DIP Corp

TSE:2379

Earnings Call Analysis

Strong Financial Performance Amid Challenges

During the second quarter of FY 2025, company X showcased resilience with net sales rising by 5% year-on-year and operating income increasing a remarkable 20%. The financial results are consistent with the expectations set at the start of the fiscal year. However, net income growth was modest at 1%, impacted by a JPY 200 million investment loss recorded in this quarter, mirroring a similar loss from the previous year. Importantly, the overall net income remains on track with annual targets, offering a sense of stability for investors.

Market Dynamics and Competitive Position

The recruitment sector shows signs of sluggish growth reflected in the 5.5% decline in new job openings relative to applicants. Despite this, the company has managed to outpace market trends, achieving media service sales growth above the deteriorating market conditions, thus improving its market share. This trend illustrates the company's resilience and strategic positioning against a backdrop of challenging market conditions.

Operational Efficiency and Cost Management

To mitigate rising costs, the company has made adjustments in its staffing strategy, reducing new graduate hires from 600 to 300 and maintaining a tighter control on mid-career hiring. As a result, personnel expenses fell by JPY 400 million compared to last year. Moreover, despite increased advertising expenses aimed at capturing growth in sectors like logistics and healthcare, overall efficiency remains stable, signifying effective cost management.

Product Expansion Through Innovation

The launch of 'Baitoru Talk', a new communication tool for part-time workers, alongside the upcoming release of Spot Baitoru, positions the company well for future growth. With Spot Baitoru aimed at enhancing wage quality for part-time work, the initiative reflects a commitment to not just improve sales but also elevate the standard of employment in the spot job market. This innovative approach could lead to increased customer engagement and retention.

Guidance Highlights for Future Growth

Looking ahead, the company has indicated that the third quarter is expected to signal a recovery in the growth trend of its DX business, with forecasts for increased subscription to media services. The company maintains its full-year financial guidance, anticipating a continued upward trajectory in its market positioning, supported by broader marketing investments and a recalibrated sales strategy focusing on boosting the number of contracted clients.

Commitment to Shareholder Returns

In a strategic move to enhance shareholder value, the company announced an interim dividend increase to JPY 47 and plans to repurchase shares. This commitment results in a total payout ratio expected at an impressive 114%. The year-end dividend has been held steady at JPY 48, further cementing the company’s dedication to delivering shareholder value amid business growth strategies.

Earnings Call Transcript 2025-Q2

[Hideki Tomita, executive]

Thank you so much for participating our briefing session. This is our briefing session for the 28th fiscal period ending February 2025. The theme for this year has been innovation. Ever since the establishment of our business, we are to create the greatest innovation this year, that's why we set the theme for this year, innovation.

And Spot Baitoru is our new product. We have released this product on October 1. On October 1, we held a press conference, and we were happy to see a lot of articles covered this new product, and we have been getting great reactions. This Spot part-time work job market is gaining momentum. A lot of people are talking about this market, and dip is finally joining this market.

We've been wanting to make sure we provide a service which has our taste, and we are a company who care a lot about our philosophy, so we've been considering a new product, which is reflecting our philosophy. And the new function we are adding is this Good Job Bonus. Spot work is something workers can work on a spot basis anytime they are available, meaning that it's a very convenient style formats of work from worker point of view.

And as a result, the hourly wage tend to be low for these spot basis part-time jobs, but dip has been always making efforts to increase the hourly wages for the part-timers. So we wanted to do the same for these spot part-timers. These spot part-timer commissioned in the market, it's 30%. This is the commission. [ Tiny ] is also all charging.

And 30% may sound big, but it's not that big in reality. But what we are saying is that 10% out of this 30%, we may want to return -- repay to the workers. And how we are going to make it happen is as the idea we have is Good Job Bonus. If the worker is going to provide quality work, then the -- our clients are going to rate them good, and then the workers can enjoy this bonus.

And when we held the press conference, there was a question asking that -- well, we were saying that we're going to reduce 10% if there was not a good rating for the client side. But if we're going to pay less, that may become a hurdle to quick good rating. So we changed the idea. We are not going to provide discount, so that means now client side, customer side, no matter whether they are going to click the good rating or not, their charge is going to be the same.

And providing a discount is anyway not our purpose. We wanted to pay more to the workers, so this updated idea is in line with what we are wanting to achieve. And when entering into this market, spot part-timer market, we are confident that we can be the winner. That's why we are making this decision to enter into this market.

And let me now talk about the reasons why we are confident. First of all, we've been playing in this part-timer job market for more than 20 years, and we've been able to have a lot of businesses with a lot of customers. We have as many as 150,000 customer base. We have a very strong customer base. And over the past 20 years, we've been able to let our employees experience -- accumulate their career.

We have more than 2,000 salespeople or even close to 3,000 salespeople we have now. And in addition, talking about the existing Baitoru product, they are also going to have these spot basis work information. These existing products, the awareness is already very high. And our customers, they can search for shift-based traditional, all part-timers and spot-based part timers together, which should be convenient. That's why we are confident to enter into this product or market.

As discussed earlier, since 2013, we've been always encouraging customers to raise the hourly wage. Until now, we've been asking the customers to burden the additional pay any time they are increasing their hourly rates, however, this time, we, dip, is going to burden the additional pay, meaning user loyalty should become even higher. We are confident. And our website product hourly wage should become even higher than our competitors' hourly wages.

Next innovation, talking about the next innovation. It is dip AI, which is something we've been discussing from before. Let us talk about the progress. Starting from September, we started to provide this service to part of the Baitoru users. We are making a good progress. The improvement -- we've been able to make improvement.

And starting from October 25, we are going to make a full-fledged start and we're going to start holding a large-scale promotion to raise the awareness of this dip AI. If you have never had opportunity to use dip AI before, please, please, let it try. Please try this service. Even senior people or even mother who are raising kids, you can talk to this dip AI and get consultation what kind of jobs are available for you.

Next is about our promotional activity. Now to be the league winner, Dodgers started to play with Mets. Today, actually, Baitoru is also being advertised at the game. During the regular seasons, Ohtani achieved 50-50, and when he actually achieved 50-50, of course, he hit -- made several home runs, 40 -- not only 50, but 49 and 51.

When the home run being hit, Baitoru advertisement was aired on TV. People are aware that any time Ohtani make a big hit, Baitoru and dip being advertised. We are, of course, calculating to make sure our ad is going to be shown when Ohtani is at bat, and thanks to this opportunity, we've been able to enjoy quite a strong advertisement effect.

And this final game, we do have very high expectations. And basically, we are purchasing advertising for BS Broadcasting. The pricing is expensive. But yesterday's game and the game when Ohtani achieved 50-50, it was aired at NHK. The viewing rate was as high as 13.5%. A lot of viewers were watching the game. And even online, these games are being covered a lot, and we do have a lot of opportunities. Advertising dip and Baitoru in these occasions has been strengthening our brand power.

Last year, we held Labor Force Solution Conference. We could be very successful. It was highly accepted, and a lot of people have been asking us whether we are going to hold this conference again this year. If yes, people are saying they want to participate. So we are going to hold the conference this year as well.

Last year, we invited Professor Matsuo, though he's very busy. He discussed about AI. And this year, we're going to invite Mr. Nagasaki, who is the President and Representative Executive Officer, OpenAI Japan. Shidachi-san has personal connection with Mr. Nagasaki, so although he is very busy, he's going to participate in this conference.

If you have time, please participate. The conference is also available online. We are going to make the conference quite exciting, so please participate if you have time. The new product, Spot Baitoru. People are wanting to know about this product as well, so this is something we're going to spend some time during the conference to explain.

On October 1, we held welcome ceremony inviting the new grads who will be joining next spring. These new grads joining April next year will be 306. Not only myself but all of the directors participating the welcome ceremony have been saying that this year's new grads are great, awesome.

It does not mean that the new grads we were accepting till this year have not been that great, but in 2020, '21, '22, '23, then '24, these new grads participating -- joining during pandemic period. The interviews, we've been able to conduct only online, and we have not being able to hold in-person type training. And as a result, the growth speed has been slower or there have been mismatches.

We have to say that we've been facing multiple problems, which was actually resulting in higher churn rates. We have to say over the past 4 years, the churn rate, more number of people have been leaving dip, but this year, we've been making sure that we meet these new grad candidates in person, and as a result, we've been very satisfied with the result. And Mr. Ohtani's promotion has been strengthening the brand power of dip as well. This should be one of -- another reason why we've been able to hire a lot of quality new grads this year.

Earlier, I mentioned that I talked about the new grads who've been joining dip during the pandemic period. And one of the very important training opportunities in our company is the training kind of boot camp we are holding right after new grads are joining our company. But the other day, we're being able to hold this session, this training session in Atami.

The new grads who've been joining over the past several years and who are still working with us, they do support our philosophy. But just as a reminder, we've been providing them opportunity to review how they've been working till now and to make sure they are going to further motivate it. And as a result, a lot of the participants, the employees, have been telling us that it's been so fruitful, participating the training.

And we also held a Family Day. One of my dream is to make our company a company who -- well, the parents are wanting to let their kids join in, so we've asked our employees to invite their kids to visit our office, and we want their kids to feel good about their parents working at this company. And our employees telling us that after they go back home now, their kids ask a lot about their jobs. So this Family Day made not only the kids but our employees happier. We'd like to keep holding this session next year onward.

Next is about leveraging AI technologies. This year, target is to reduce 500,000 hours. We're going to ask AI to work 500,000 hours equivalent on behalf of our employees. At this moment, we've been able to reduce 240,000 hours. We are making a good progress. We are leveraging ChatGPT and other AI tools. They are evolving a lot. And we are also developing our own AI tools. We are also making a good progress here. And we are going to -- we'd like to achieve our target, which is, again, 500,000 hour reduction.

That's it from myself. Thank you.

[Masatsugu Shidachi, executive]

Hello. COO Shidachi, I'm going to explain the following slides. First, our consolidated results for the FY 2025 second quarter. The net sales increased 5% year-on-year, and operating income increased 20% year-on-year. The results were in line with the plan shown at the beginning of the fiscal year. The reason for the 20% increase in operating income will be explained on the next page of SG&A expenses.

The low growth rate or quarterly net income of 1% is due to a decrease in a tax burden of JPY 200 million in the second quarter of the previous year, associated with the recording of an investment loss in the equity method asset. And in this second quarter, we recorded a JPY 200 million investment loss. Having said that, looking at the first half year-to-date, net income is progressing as planned at the beginning of the fiscal period, so there should be no concern.

Next, the sales trend of media service compared to the market. The ratio of new job openings to applicants, which is generally linked to market growth, was minus 5.5% in the second quarter. There was no significant change from the first quarter, and the market remains subdued. Although the gap between media sales growth rate and market growth rate has been recently narrowing, but we are continuously outperforming the market and our market share continued to improve.

Next, SG&A expenses. First, in personnel expenses, the number of new graduate hired was reduced from 600 last year to 300 this year, and mid-career hiring was held down, resulting in a year-on-year decrease in headcount. In addition, by the reversal of -- excuse me, the [indiscernible] per capita has not achieved, therefore, we reversed the JPY 200 million provision for the special bonuses, which was recorded in the first quarter. That means we reduced expenses.

As a result, personnel expenses were down by JPY 400 million from the previous year. The actual amount of advertising expenses increased as a result of the initiatives to strengthen the acquisition of application from growing industries, such as drivers and medical and nursing care, but the ratio hasn't changed and advertising expenses are used efficiently. The increase in the other expenses, as I explained in the first result, was due to the rent increase associated to the opening of [ new 2 ] office and expansion of the floor in the head office.

In regards of full year forecast, there is no change from the one disclosed in April, at the time of the announcement, of full year financial results. This page also, the same slide as the full year financial results. Always keep this. Next, business overview and progress in the DX business. This is the KOBOT series lineup. No change here, so I will skip this page.

Next, there is an additional product in the DX business, which is Baitoru Talk. We are planning to release Baitoru Talk, a part-time workplace communication app. By promoting conversation among part-time workers and the store managers, we aim to improve retention rates. That's our plan. On this app, shift adjustment function is available. If the shift is not filled, the empty slot can be posted on the Spot Baitoru with single click and also on Baitoru. So as Baitoru Talk as a core, we would like to improve the upsell of Baitoru or Spot Baitoru.

Next, second quarter performance of DX business. Sales growth slowed to 12% from the previous year. The main reason is that although a discount campaign was implemented for our new customers of Interview KOBOT, the number of companies did not increase as expected and the unit price only declined, resulting in the decline in the flow product sales.

We are reviewing this campaign in the third quarter. And as third quarter will be the busy season for job advertisement services, we believe DX business will be able to return to an upward sales trend from the third quarter onward. Sales of stock product in sales promotion area is progressing well, and the sales has been steadily increasing. The number of companies also slowed down as I explained earlier.

Next KPI. From the third quarter onwards, the number of companies subscribing to our media service is expected to increase. And along with that, each KPI is expected to turn around to an increased trend.

Progress of DX business and third quarter topics. In the area of recruitment and human resources, we have decided to push back the development of products for SMEs to the next fiscal year. This is because we have decided that it should be considered in conjunction with the service strategies of dip AI as one set. As for topics in the third quarter, we will review the discount campaign, as I mentioned earlier, as well as the launch and enhancement of the function of Baitoru Talk.

In the sales promotion area, customer attraction KOBOT MEO steadily increased the number of subscribing companies. In the third quarter, we plan to add a web membership card function to customer [ attraction ] for KOBOT MEO. By this new function, we will try to increase the unit price and reduce the cancellation. This is the business plan for DX. By developing a product for SMEs, we would like to increase the number of contracted companies. However, this development is postponed to the fiscal year, so it may be difficult to achieve this plan. However, I'd like to -- or we'd like to do our best. That's all about DX.

Next is permanent recruitment service. First media job advertisement sales. Sales grew by 3.6% year-on-year, a slowdown from the 7.2% growth in the first quarter. However, as I mentioned earlier, we have outperformed the market growth rate of minus 5.5%, and we are continuing to expand our market share.

Next, contracted number -- contracted companies number. Breaking down the slowdown in sales growth into number of contracted companies and unit price, we can say that weak growth in the number of companies was the main factor of slow down. The growth in the number of contracted companies in the second quarter was 4% compared to 8% in the first quarter.

In the second half and beyond, we will expand the client number base by boosting sales of Spot Baitoru, and we will aim to increase the number of contracted companies who are using our existing media. I think this is only the way that only dip can do. Unit price is still below the previous year's level, but it was minus 0.4% in the second quarter compared with minus 0.8% in the first quarter, while unit prices gradually recovering, we believe.

Next, user-related KPIs. The number of app downloads stays as #1. MAUs decreased in the second quarter, but this is due to seasonality. In the second quarter, the number of applications is decreasing. This decrease was due to seasonality as well as temporary factors. The number is expected to increase from the third quarter onward.

Next, progress and topic of Q3 in media service. First, to improve the productivity of sales staff. To all employees, we deployed tools for efficiency that reduces the time required to collect materials and data necessary to make proposals. [ AI-Agent ] dip is generative AI that we are using. Employees interact with generative AI dip agent to collect materials and data.

In the second quarter, as President Tomita says, there was a temporary increase in the number of retiring employees, but we have taken various measures and expect this to settle down by the end of the year. From the third quarter onwards, as I explained earlier, we intend to increase the number of companies using our existing service by expanding sales of Spot Baitoru.

Secondly, as for strategy to strengthen growth industries, in the second quarter, we were able to increase sales in the logistics and media nursing care areas. In the third quarter, we will continue to strengthen advertising investment in Baitoru NEXT, aiming to increase sales in the driver recruitment and other fields and also strengthen advertising investment in Hatarako.net aiming to increase sales in the clerical jobs.

Thirdly, in enhancement of market share in the suburban and rural areas, growth of market share in suburbs is accelerating. In the third quarter, we will continue to focus on expanding our agency network as we did in the second quarter.

Sales of permanent place service increased 17.5% over the previous year. We achieved high sales growth. Sales growth among existing employees has been making good progress. Since the number of new graduates hired this year is lower than the previous year, the sales growth rate is expected to slow down from the third quarter when new graduates begin to continue to sales.

Progress of permanent placement service and third quarter topics. Firstly, the regard to the productivity improvement of career advisers or CA. We will start to use the tool, which analyze the interviews between job seekers and our CAs. In the third quarter, we will continue to focus on training new graduates who joined the company in 2024. We will also improve the UI of the CA job screen research to make it easier for CA to search for candidate companies and improve CA's productivity. The second and the third strategies have been continued from the previous quarter, and we will continue that. So I will skip the explanation.

Finally, second quarter for sales personnel recruiting service, combining both media service and permanent placement service increased 4.1% year-on-year. Since the sales growth rate for the first half is 6% compared to the full year guidance of 5%, which is generally in line with the plan, there is no change to the full year plan.

That's all for me. Thank you very much.

[Hideki Tomita, executive]

Let me briefly talk about our shareholder return. The interim dividend is going to be JPY 47, JPY 7 increase year-on-year. We're going to repurchase our shares, so if we add this share buyback, the total payout ratio is expected to be 114%, which is a high number, we believe. The year-end dividend will be JPY 48. No change.

That's it. Every time, we are showing you a video. This year, our video is related to the new product, Spot Baitoru. The original plan for us to release this new product, Spot Baitoru, was by next year or the following fiscal year, but the schedule is now being advanced a lot. We are asking our employees to develop and release much earlier, and now our plan is to roll out this new product nationwide by the end of the current year, so they've been rushing to develop this new service. And our employees do have their own feeling. Let us show the video.

[Presentation]

[Unknown Attendee]

At General Assembly meeting held on March 19, 2024, Mr. Tomita, in front of all employees, said dip will finally enter into this spot part-time job market. dip has submitted a patent application for the idea, which will fundamentally change the service. Let's take a look at this big ideas overview and how this service has been materialized.

[Hideki Tomita, executive]

Differentiation is important in any service we provide to our clients and users. That is why I was thinking so long about how we can differentiate this service. And to get ahead of the first mover, we have to have a clear idea with which we can be confident to win. That was what I was strongly feeling.

Our policy is user first. So the service has to be beneficial to both clients and users. How can we make it happen? The idea is to partially return our 30% commission to the workers. That was the idea. Specifically speaking, clients will evaluate the workers, and based on the evaluation, approximately 10% out of the 30% will be paid to the workers.

If the workers hourly wage is JPY 1,000, client will pay JPY 1,300, we will take JPY 200, and the remaining JPY 100 will be paid to the worker if the worker is a quality worker in addition to the hourly wage. It is like a tip. I thought this is a good idea because this will be beneficial to both sides, so I shared this idea to Shidachi-san on the following day.

[Masatsugu Shidachi, executive]

Listening to the President's idea, my first impression was, wow, user-first. Mr. Tomita is essentially considering why users are going to use this service. The idea is there for the users, which will grow the business and be beneficial to the clients who are searching for workers.

Our President's ideas are not only good, but always fundamentally in line with our philosophy, and it's just amazing that he has come up with such ideas one after another. That's why I am confident that we can win with this idea. This idea will be well accepted by the society. People will love it, and we can be the winner. I was shocked at this idea.

[Unknown Attendee]

While making a good progress in getting prepared to join the competition, time allowed for this service development was limited. Now let's take a look at how the idea has been materialized.

[Masatsugu Shidachi, executive]

I was considering who should be the leader to make this business successful. The person came up to my mind was Fujiwara-san. I thought his experience in Demae-can should be beneficial. I talked to the President telling him Fujiwara-san's experience should enable us to make Spot Baitoru successful, and we decided him to be the leader.

[Shoji Fujiwara, executive]

When I first heard about it, I could not make up my mind on the right spot, because I believe if I am going to be the leader of a new service, I should leave the company when the service is going to be terminated. I have experiences developing new services in various companies, but that's the mindset I have always had.

90% of the success or failure of a new service will be determined with the mindset. This time, we know the competitor is a start-up, which means we have to compete with them with the same level of passion and motivation. At the beginning, I could not become confident enough whether I could be as passionate as the start-up company while keep working on the existing DX business, but after considering a week, I decided to take on this opportunity.

[Unknown Attendee]

dip started to take on this, [ but ] the company challenge. The first thing Mr. Fujiwara did was to ask each single employee how determined they were.

[Unknown Attendee]

Originally, we were discussing it would take about 2 years to develop. But Mr. Fujiwara, at the first meeting, said we are going to release this product by the end of this year. We are definitely going to make it happen. He also added anyone who cannot commit yourself to this should leave from the project.

It was clear that we were going to develop a product within a few months, which we were supposed to spend 2 years. The more I thought, the more my mind became blank. But the reason why we could not release last year was heavily because of myself. So at the end, I made up my mind to commit myself to this product.

[Unknown Attendee]

When Mr. Fujiwara asked us who was determined to join the project, I was the first to raise my hand. I am quite confident that this is a service needed by the users, and I could feel our company's big potential as dip. I believe the value provided by this product, Spot Baitoru, to the users is not only the additional pay, but also the experience and confidence. And the work is going to be fun in the workers' lives.

[Unknown Attendee]

In 2019, we were having a lot of discussions. We were discussing how we are going to achieve the right balance with the existing Baitoru products, and we are going to differentiate our product against the existing competitors' product. But we were not being able to make a good progress.

There were so many things we were wanting to make it happen. The number of functions and development requirements just kept increasing, while we -- which was leading to a delay. We were feeling rushed day after day, not knowing whether we could release the products, but we never gave up because we truly believe it is going to be a meaningful to dip to enter into this product.

Spot part-time job as a form of employment is very convenient from a workers' perspective, but wages for these jobs tend to be the minimum wage. And since dip is the company who's been always playing its role to increase the hourly wage, I believe we can play the same role here.

[Unknown Attendee]

We will materialize this idea for sure with our strong passion. What is the dream for the new era?

[Hideki Tomita, executive]

The problem of spot part-time job is, it is a method to recruit as many labor as possible under this labor shortage environment. Quality of the labor can be good or can be bad. There is a risk, in that sense. With our new system, workers will do their best to win more hourly wage, meaning, in a sense, quality of their work can be guaranteed.

Nowadays, there are a lot of works in this spot part-timer market, which can be fulfilled by any worker. But if the quality can be guaranteed, the types of works available for these spot part-timers can be even more. Nursing care can be one of such examples. By developing a mechanism where the spot part-timers' hourly wage can be higher depending on the workers' effort, should be able to solve the problems, which spot part-timers are facing with, which should also improve the overall part-timers' quality.

If that is going to happen, needless to say, part-timers' evaluation and position in the society should also improve, which is an idea exactly in line with our philosophy, and we truly believe executing this idea is going to change the world. As a company to improve the society, now dip is taking on this new challenge.