Nihon M&A Center Holdings Inc
TSE:2127
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Nihon M&A Center Holdings Inc
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[Interpreted] Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our FY '20 Full Year Earnings Conference Call. This conference call is being broadcast both in Japanese and in English simultaneously globally.
I am Suguru Miyake, President and Representative Director. With me today are Mr. Naraki, Senior Managing Director; Mr. Otsuki, Managing Director; and Mr. Takeuchi, Director. All of us are going to give you the reports.
First of all, including the financial results, which were announced today, I would like to give you the summary of the business results of the full year FY '23. And I'd like to give you the good reports on our fiscal year '23 business results. And this is our holding purpose, to make the optical -- optimal M&A closer to you. And we always aim to connect hopes and dreams for the best M&A experience in Japan and then the world.
And recently, the -- when the industry is faced with different reputations and different issues are coming up, so we would like to further focus on our purpose.
Over the past 3 years, in FY '21, we marked 30th anniversary titled EXCEED30, and we try to go beyond ourselves and go beyond the 30 years of history of the company. However, in February of the same fiscal year, we've discovered accounting misconduct, and we had to take different measures. And in March, we had to take disciplinary actions against about 90 employees. And most of all, we had inconvenienced shareholders, and we gave concerns to shareholders. So to prevent such incident in FY '22, we spent the whole year to shift ourselves to compliance-centric management. We welcomed Mr. Takeda, Chief Compliance Officer, to shift ourselves to compliance first management. In FY '23, we gathered the sense of unity among the employees, and that was the focus. And starting April, we started the new growth period.
So first, I'd like to give you the reports on fiscal year ending March 2024. In the first quarter, we lagged very much and worried you very much. But in the third and fourth quarter, we made a huge recovery, and we ended by increasing revenues and profit year-on-year basis.
And if you look at the revenues, we exceeded the guidance. It was supported by the sense of unity among employees. And I think the sense of unity of employees and the passion of employees are demonstrated in the number of transactions closed, which marked a record high in our history. And at the same time, we could maintain a good level of M&A sales per transaction. So of course, M&A sales transaction multiplied by transactions closed to make sales and sales exceeded the forecast by JPY 44.1 billion. Last year, it was JPY 41.3 billion, so up by 6.8%. The guidance was JPY 44 billion, so we reached 100.3% of that.
However, when it comes to ordinary profit, if you compare over the previous year, it was JPY 16.5 billion from JPY 15.4 billion, so it grew by 6.8%. But if you compare with our original guidance, we were less by JPY 500 million, and we only achieved 97.2% against the plan, for which I apologize.
However, the P/L position has recovered a great deal. That's the feeling [Technical Difficulty] 7.4%, so it was equivalent to the last year's level, and we will work harder to make it closer to 40%. And overall, the transactions closed at a value almost JPY 1,146 million compared to last year's JPY 1,050 million. So approximately, it grew by 10% by the efforts of our employees.
And if you look at the M&A sales per transaction, it was JPY 37.5 million last year, and it went down slightly to JPY 37.2 million. So we could finish at almost the same level as the previous year. I'm happy about that.
And revenues of the fourth quarter only were JPY 12.9 billion compared to the previous year. We grew 13.5%, and the number of transactions for just fourth quarter, we marked 350 transactions. It grew 18.2% year-on-year. And ordinary profit grew from JPY 4.4 billion to JPY 4.8 billion. And so, in particular, sales and transactions closed, we marked record high for 1 quarter. So we have gained back our confidence slightly.
So this was the review of last fiscal year. And we could increase the sales due to higher number of transactions closed and maintaining average revenue per transaction. And the SG&A, which was an issue for us, was controlled very much to increase our profit. So P/L structure was improved very much. Having said that, we still have a lot of support staff. And by streamlining and introducing DX, we would like to reduce the ratio of support staff, and we would like to have a 65% ratio of consultants or customer-facing people among all employees. And I hope that you will understand that the balance between direct and indirect employees is improving.
Now, cost of sales, the labor cost, personnel cost, is increasing. However, transportation costs and business trip costs were not just reduced simply, but we try to comply with the regulation and rules. And by doing that, we didn't reduce the activity of consultants. We secured and ensured the minimum amount of activity as one of the KPIs. So while increasing the volume of activity, we could reduce the transportation costs by, for example, JPY 270 million.
And in terms of referral fee, it increased by JPY 920 million. Of course, we increased the number of referrals from institutional -- financial institutions and partner accounting firms, which is a good thing. However, we have to increase the direct sourcing transactions accordingly. Otherwise, the profit margin will be declining. So direct marketing strategy or direct sourcing transactions or mandates are very important for us at this time. And in FY '24, current year, this has become our main focus.
And SG&A expenses were controlled very well. So the ordinary profit margin was kept at the same level as the last year. I'm happy about that. However, I'm not content with the results. The ordinary profit margin has to be much closer to 40%, so P/L structure has to be even further improved.
Now, this is the results, but let's talk about this fiscal year. The most important KPI is the new transaction negotiations. We call it negotiation opens, so how many mandates we have received in pipeline and how much we have seen the increase in the transaction negotiations. So in that sense, the third quarter increased from 255 to 298. And in the fourth quarter, it increased from 249 of last year to 270 this year. So 298 and 270, respectively. will be closed in the first, second and third quarters in this fiscal year. So looking at these numbers of transactions, as well as the conversion rate, we believe that we have started very well.
Of course, M&A has another factor; that is the success rate. Even if you have many starts, if you have too many breakdowns of breaks, then you can't close them. So you have to control and manage the processes and quality and you have to have a higher success rate while shortening the lead time. So we would like to do them both in parallel. And the Quality headquarters are in charge of these.
And in terms of the mandates increase, and then the transaction value tend to get lower. So to prevent that, we have to secure the large mandates, mid-cap mandates. Compared to the last year, the total number didn't really increase. It was only from 167 to 169. We wanted to reach about 180. But what was good about that is that large mandates increased from 66% to 88%. So it, from the success fee, should be around JPY 150 million from both sides. So that increased from 66% to 88%. So we believe that transaction value should be maintained around JPY 38 million per deal.
Now, these are the record of transactions closed sales and new mandates and the quarter number over the past 3 years. As you can see, the number of total numbers increased total number of transactions closed from 996 to JPY 1,050 million and JPY 1,146 million. And if you just look at the fourth quarter, it increased from EUR 296 million to EUR 350 million. And mandates, it was 1,192 and increased from the last year. And in the fourth quarter, it increased from 301 to 327, so it increased. So this year, we would like to increase the number of sell-side mandates. And it looks as if it's declining, but that's not the case because the ones with less than JPY 100 million, the smaller mandates, have been transferred to our group company patterns, and they take care of them. In FY '22, 1,225, but we didn't really have any transfer, but we had 1,184. It looks it is declining, but we transferred 83 cases to Batonz. And we had 92 cases but 160 were transferred to Batonz. So as for M&A, Nihon M&A Center has maintained the number of mandates.
And this is the summary of what I've just explained.
And for balance sheet, we have maintained a healthy balance sheet. In different senses, one is the current assets have been accumulated steadily. Having said that, the excessive accumulation will result in inefficient capital management. So for this FY '23, we conducted share buybacks twice with JPY 7 billion and another JPY 7 billion. So together, JPY 14 billion of buyback was conducted. And as a result, ROE of last fiscal year, 18.7%, and this year 21.8%, so we made a good recovery. ROE for a company like us has to be maintained over 20%, I believe. So with that sense assets situation, of course, we do need assets for uncertainties, unexpected things, like COVID-19 or natural disasters. Under such circumstances, we need abundant assets to maintain the corporation. And of course, another reason is to be prepared for M&A opportunities. We are always willing to take actions to acquire companies where we can expect synergy effect. And also, we also -- so for those, we would like to secure good current assets, optimal current assets, but we have no intention to make it excessive because our ROE will be deteriorated if that's the case. But in that sense, we believe that we managed our BS very well.
And for hiring, we have been very active. FY March '23, it was 622, which includes Batonz of 15 people. But this year, we didn't include that. So if you subtract 15, 607 was the actual number. And we could increase that from that to 645, but we still have some issues here. Although we were very active in hiring, but we have to secure quality and volume. We still have a room for those for hiring. So both volume and quality, we reviewed our activity and methods since last autumn.
And for this current fiscal year, we would like to increase 100 employees both in quality and volume. And for that, we combined recruitment and development, and we are expanding the recruitment events since this year. And myself, Mr. Otsuki, Mr. Takeuchi and Mr. Suzuki, Head of Sales Headquarters, the four us participate in recruitment sessions on weekends almost every week. And of course, referral hiring has been reinforced, and we are going to increase the number of different events in this fiscal year.
And also, we would like to reinforce recruitment branding. At the same time, we would accelerate development and improve retention rates. Even if we increase the number of hiring, if we lose people, we would just incur the liabilities. So for the current FY, we were able to increase the number of general managers to 36 and group leaders to 60. So per person, the number of employees to manage has some limitation because M&A business has to have a micro control for each transaction. So 14 to 15 employees per group is the optimal. So we could really achieve that level this year, and we hope that the results will be ideal as well. And also, we are offering a varied career. And by doing that, the experienced consultants could stay with us longer.
Now on to shareholder returns, this is a very important topic for our company because shareholder returns, by the end of the mid-term business plan, we have a minimum payout ratio of 60% -- dividend payout ratio of 60%. We have committed to shareholders about maintaining 60%. In this fiscal year, at least JPY 23 to be paid as ordinary dividend. But at the same time, shareholder benefit program will end, and we have put an end to this. So this may be some trouble to retail investors. But to compensate for that this fiscal year, we plan to pay JPY 6 of special dividend. And that brings the total dividend amount per year to be JPY 29. And the forecast dividend payout ratio will be 83.6%, and this is our new dividend policy for the new year.
As to ROE, ROE experienced a temporary drop. But as I explained last year, ROE has recovered to over 20%. And in addition, by improving dividend payout ratio, we would like to target mid-20%, such as 24% or 25%, and we think that we can come back to 24%, 25% ROE.
As to our share price and market cap and share ownership, as for market cap, we have been causing inconvenience to shareholders. Our market cap is not really recovery, but the signs of recovery, we think that we are starting to see bigger signs of recovery. And this has to be demonstrated through our actual performance, financial performance, that we are back to our previous stable, high-growth period. Our market cap is already high, and this has been led by our stable high growth. So this time, it is the utmost resolution to recover through this improvement and improvement in growth rate.
And we will also expand our IR activities so more investors more accurately understand about our current situations as well as our forecast and what kind of company we would like to be. Last fiscal year, we went to the U.S. and Europe on our IR road show for a direct conversation with shareholders. And last year, we had IR meetings with 50 investor companies on IR roadshow, and we would like to do that this year as well. And we plan to go to the U.S. in June and Europe in November, and we plan to visit and have conversation with about 50 investors on those trips. And not only that, we will be fully implementing on sound dividend payment and other returns. And last year, we did do a share repurchase and this fiscal year, the special dividend payment of JPY 6 is decided. So that's it for -- I think this shows the share ownership of retail individual investors, 30%; financial institutions, 25%; and foreign, 30%. We think that this is a quite balanced structure of shareholders.
We would like to improve our market cap. And for that, all of our management, top management, is looking towards the same direction of improving market cap.
About our forecast of financial performance, for the current fiscal year sales, JPY 48.9 billion is our target. And this is -- would be a growth rate of 10.6% or ordinary profit of JPY 17 billion. JPY 17 billion operating profit is the forecast for the new fiscal year.
And as to the ratio between first half and second half, that would be 40% to 60%, which is in the first and the second half in sales.
And as to operating profit, or rather ordinary profit, 40% and 60% for the first half and second half. However, that's more [ than net sales ], but ordinary profit is 26% and 74% for ordinary profit. It's because we have a larger fixed cost than variable cost. And so we have the 25% equal fixed cost for all the year, but we have about 50% of costs in the first half. But the sales ratio is different, 40% to 60% in first half and second half. So the cost ratio and the profit amount and ratio would be different. But as a full year, we would like to have JPY 17 billion of profit, in operating and ordinary profit.
And compared to our mid-term business plan, as to sales, we would like to improve our sales -- or rather, we exceeded our sales and slightly exceeded to be JPY 44.1 billion, but JPY [ 15.6 ] billion was the actual result, and we didn't get to reach our target. And in mid-term business plan, JPY 48.7 billion, but JPY 48.9 billion, and this is the sales forecast that we have newly announced. However, ordinary profit [ in ] mid-term business plan is JPY 18.7 billion, but we have decided to have our consolidated ordinary profit forecast to be JPY 17 billion. And in total, in FY 2027, we plan to have sales of JPY [ 26.2 ] billion with JPY 3.5 billion in ordinary profit forecast, and these remain to be the same as before.
As to sales, we are doing better than on our original plan. So we now have a bigger confidence about achieving this sales target. And as to the reason why we have set ordinary profit forecast to be JPY 17 billion, this is because of our strategic growth investment. By reducing such investment, we can reduce cost and also, by reducing cost, our ordinary profit can be better because our sales are picking up. However, if we cut back on investments and costs, that would damage our potential growth rate in 3 to 4 years' time. Therefore, as a first step, we have catched up on sales. So as to the next, second step, we would like to conduct the strategic growth investments. And on the third step, we would like to catch up on ordinary profit. These are the 3 steps that we would like to take.
For FY 2023, ordinary profit ratio was 37%. But for the new fiscal year, we plan to reach 34.8%. And this would be lower than FY '23 by 2.6 points. And this is because, first of all, of recruitment-related investment. And this includes new ground [ rates ]. Including new [ ground rates ], we would like to increase the number by 120 on a net basis. And in 2 to 3 years' time, we would like to improve the per-head sales to be jPY 40 million or even JPY 80 million. So there will be a significant contribution from this investment.
And as to the other investments, such as seminar and direct marketing, this is the kind of strategic investment that we would like to focus on this fiscal year. In this way, our gross margin will improve. And that will eventually improve our ordinary profit margin as well.
And also digital transformation investment is planned. For example, in order to use data with the sales force, we would like to utilize Bring Out. This is the AI-based negotiation service -- negotiation analysis service, and also Compass, an advanced version of Compass for regional banks, mega banks, securities companies and accounting firms. We would like to increase the number of referrals from such alliance partners through this V-Compass system. And we believe that this would also improve the per-head transactions.
And as to operations investment, for example, we would like to have our local entity abroad. And in order to establish local entities, we need to recruit some members, and the number depends on the country. But we would like to satisfy those requirements, and that will allow us to do more full-fledged business investments.
And this fiscal year, we will implement some investments such as the establishment of [ New Fund ], and that will contribute to us as higher growth in 3 years' time or so. And that is the reason why we're planning to have a slightly lower ordinary profit margin this fiscal year. And it's a must to improve our productivity. And this will be achieved through recruitment, education and DX. And per-head M&A sales has bottomed out for recovery.
The target of sales headquarters, we would like to set the target to be JPY 100 million. It's difficult to target JPY 100 million per head, so we cannot commit on this target. But we are striving towards this target, internal target, of JPY 100 million per head.
Related activities have progressed very smoothly. Of all, for example, J-Advisers, Tokyo Pro market has progressed very nicely. And for the entire industry, 40 companies were IPOs. And of that, we supported or sponsored 17 companies, and we are becoming a leading company in this area.
In the fourth quarter, we supported 8 companies too for IPO. And this IPO has a very strong momentum.
And on funds, Search Fund Japan started the Fund #2. And also, with nice IRR, we managed a wonderful exit. And on the part of J-FUN, Japan private -- Japan Investment Fund is working very well, and we could make a very good exit, one, in Kumamoto, and Fujibambi was the company. JR Kyushu acquired this company, which really realized regional rejuvenation. And so this activity at Japan Investment Fund has become very active and 14 M&A have been closed overseas.
And we also decided to invest in an overseas M&A intermediary firm. KMX is the name of the company. And with that, in addition to 5 offices in ASEAN, we started our operation in East Asia in Korea.
As to topics, the second funding of the company and business succession are the 2 major topics. And that led us to build a holding company structure. And under this holding company, we have management meeting yearly (sic) [ weekly ] where everybody has discussion for decision-making. So we are making decisions driven by discussions and that has been improving the quality of the decisions made. And under this management meeting, we have M&A strategic meeting chaired by Takeuchi-san, this person. Takeuchi-san manages M&A-related matters.
And as to financial strategic meeting, the financial area related decision-making, this person, Otsuki-san, makes decision and he chairs this meeting. And last fiscal year, the core company in the financial area, Japan Investment Fund, President became Atsuki-san from last fiscal year. And for the new fiscal year, M&A-related core company, Nihon M&A Center, is now newly led by Takeuchi-san, the new President of Nihon M&A Center, while I manage the holding company, and I have 2 supporting ministers next to me. And since this is a good opportunity, I would like to get a few comments from them.
[Interpreted] I am the person responsible of the financial area. I am Otsuki.
About the financial area, the main business is the fund business in financial area. As M&A center, we have 3 funds, 2 PE and one search fund. And we already are starting to see some exit mandates, and this business has made a full start.
And last fiscal year, we established a new fund. And in the ongoing fiscal year, we will establish a new fund company, GP. But a fund is not just by establishing it. We need to establish the fund and make investment. And also, we need to lead project to an exit. And that is why -- when we can recognize profit. So we would like to go toward that stage.
[Interpreted] Hello. I am the person responsible of M&A. I am Takeuchi.
For the second founding of the company, stable, high growth rate. I know that this is the expectation from shareholders, and I will do my best to return to the stable, high growth rate.
[Interpreted] Thank you for the comments. Now, major topics. We used to have a division-based organization of 5 divisions, but we know that we need to have more detailed management and development for more detailed strategy implementation. So we have shifted from 5 divisions to 11 mission-based channels. And we also established 37 departments. And under the 37 departments, we now have 60 group leaders. And this allows us to have more detailed strategy implementation, as well as detailed management than before. And this new structure turned out to be much better than we had thought. So we have got 37 department managers and the channel has as well 11 channel heads. And this, I believe, will be a good contribution this fiscal year.
And as to branding activities, we identified a new Chief Branding Officer. And this Chief Branding Officer, is Ms. Kaoru Nakagawa, leader external/internal branding. For internal branding, we created this new mascot. This is the blue bird that brings happiness, which is the optimum M&A. And the name of this mascot, we are soliciting proposals from employees. Through the establishment of this character, we are hoping that we can do better branding internally as well for the generation of attachments, employees' attachment, to our company and direct marketing strategy for central area, local area and the industry-specific strategy.
What we want to do is to strengthen our direct marketing structure. Business success seminars are held nationwide, and growth strategy seminars are held as well. So we are addressing both sellers and buyers candidates. And we put more focus on these direct marketing activities this fiscal year. And we have the consultation office, which has been highly appreciated, in Niigata, Miyagi and [ FM ] - [ Miyagi FM ] is the name of the broadcasting agent that we run our commercials.
And as to industry-specific ones, we reorganized our structure. And IT transportations are the sectors undergoing restructuring, and this is taken care of in the Industrial Restructuring department.
And as to dispensing pharmacies and medical and nurse care department, we have decided to split these 2 departments -- as part of health care channel from the former sector division.
And another topic is the establishment of joint venture with Higo Bank and E.Sun Venture Capital of Taiwan. The newly established joint venture is a M&A-related joint company. And the name is Kyushu M& Advisors.
So this is how I have reported on how we did last fiscal year. And from this point onward, I would like to take questions from the participants. We welcome your questions.
Now, the next session is Q&A and we receive your questions using chat functions. And due to time restrictions, we may not be able to answer all of your questions. Now we will move on to Q&A.
[Interpreted] We have prepared usual questions. So first one is how many sell-side mandates outstanding at the end of March?
[Interpreted] Thank you very much for your question -- for the question. At the end of March, the outstanding sell-side mandates, 1,850 mandates, in '22 March, 1,780, and in the following -- before that, 1,560. Excuse me, correction, at the end of March, 1,930, and at March 2023, 1,850. So it increased by 4.2%. And before that, in '22, 1,780, and before that, 1,560. So I think it is growing in a steady manner.
[Interpreted] The next question, I believe that the company has been proactively conducting consultant recruiting activities from the beginning of the year, but the stand-alone number of consultants decreased Q-on-Q. And please share with us the reason for this. Also please talk about the number of recruitments and the number of people who left your company.
[Interpreted] About recruiting, as I said before, we never think that our recruitment activity is making good progress. As to turnover, we do not think that we implemented a perfect measure. And that's what we used to think. But for now, we think that we were able to improve on turnover numbers.
And as to last fiscal year, the whole of the last fiscal year, as to the number of the people who we recruited, that was 150. We recruited 150 people last fiscal year. And the people who left our company was 108. And also, we have people who shifted department, and that's, for example, from consultants to staff. So including the turnover and internal shuffles, [ 102 ] people was the decrease. So a net increase of consultants was 38.
About the reason for this result, starting with recruitment, we didn't pay enough attention at the beginning, now we think. For FY '22, we were in the middle of the incident, so we halted recruiting. And from the latter half of 2022, we resumed recruiting activities. And last fiscal year, we fully -- we thought that we fully restarted recruiting activities, but that's what we thought. And we were fully focused on recovering our financial performance, and we didn't get to pay full attention to recruitment. For example, we didn't have many referral recruiting-related events.
And as to recruitment events, senior management were not proactively involved in the recruitment events. So in both quantity and quality, recruitment was low. And without good quality, new members cannot catch up, and that impacts the turnover ratio. So we introduced 2-in-1 system to stop that worsening turnover-related numbers. And that helped some members, but there were many members who still found it difficult to catch up with the incumbent personnel. And out of 108 members, 54 members are the first- to the third-year employees at our company. And when more people find our job interesting, then the likelihood or the ratio of the people who stay with our company improves.
And from last year, our senior management started to physically come to our company, even on Saturdays and Sundays, to join in on recruiting events in the morning, and we have done candidate interviewing in the afternoon where we make immediate decision-making on recruitment. And this triggered a start of better quality and quantity recruitments. And there are people who decided to join this event because they can directly see our senior management -- that at least have immediate decisions of recruitment.
And we also started to focus on branding, branding activities. That's a clear difference.
And as to turnover rate, we used to see relatively many veteran, experienced people who left our company. And that was a tough negative impact on us, and that impacted our financial performance and the atmosphere internally. So we thought about why this occurred. The first reason we came up with is the end of stock option system. And the second reason we identified is that this was not really with the people who smoothly became group leaders, but people who were rather slow to be promoted, started to review how they would like to live their lives at the age of 36 or 37 and they -- some of them decided to leave our company, therefore, from the fall of last year.
First, as part of Azabu project, I go to a restaurant in Azabu with 4 to 5 middle management for dining with me. And in that restaurant, we talk about the career vision of each members, of 4 to 5 participants each time. But this is not just with me. Otsuki-san and Takeuchi-san also do the same activity. And as to Takeuchi-san, we used to have more than 30 group leaders last year. And this year, we have more than 60 group leaders. But Mr. Takeuchi dines with those members to talk about their career vision. And this initiative has been effective in reducing the number of people who left our company.
And as to the people who are in their seventh to the ninth year, we were able to reduce the number of people who left our company from [ 75 to 41 ] for each quarter, and we only had 1 person who left our company in this range of experience at our company. And this is a very good result given that only one people left our company in the most recent quarter.
[Interpreted] Next question, it seems the FY '24 numbers are weighted to the second half. Could you give us the background?
[Interpreted] Thank you very much for the question. It's not extreme weighting because it's only 40% versus 60%. But ideal should be 45% versus 55%. And if we can make further improvement, it should be 55% to 45% that we can make good results in the first half. However, as our business cycle, usually, we make momentum in the first half. And in December, we always make the highest peak. That is the typical cycle of our business. So from that sense, in this fiscal year, oh, I'm talking about the last fiscal year, we worked very hard in the fourth quarter with the 350 transactions closed.
So of course, we would like to kick off a rocket start from the beginning of fiscal year in April to increase the number of transactions. However, we always need some ups and downs or the relaxed time as well so that we can actually come up with ideas and events in the third or fourth quarter. We used to have peak in the third quarter and spent the fourth quarter as a preparation for the next fiscal year so we could really start immediately from the April. But now, currently, in the first quarter is the preparation period for the events and programs for the rest of the year. So 40% in the first half and 60% in the second half is the allocation for this year. And we did it the same way in the last fiscal year, but 60% in the second half is difficult, hard, 30% in the third quarter and another 30% in the fourth quarter. So to make the life much easier, we would like to make as much as possible in the first half.
[Interpreted] Next question, please share with us the ratio of direct referrals in the new sell-side mandates in Q4.
[Interpreted] Thank you for this question. This is about the fourth quarter. Direct was 30% and referral was 70%. We think that the referral ratio remains to be high. And we would like to improve this to 60% and 40% to have a significant improvement of gross margin. So our focus this fiscal year is direct, but we also need to improve the number of referrals, 10% increase in referrals, while improving direct significantly to improve the balance by 60%, 40%, 40%, [ 60 ]%.
[Interpreted] Next question. Regarding the new general managers and group leaders just the same way as the previous fiscal year, do we have to think the first quarter will be spent to let them [ get ] accustomed to management?
[Interpreted] Well, there are 2 answers to that. First, we have some reflection from last year, so that we actually changed our training for new management so that they can start from the beginning of April. And for channel leaders, in February and in March, we gathered 11 channel leaders, and we conducted or we started meetings and trainings for them. So I don't think the delay, as we had last year, should happen this year. But for people who, for the first time, come to management job tasks, there are many new things and things that they need to get accustomed. So I think, in the first quarter or the second quarter, there should be some delay among new leaders, but they shouldn't be as much as last fiscal year.
[Interpreted] Next question, please share with us some track record from the joint venture company established with local bank.
[Interpreted] After our concrete track record, we are seeing good results, very good results. Nobunaga Succession is the name of the joint venture we established with Juroku Financial Group. Nobunaga Succession was founded in July 2023. And August was the actual start of operations. So we started the operation from August. And already sell-side mandates number is 26 or 27. I forgot the accurate number, but 26 to 27 sell-side mandates are held already. And this is an outstanding result.
We spent a whole year with local banks. When I consider the number of mandates we can receive with local bank spending 1 year, but then we achieved this number in just a half year. And for a few, including 26 or 27, we have received large mandates. And this is thanks to the trust held by local bank and our know-how. So a good combination of the strength that led to this result. For example, for making appointments, we have the trust of the local bank, so not much difficulty in getting appointments. And small companies are rather winning and not really resistant to listening to employees. And also, by showing our track record, the likelihood of getting mandates becomes higher under this joint venture. So we are starting to see some promising results from this new joint venture.
[Interpreted] The next question, what is the ratio between the referrals and direct sourcing in the transactions closed of the fourth quarter?
[Interpreted] Direct sourcing was 36% and referrals, 64%. Therefore, we would like to increase more. But the transactions closed in the fourth quarter had a higher ratio number of referrals. So therefore, in this fiscal year, we will need to increase the number of direct-sourced transactions mandates. Currently, 36% versus 64% in the fourth quarter.
[Interpreted] Next question. Please give us concrete information about the size of investment in the new ongoing fiscal year by each area, such as personnel and DX.
[Interpreted] I don't have detailed information on my hand. So Mr. Naraki, could you explain?
[Interpreted] In the new -- or the in ongoing fiscal year, we are forecasting growth in the future. So we would like to be more proactive in doing direct marketing. And we would like to proactively recruit consultants and do investment in DX and operations investments such as foreign business investment.
And as to details, as to personnel cost, JPY 16 billion. The cost is JPY 14 billion, and DX is about JPY 2 billion -- is the planned investment size. But we will keep good discipline in making investments, and we will make sure to have the balance of investments and returns.
[Interpreted] Next question. Why did you invest into Korean company? Iincluding China, what is your East Asian strategy going forward?
[Interpreted] Thank you very much for the question. I would like to ask Mr. Otsuki, who is in charge of overseas business, to explain about the investment into the Korean company.
[Interpreted] We didn't choose Korea for the sake of Korea. Our overseas business is cross-border business in-out. Japan purchaser and ASEAN seller are the major business. And the reason why we went out to ASEAN countries is, well, M&A doesn't really sell products, but sell companies. So the feeling towards Japan is very important. So we started to enter ASEAN countries who has a very favorable feeling towards Japan. And from that sense, East Asia is not necessarily favorable to Japan, so we were not so active in entering East Asia. But Korea has a higher aging society and low birth rate, and they have more SME companies than Japan. So we can easily predict that M&A among SME will expand in Korea.
However, the feelings towards each other as a country, we didn't have an idea to enter on our own into Korea, but there was an approach from the Korean investment company to us to make a joint venture. So we decided to make investment and start this company or alliance at this time. So we have no intention to enter China. So first, we would like to establish this company in Korea.
And also, we have an increased number of selling mandates in ASEAN, so now therefore 20,000 people in Japan and 200,000 people in Korea. So I think we have a priority in Korea and Vietnam. So we focus on out-and-out mandates or transactions.
And just as additional comments, Mr. Takeuchi, who was in charge of negotiation with this Korea M&A exchange, can you just give us some comments in making investment into this?
[Interpreted] I was head of the group, and I was in negotiation. And it was owned by [ Juana ]. And even before the COVID-19, we had some deals relationship. They wanted to learn M&A in Japan. And Wakebayashi, our founder, or Mr. Miyake, our President, shared the culture and vision and purpose and directions. And we thought that we could establish a very good alliance.
[Interpreted] Thank you very much for the comment.
[Interpreted] Next question. There is no change to mid-term business plan, but do you have the same confidence as before for the next fiscal year onward?
[Interpreted] To answer this question, I would say that we now have a better confidence, stronger confidence, than before. To achieve mid-term plan, growth rate in ordinary profit is the most important. And to achieve this, we need a sense of unity among our employees and improved motivation of employees. These are the most important. And we are starting to see this. We have been achieving this improvement. And as a result, the number of transactions closed is improving. And not just that. Average sales per transaction, we are maintaining this indicator too. And we catched up -- I mean, we caught up on sales.
And as to the guidance for the ongoing fiscal year, JPY 48.9 billion versus GBP 48.7 million, so we announced a slightly higher guidance. And if we can improve top line, what we need to do is the control of profit and loss, and we can do that.
So the transaction number is the most important, and we now have a good confidence about this growth. And we also now have a good confidence in the improvement of the average sales per transaction, and we believe that we can see better gross profit. So we think that, with some lag from sales growth, we can see better ordinary profit. So we now have a higher level of confidence about the achievement of mid-term business plan.
[Interpreted] Next question. In this fiscal year, how many people do you think will leave the company? What is the appropriate or optimal turnover?
[Interpreted] Thank you very much for the questions. In terms of the number of leaving the company, 60 to 80 people, it could be around 80, but I'd like to control the number around 60 to 65, but it could reach 80. But at maximum, we would like to control the number up to 80.
In turnover, 12% to 14% is regarded as the optimal turnover rate from the past experience. If it is less than 10%, it means that we still retain the people who are not appropriate for this M&A business. So my ideal number is 12% from my past experience.
And in this fiscal year, we would like to control the people who would leave the company up to and, if possible, around 65. And for that, we are introducing different measures.
[Interpreted] Next question, the company has not been able to achieve profit target for some time. So how shall we trust about achievement of the profit target for this new fiscal year?
[Interpreted] We apologize for this. Our actual number is JPY 26.5 billion, and we were short by JPY 500 million to the target, but we think that we have improved. And before the incident, we had -- we were able to -- we would have been able to achieve this target.
And for fiscal year 2022, we were not able to do sales activities basically. And M&A has about 1 year's lead time. So for FY 2022, the result of FY 2021, when we conducted sales activities significantly under the Slogan EXCEED30, but for FY 2023, because we were not able to be fully focused on sales activities in 2022 to take care of that incident, we rather tried to strengthen compliance and we did backfilling related recruitments for the people who left our company. And we were not able to do positive sales activities in 2022, meaning that we didn't get to plant the seeds in 2022 for the field we have. But we -- seedling and we grew the seedlings and did cultivation in 2023. That was a tough year, but we achieved sales target.
And as to ordinary profit, we were not able to achieve target by JPY 500 million, but almost there. And that strengthened my confidence.
For the new fiscal year, as to the number of transactions closed and sales amount, we will definitely catch up on these KPIs. And if we can, we would like to do better than these by 10% for an upward revision of our guidance, if we can. This is the level of motivation we have and all of our general managers and [Technical Difficulty] oriented towards this target. With this kind of mindset, if we can have even higher sales, we can have a better profit for the portion that exceeds breakeven point. So if we can have better sales, we think that our ordinary profit will improve as well.
So about the JPY 17 billion ordinary profit guidance, I have good confidence. And for the logic that I have just explained, I believe it's safe to trust us.
[Interpreted] The next question, what could be the reason for a person accepted by multiple M&A firms to choose Nihon M&A Center?
[Interpreted] I think this is clear. One is that, when you start M&A business, there are many people who believe we are the best. First, for the status, we are the largest company, and we have the longest history among the listed companies, and education and training system is extremely well developed. So people can become full-fledged consultants very early. And the quality has been managed very rigorously, so they can learn how to maintain quality of M&A. So the brand value of each individual can be raised drastically. So that's the one distinctive differentiator about us.
And the second factor is that people can grow as business people at other companies, competitors. Let's say they train people as a salesperson or solo player. That's what often happens with the very intensified competitions and very hard KPIs are given, so they can grow as a salesperson or individual player. But as a business person, they are concerned about the possibility at the competitors. And people have very high motivation to become high-profile consultant.
So for us, there's still a sell-side team and buy-side team work as two, and CPA and the accountants and all these people work together as a team. So each team takes care of projects from planning, managing and harvesting mandates so business modeling can be experienced. So people can actually become a comprehensive business person. So I think that is the differentiator about us, especially according to the voices from the people who join our company.
[Interpreted] Next question is about measures to reduce lead time.
[Interpreted] Lead time reduction is important, very important. M&A can be broken down into 3 phases. The first phase is about receiving mandates, sell-side mandates. And from then to start mandate -- start matching, document needs to be created, and also corporate analysis is required. And after that, as a second phase, the matching starts to identify the counterpart company. And then the third phase, negotiation and execution. In the 3, the final phase does not require a reduction of lead time because, when we reduce this period, we cannot fully cover all the risks and customer satisfaction may be damaged.
So negotiation and execution, we will continue to spend about 3 months. But the first and the second phase can be optimized. In our company, we used to conduct the first and the second phase in a serial manner. So we waited until the end of the Phase 1 to start Phase 2. And this is why we used -- we have been spending 6 months for the 2 phases. But we would like to change our system so the 2 phases can be conducted in parallel and -- because we don't need all the information available to us to start matching activities. We just need minimum information to start matching. So we would like to gather minimum information and then immediately start matching going forward.
And also, we will shorten that phase itself. And identifying mandates and corporate analysis requires some time, but we have been [ implementing ] measures to reduce this. We have been trying to reduce the time required for the analysis.
And as to matching, we are trying to see if we can do matching in less than 3 months. For example, to get the name clear, we may be able to use DX to get that [indiscernible] from customers.
By the accumulation of these measures, currently, we are spending 9 months in total, but, if possible, we are hoping to need only 6 months instead of the current 9 months for the total period. And we are putting in all our efforts to reduce the lead time.
And Matching Management Department is the name of the new department we established this fiscal year. And a highly experienced person in the buy side is now the General Manager of Matching Management Department.
And to shorten the first phase, as the subhead of Strategy Headquarter, we appointed the General Manager, Division [Technical Difficulty] Manager over the last fiscal year. And together with this person and I and Mr. Takeuchi, these 3 people are fully focused on reducing the lead time. And I believe that we have strong members dedicated for this target of reducing lead time.
[Interpreted] The next question, your FY '24 ordinary profit forecast is lower than the mid-term management plan number. Of course, we expect that the results will exceed that. And in FY '25, can we expect that profit, ordinary profit, will go back to the level of the mid-term management plan, or will you continue upfront investment for the next few years?
[Interpreted] Well, yes, we require initial investment, upfront investment. However, we are thinking to increase or exceed the plan of revenues. Our mid-term plan of revenue target is JPY 56 billion in FY '25, but we would like to exceed that. And for that, if we could do that, we believe that we can catch up with this JPY 21.8 billion ordinary profit in FY '25.
So the current fiscal year is a transition period. So the sales target is with only a limited growth. But we would like to increase that by 5% to 10%. And JPY 17 billion of ordinary profit forecast for this fiscal year should be close as much as possible to JPY 18.7 billion, and in the next fiscal year, by realizing JPY 56 billion revenue so that we can achieve JPY 21.8 billion ordinary profit for sure.
So yes, of course, upfront investment is continuing to be required. But I believe that FY 2025 is the year where we would see bringing back our numbers according to the mid-term management plan.
I'm sorry, but we are running out of time, so the next question will be the last question.
[Interpreted] What do you think about the future plan of share repurchase?
[Interpreted] We are always positively considering all methods, all forms of shareholder returns. Therefore, for share buyback, when we see the need for it, we will proactively conduct share buy-back. However, for this fiscal year, a special dividend payment of JPY 6 is decided. And dividend payout ratio is to exceed 80% for this fiscal year. We conducted 2 share buyback last fiscal year, so we have not decided about the current fiscal year. But about whether or not to improve the [ dividend payout ] ratio, the return ratio to be higher than 100%, we -- I personally think that we need to be careful in making the decision. However, our financial performance and share price will be the basis of our decision for potential buyback.
And we would like to positively consider the implementation of share repurchase. And if we see the need for it, we will timely execute it.
And as to dividend, this time, so we decided on the special dividend. But from next fiscal year onward, if we exceed guidance, for the part that we exceed guidance, we would like to have the special dividend, sort of something like a special dividend, which is not the same as incentive dividends, but that may be how we may be able to return to shareholders as well as employees. And this is how we plan to return our profits to our employees and shareholders. So incentive dividend may not be the right terminology for this, but for the outperformance versus guidance, we hope to return to shareholders. That is one of our options we are exploring.
And for dividend payout, we will keep at least 60% in dividend payout and ratio. But we have been and we will always explore all different -- all the different possibilities, including share purchase every quarter. And that is how we will manage our company.
Thank you very much for being with us until the end of this session, for this briefing session of financial performance. Today, we're using simultaneous interpretation, and we are broadcasting this session to the entire world.
In June, we will have our shareholders' meeting. And in that month, we also plan to visit the U.S., and we will go to Europe in November for our IR road show activities.
And we have IR office, so please request for an interview with our members anytime. And when you have any questions, please send your questions to us via e-mails or phone calls. We would like to maintain and improve our relations with investors to improve our market cap. And we also will try to improve our financial performance to be back on a growth track. Thank you very much for staying with us to the end.