall, we continue to expand powerfully. So we're still expanding. On the other hand, OP is not growing as strongly.

In this industry as well, AI is dramatically changing the market, the environment. So we are actively investing in AI and new business as well. And we lost a high profit business. So we want to implement various measures.

We have been implementing various measures to improve our profitability. So we hope that those initiatives will bear fruit going forward, and these are the trends by quarter. And this is the quarterly OP. Internet ad business as well.

AI, we're seeing significant changes due to AI. So we hope to transform this into a growth opportunity as well. So we are implementing various initiatives to take advantage of this opportunity, especially from search to gen AI, users behavior is changing.

So that is a key area that we are focusing on. So we're making sure that we're addressing this change as well. So we are establishing new marketing methods, advertising methods. Moving on to the game business.

With respect to the game business, we have overcome the impact from Umamusume and new hit games as well, we released many of them towards the end of the year, latter half of the year, but they have become great hits.

So we're seeing this very clean growth trajectory. And OP has year-on-year doubled. So we have seen significant increases in OP. So this is the results by quarter and OP trends by quarter is on this page.

In 2025, we released 7 new games Gundam, Shadowverse, Umamusume, English version had done very well, became huge hits. So we are actually increasingly producing more hits. So our hit rate is increasing. And overseas sales has gotten to TWD 20 billion in 1 quarter.

So times 4 would be JPY 80 billion, so it's become quite a large size. Over the mid- to long term, Internet ad business is stably growing and the media and IP business has become profitable.

So we hope to create a solid foundation and continue to generate new hits with games and build a highly profitable business model. So we would like to continue with the strategy.

And lastly, we have announced today that the President, a new President will be appointed at the General Shareholders' Meeting next month, the President, we would like to pass the baton to Yamauchi as the next President.

The reason being we have the Ah! Media interview as well as the blog, and you'll be able to understand why we are making this change if you can watch and read this content. So please take a look when they become available. This concludes my explanation. Thank you very much. This concludes FY 2025 full year earnings briefing for CyberAgent. Should you have any questions, please reach out to the IR team. Thank you for watching today.

[Statements in English on this transcript were

spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]