DeNA Co Ltd

TSE:2432

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Shingo Okamura, executive]

Hello, everyone. My name is Shingo Okamura, and I took over as CEO of DeNA as of the new fiscal year starting on April 1, 2021. I would like to spend about 20 minutes going through my presentation.

First, I would like to look at the review of fiscal year 2020. As you can see, in fiscal year 2020, revenue grew and both IFRS and non-GAAP operating profit saw a major improvement compared to the previous fiscal year. Revenue was JPY 137 billion and the non-GAAP operating profit was JPY 15.6 billion. This good performance was due to the good results in the 3 major initiatives we executed in fiscal year 2020 in response to the previous fiscal year performance. This means that in the new fiscal year, we are ready for new growth opportunities.

Now I would like to look at the more detailed financial results summary. For Q4, in particular, the operating profit was impacted by higher costs. I will discuss this in more detail later on the costs slide. Revenue was flat from Q3 to Q4 and increased on a year-on-year basis. Looking at the financial results summary by segment, Sports was significantly impacted by COVID-19, but aside from that, our results were solid. I also want to highlight the growth of the Live Streaming Business in fiscal year 2020, which you can see clearly on this slide as a remarkable result.

Now I would like to examine each business in more detail. We had 3 major initiatives for fiscal year 2020. The first is to strengthen the Game earnings base. In particular, we have previously mentioned how Slam Dunk, one of our IP titles developed in China, became a global hit and contributed significantly to performance. Our existing Japan titles also had a solid showing. Virtual currency consumption was flat to a slight increase, but despite that, we were able to grow the Games segment operating profit.

Looking at the quarterly performance, you can see that for Q4, we had solid results with our international apps, in particular, seeing good performance with significant contribution from Slam Dunk out of China. Fiscal year 2020 was a year where we saw good results from the strategy we have pursued for many years of international expansion in games, particularly establishing our China business. Our existing Game Business also had a solid showing.

The next major initiative was about our New Businesses, where we made it our goal to optimize the growth investment approach in new business areas. We committed to disciplined investment in line with growth and to a flexible capital policy and optimal structure. This fiscal year, we saw significant growth from Pococha in our Live Streaming Business. We also transitioned Mobility Technologies and SHOWROOM, among others, to a new structure. These enabled us to achieve a major operating line improvement. In fiscal year 2020, we had a JPY 3.8 billion profit. In New Businesses, we are successfully conducting disciplined investment in line with growth and adopting the optimal policy for each individual business. In particular, I would like to comment on the Live Streaming Business, which has had great performance. Pococha has been focused on revenue growth and seeing good growth. For the operating line, we are focused on revenue growth and doing marketing and implementing other measures, and that has led to some ups and downs for the operating profit, but we have achieved good revenue growth.

The third major initiative was to reduce fixed costs by reviewing all businesses and functions. We have been working to streamline our operations. In the midst of the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic, we worked to streamline our costs while responding to that unprecedented situation. We optimized our use of internal human resources and cut down on mid-career hiring. We increased the efficiency of our corporate and common functions and we decided to change our office strategy, which I will discuss more later. These all led to significant improvement in fiscal year 2020 on a year-on-year basis.

We will continue to do our best with these initiatives in the future. Our good results from our 3 major initiatives led to overall good results for fiscal year 2020, and we are ready to move on to a new phase.

Before that, I would like to discuss our cost and expense breakdown. In relation to the change in our office strategy, we recognized JPY 3.4 billion total in onetime costs for the full fiscal year in SG&A and other expenses. I will share more details later, but we wanted to respond to new work style needs during COVID-19, so we are making our office costs variable. By doing so, we expect to at least have office expenses from fiscal year 2022 onwards.

One other matter to mention is that we worked to strengthen monitoring of individual games in the Game Business and as a result, we shifted to managing individual games as cash-generating units. Consequently, we recognized JPY 3.2 billion in software impairment under other expenses in fiscal year 2020.

Now that I have shared our results for fiscal year 2020 and the aim to move on to a new phase, I would like to share my long-term vision as CEO. First, on the 20th anniversary of DeNA's founding, we reflected on and took stock of ourselves to achieve growth and evolve in the future. In the past, we have had some tough times, such as in fiscal year 2019, when we set our major initiatives for fiscal year 2020. However, we have had good results in those initiatives and now we are ready to move on to a new phase.

We took the opportunity to revamp our mission, vision and value which we announced in April at the same time as I took over as CEO. This is our new mission. We delight people beyond their wildest dreams. We incorporated our aspirations for the company we want to be and the type of delight we want to deliver to people into our mission after considering the state of society and what we have accomplished to date.

As we lay out in our vision, we will use Internet and AI technology to delight people everywhere. We seek to Entertain and to Serve. And each of us harnesses our individual strengths to make our unique business succeed. We have grown significantly as a company under Entertain and going forward, we will also Serve. And I expect we will take on a unique position as a company.

Another characteristic of DeNA is how we often work with partners and are open to a variety of partnership structures. DeNA's core competencies are our Technology & Monozukuri; our Organization & People; and our Home Base, which is Yokohama and Kanagawa, where we have the Yokohama DeNA Baystars. We will make use of these core competencies to become a unique business that entertains and serves with synergy between the two.

I will share some examples of how this can work. For example, we bring together Technology & Monozukuri and Organization & People with our Live Streaming Business. We have live operations know-how and safety know-how from our Game Business, which is very useful for Live Streaming. This is useful for Sports and also for Healthcare. We use expertise from gaming to make fun services that users will want to use in the healthcare space. That type of approach to healthcare is unique to DeNA.

In Sports as well, we have experience from games and online services we can draw upon from thinking about the user perspective and running the PDCA cycle. For events, we know to perform thorough checks and think about what users want. And this has led to the success we have seen with the Yokohama DeNA Baystars. Our expertise in technology will also be useful for Machizukuri initiatives, including for example, creating a zero emission stadium at Yokohama Stadium in the future. There's a variety of possibilities in the future.

As we've mentioned, DeNA does not always operate alone. We have many partners with whom we create value. I do not expect this will change in the future. We have Nintendo, Shueisha and Cygames as partners in entertainment. We have Sumitomo Corporation in healthcare and Preferred Networks. In our Sports business, we also work in collaboration with local municipalities, specifically the City of Yokohama. Creating new value with partners is something that is unique to DeNA and we will continue to strengthen this part of our business.

As a result, in the long term, my aim is to both Entertain and to Serve, and ideally, to have synergy between the two approaches. First, We will work to secure an earnings base within each approach and achieve growth in each. In addition, we will look for upside opportunities to achieve leaps in growth. For example, we will continue doing our best with our Live Streaming Business with New Businesses and with possible M&A opportunities. But while we look to upside opportunities, first, we will be creating an earnings base for Entertain and Serve.

Looking out 10 years, our strategy will look like this. The Serve portion will grow and accumulate steadily. Sports will shake off the impact of COVID-19. Sports also includes our community initiatives and by its nature, is something that will grow in stages. The Healthcare business is similar and will also build up, serving as a foundation for our business, and we will have New Businesses come on top of that. In entertainment, Games, in particular, are volatile. But we will work to secure a good level of profit from this core business and build that up. My goal is to clearly show all of you the growth DeNA achieves and the shape we grow into.

Earlier, I mentioned the importance of the DeNA mission and vision. The DeNA value is another important matter for us. Within this, we have the DeNA promise, which is our commitment to society. We endeavor to act in a socially responsible way, including being aware of the importance of the SDGs and contribute to society. That will serve as the foundation upon which we do business, delivering delight to people and creating new values. We will bring our unique approach to Entertain and to Serve and aim to be a company that attracts people's attention.

Now that I have shared the broad long-term strategy, I would like to discuss the future strategy for individual businesses in greater detail. In fiscal year 2021, we want to go on to a new phase. We have a revamped mission, vision and value, and I have just started as CEO. These will be our focus initiatives for the next 3 years. Considering the good results in the 3 major initiatives from fiscal year 2020, in fiscal year 2021, we will prioritize investment into future growth and initiatives. By fiscal year 2023, 3 years from now, our aim is, under Entertain, to operate businesses with the aim to secure a good level of profit in the entertainment space despite volatility in Games. But in addition to that, under Serve, for Sports to shake off COVID-19 and grow, and for Sports, Healthcare and the other businesses to achieve steady and sustainable growth.

In particular, in the Game Business, we need to develop new titles. We will use our established core competencies, including our development and live operations structure in Japan and China and partnership with IP holders to deliver titles, mainly using major IP to the world, including those shown on the slide. We will work to deliver about 3 to 5 titles per year, although there may be some variance in any one year. As is clear on the slide, the fact that existing titles make up the majority of our performance continues to be a challenge for us. Creating new hits is very important, but we also need to think about how we can secure segment profit.

As I've mentioned a few times, we are seeing great growth in live streaming. We will further grow and enhance Pococha. We will also expand into new genres and go after global opportunities. As you can see, Pococha is seeing strong performance in Japan. We have over 2.55 million downloads, and Pococha has become a welcoming place for users, both for live streamers and listeners, and we are seeing a good accumulation of highly active users. We need to continue our efforts to make this service something that users can enjoy using over the long term.

When we finally get out of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have our newly-expanded stadium ready and we believe that we will have even more fans who come to see our games. We will use our professional baseball know-how in basketball, for example. This year, we were the champions of the Emperor's Cup, and our management was recognized for an award. This shows how, in addition to professional baseball, our basketball is becoming an appealing business for us. Sports is an important form of entertainment that has the power to bring life to the community, particularly in Kanagawa, including Yokohama and Kawasaki. One of our initiatives is to bring life to the Yokohama area through the previous City Hall District Development Project. We expect our proactive involvement in this project will lead to new business opportunities.

Health care is an obvious space in which we can serve people, and we are seeing good progress here. As is shown on the slide, we have been providing services and products to promote health and encourage behavior change. In the midst of that, we have begun to cooperate with industry players to make use of data and solve social problems, not just help individuals. I think through healthcare, we can help society as a whole. In particular, I think we will be able to create a wonderful business with DATA HORIZON, with whom we concluded an alliance last fiscal year. DATA HORIZON has relationships with local municipalities and familiarity with services for elderly persons, while DeNA has relationships with health insurance societies and a strength in IT and engagement science. By leveraging these strengths, I believe we will be able to build a business that makes use of health data.

I have just described our strategy for each business. And I hope you have a better understanding of our plan for the next 3 years and how we will invest for growth in each business. In the long term, that will form the portfolio that I described. And in the next 10 years, DeNA will become a unique type of tech company. I will do my best to lead DeNA to this goal.

Now I would like to discuss our financial strategy. As is clear on the slide, we have a healthy financial base. We will use this base to pursue new growth investment opportunities to grow our corporate value. Some of these opportunities will be in the mid- to long term, such as those under Serve. So going forward, we will make proactive use of our balance sheet, including debt to capture these mid- to long-term growth opportunities. We intend to approach our financial strategy so as to be in line with our existing business strategy.

Finally, I would like to discuss shareholder returns. For fiscal year 2020, we expect to have a dividend of JPY 32 per share of DeNA common stock as per our dividend policy. We do not expect to change our dividend policy. This slide also shows our progress on the share buyback announced on February 9, 2021.

I would like to reiterate our view for fiscal year 2021 for each business. Our forecast is for operating profit to decline in fiscal year 2021 due to the following factors: the consolidated financial results forecast for fiscal year 2021 cannot be provided due to the difficulty of reasonably and accurately estimating the figures.

For the Game business, we have multiple new titles planned for fiscal year 2021, and the performance of these titles are potential upside factors for overall performance. However, considering the period they could be expected to contribute and the structure of the business overall, among other factors, our existing titles are expected to be the main contributors to overall performance.

For Live Streaming, we will be working to grow the revenue of Pococha in Japan, but there is uncertainty about the potential for other genres in Japan and we will be going after a global launch, which also involves uncertainty. This means that we expect to conduct growth investment.

For Sports, as shown, the COVID-19 situation continues to be unclear. So we cannot forecast its impact for fiscal year 2021.

In Other, we expect Healthcare will continue to grow steadily. Meanwhile, we do not expect any onetime factors such as what we had last fiscal year. In summary, the top 2 bullet points are the key takeaways.

Previously, when I mentioned our costs, I mentioned that we had changed our office strategy. We will have offices in Shibuya and in our home base in Yokohama. Yokohama will be a new office location. And our new headquarters will be in WeWork in Shibuya Scramble Square, Through these changes, we will pursue a new work style for the COVID-19 era.

This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your patience and your attention.

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