DeNA Co Ltd

TSE:2432

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[Isao Moriyasu, executive]

On this occasion, due to COVID-19, we are holding this presentation online. I would now like to start the DeNA Fiscal Year 2020 Q2 Operating Results Briefing.

First, I'd like to discuss the financial results summary. In Q2, revenue was JPY 38.8 billion. IFRS operating profit was JPY 8.3 billion. Non-GAAP operating profit was JPY 8.1 billion. Revenue and non-GAAP operating profit, which is an important metric for us, were up significantly year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. So financial results were solid this quarter.

I wanted to talk about our performance over a slightly larger period, 2.5 years or 10 quarters. In the graphs on this slide, we have removed the performance of the Sports Business due to its strong seasonality and relatively greater degree of negative impact from COVID-19. First, please see our revenue in the graph on the left. For the past 2 years or so, we have been seeing a gradual decline, but we turned that around with Q3 last fiscal year as the bottom. The Game Business and live streaming business were major drivers of that top line growth. At the same time as our top line growth, we could put cost measures into place and reduced costs. If you examine the operating profit graph on the right, you will see how we have achieved good growth with a clear V-shaped recovery. Making use of cost-cutting measures to improve operating performance is a common management practice. But in our case, we achieved top line growth and then had contribution from cost-cutting measures on top of that. For this reason, I believe the growth that we have achieved is good quality growth.

Next is the financial results summary by segment. The Game and live streaming businesses both performed well. And for Sports, we had an operating profit in Q2. So all our businesses performed well.

Next is a slide on the cost and expense breakdown. Please see this slide for our cost of sales and SG&A.

Now I would like to present each of our individual businesses. First is the Game Business. Our key existing titles, including Nintendo partnership titles, Granblue Fantasy provided by SI Games and Pokémon Masters, which just had its 1-year anniversary, collectively contributed to continue our solid performance from Q1 into Q2. In addition, we have expanded the offering of our international app, Slam Dunk, which contributed to performance and led to our overall good Q2 results.

I'd like to touch on the graph on the left. Thanks to the contribution from Slam Dunk, we have seen significant growth in virtual currency consumption from international app. The performance of international app, virtual currency consumption has grown to rival the scale of Japan app virtual currency consumption. Our approach in the game business is to make use of well-known Japanese IP, operate from our studios located in both Japan and China and provide games for users around the world. I think we are starting to see success from this approach for our Game Business.

Next, I would like to discuss the hit title for Slam Dunk. During Q2, specifically in late July, we launched Slam Dunk in South Korea, and it became a hit in line with our expectations. For both the Mainland China version and South Korea version, the game has performed in line with our expectations. Meanwhile, the traditional Chinese version, which launched in Q1, specifically in May, became a hit that exceeded our expectations. And these regional expansions contributed accordingly to our financial performance.

Going forward, we will launch in more areas. In late November or later this month, we plan to launch in Southeast Asia, Europe and South America. In conjunction, we will add English, Thai, French, Spanish and Portuguese languages. Additionally, on the marketing side, we are running promotions that have been localized into the local languages of relevant areas, and we aim to achieve a good launch for each region.

I would like to share about some upcoming titles in our Game Business. We have a number of titles in development that we cannot discuss today. But today, I wanted to share some titles that we are able to talk about. First, we have Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai on the top left. This originates from a recently released remake of the original anime of this old popular manga. Our game is the game for the new remake anime, and we're excited about this title. On the bottom right, we have a game that makes use of the popular Hunter-Hunter IP. This game is being newly developed in our China studio. And it will be an MMORPG. This genre is very popular and well loved by fans in the broader China region. So we're looking forward to this title.

Next is the Sports Business. This business really struggled in Q1 with significant impact from COVID-19. We were able to start holding games without spectators from June 19. Then on July 17, we were able to have up to 5,000 people in the stadium. And on September 19, the maximum increased to 16,000, which is about half the capacity of Yokohama Stadium. So the number of spectators allowed to come and see the games have increased in stages. Of course, there is uncertainty about the potential future trends and impact of COVID-19. But we have been able to have increasing numbers of spectators come to enjoy games. And we hope to continue in a similar manner next season.

In our New Business areas, we have a variety of initiatives. We have divided them into different approaches with consideration for the nature of each initiative. We are conducting appropriate investment for each service. And in the case of our service, Pococha, we are pursuing organic growth. We also take this approach for KenCom and health care. For KenCom, we recently announced a business and capital alliance with DATA HORIZON, and we will work with them to make use of data and pursue related business opportunities.

Pococha in our live streaming business is seeing really good growth. And I would like to spend some time discussing the characteristics of this genre. This slide shows the revenue and operating profit for the live streaming business. The performance of SHOWROOM has been removed from this quarter since it is no longer consolidated. And for reference, on this slide, we have restated the previous results to match. The results for revenue and operating profit shown on this slide can be considered to essentially reflect Pococha performance. As you can see, we had good growth in fiscal year 2019. But as we came into the first half of fiscal year 2020, we were significantly impacted in a positive way by COVID-19, leading to significantly higher revenue growth. With the growth on top line, we also saw good operating profit growth at a scale where it began to contribute to overall operating profit performance for the first half.

Here we have some KPI for the service. We have the number of downloads and the MAU for both listeners and live streamers. These charts are on a monthly basis. And you can see how we had a leap in download with the declaration of the state of emergency in April. This also led to an increase in MAU over April, May and June. For Q2, July, August and September, the downloads have slowed down. But the MAU, which reflects usage, has shown that it will not be a onetime thing, and we continue to see high levels of activity. So that's what we saw for Q2.

I believe many people in the investor and analyst community may not be familiar with the characteristics of live streaming. So I would like to go into more detail about how we view this business and the space in general. Over the history of the Internet, there have been various types of social media and online community services.

First off, the format. It began with text, then shifted to images, then non-real-time archived video, then real-time video broadcasting and communication became possible. The offerings have become more rich and varied. Of course, the foundation for this is the evolution in devices, but more so, the evolution in infrastructure. We have seen a shift to higher speeds, more data and all for a lower cost. These infrastructure changes have made major format changes possible. For the business model, in the early days of the Internet, it was difficult to convince users to spend money on digital content or services. And this meant that the ad model was the only viable option to grow your business. However, as the use of the Internet has become more commonplace, consumers have become more comfortable with paying for digital content and subscriptions.

Another trend we're seeing in the real world as well is a shift from consuming things to consuming experiences. In the Internet space, this means you do not necessarily just purchase and consume a digital item, but you may also pay in order to share and enjoy a particular space with others. You may pay for that experience. So that's some of the trends we've seen in the space, and our service that takes advantage of all these aspects is live streaming specialized for smartphones. That's our view.

Another characteristic of this genre is from the view of the space from the perspective of a live streamer. With the rise of the Internet, there have been a number of beneficial factors mentioned even before now. Even without any particular facilities, equipment or start-up costs, individuals can share information and make use of the Internet for their business. The Internet is great. It connects a variety of people end-to-end and allows them to communicate and do business. This is a great characteristic of the Internet that has been brought up before now from the beginning. But first it began with B2C offerings, where businesses reach out to consumers. Then as the method became more commonplace, more individuals started to make use of the Internet for communication and doing business. That led to the growth in services that empower individuals.

These are some of the characteristics and trends of the Internet. Then in addition to what I just mentioned, from around April of this year, COVID-19 started to have a major impact on many aspects of our lives. Many people have had to say at home. And this has led to particular types of demand that has been a recent focus topic. Some of that is behavioral changes that led to changes in consumer behavior.

But it is not just that. Since the declaration of emergency in Japan, some businesses have temporarily closed and some people have lost their jobs. Some individual proprietors may have faced difficulties in their business, such as problems with sales channels. So a lot of people have really struggled during these difficult and confusing economic times. I believe that this is why opportunities for economic activity on the Internet have become popular. For example, in e-commerce, individuals can sell things easily. We're also seeing increasing crowd funding for people who want support to pursue a particular project. In our business, live streaming, we have people who want the live stream, have listeners who cheer them on and be compensated. So we have demand from people staying at home who want to consume. But we are also seeing production and creation from people staying at home. My view is that online services that allow people to produce things online and consume things online, for the entire process to occur online while those people are at home, have grown dramatically during the first half of the fiscal year.

Now that I have discussed some of the characteristics of the space, I would like to discuss the characteristics of Pococha specifically. Of course, we have an ideal UI and UX for smartphones. In our service, we think it is incredibly important to have an environment set up so that listeners on the live streamers can communicate and create an exciting atmosphere. So both the listeners and live streamers participate in driving the excitement. In our service, the community works together to create such a place, a positive experience for everyone to enjoy communication. Our service works to accelerate that process for our community.

On our slide, we mentioned individual empowerment. Another focused aspect for our service is matching the appropriate listeners and live streamers. Communication is the main focus of our live streams. So having a live streamer with thousands of listeners is not the best fit. That may work for other services, but not for us. Since communication is so important, we need a certain ratio of listeners per a live streamer, such as a few dozen listeners or at the very most, a few hundred listeners per individual live streamer. Without that ratio, the communication doesn't work. We want a variety of live streamers, and we try to make sure to match the appropriate listeners, set up the best space, and in that way, make the tail longer. So we try to be more decentralized with our live streams with a wide variety of live streamers each hosting exciting streams with their listeners. That's how we operate our service.

For the compensation as well, we have some aspects unique to Pococha. We want our live streamers to stream for more time over a long period. So we have set up a compensation structure with that idea in mind. Our goal is to make the service a positive and welcoming place for listeners and live streamers, and we design our operations accordingly.

This is the final slide on live streaming. I would like to share our approach for live streaming going forward. In this genre, China has long been the global trendsetter, and we have been keeping a close eye on this market. As you can see in the graph on the right, in 2014, the market was around JPY 300 billion. And opinions about whether the market for this genre would stop there or keep growing varied among analysts and investors. In reality, the market continued growing at a rapid pace. As this is the China market, it is our estimates rather than any official numbers. Per our calculations, the market has reached JPY 1.4 trillion per year.

For the genres as well, what we have here is generic is where the live streamers appears themselves to chat or sing or play games. Basically, they do various types of performances. But as more players joined the space, some of them started to specialize, and this led to specific layers developing and growing in the market. So those are the trends we are seeing in the China market. Given this background, we believe our generic offering in Pococha still has room for growth. So we aim to enhance the service, and we are working on bringing more listeners and live streamers into the service, and making it so that our service is a safe and secure space for them to use.

Another trend we have observed from China is the advent of new genres. We believe that new genres will definitely come, and we are exploring the options. For several years now, we have placed focus on YouTubers. And we believe that this genre unique to Japan, where an anime character is shown in the live stream, will definitely be coming. IRIAM is one service in particular with a lot of user traction, and we have our know-how from Pococha. So we aim to achieve growth by combining them.

For the third point, the Japanese live streaming market is ticking off. Looking internationally, our view is that live stream has also started to grow in many other countries. The China market is a red ocean at this point. But in other countries, we believe we are in the phase between the dawn and beginning of the growth phase. Our goal is to grow this service not only in Japan but internationally as well. So our goal to grow this space is: one, to grow Pococha Japan; two, expand into new genres; and three, to go global. That's how we'll grow this business.

This is the final slide of my presentation. We announced these major initiatives during our Q3 fiscal year 2019 earnings announcement in February. At that time, we recognized a major impairment, and we had a non-GAAP operating loss as well, and we announced these 3 pillars for the short term to improve our performance and have been pursuing them. Now, in all 3 pillars, we are starting to achieve results that exceeded our initial expectations, and we've made good progress towards achieving our business recovery.

This concludes our presentation. Thank you.

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