Park24 Co Ltd

TSE:4666

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Koichi Nishikawa, executive]

[Interpreted] Hello. I am Nishikawa. Thank you for attending the Fiscal 2024 First Half Financial Results Briefing Meeting for Park24. I will now start explaining according to the presentation material.

First, I will start with the consolidated results for first half. As was announced already last Friday, net sales were JPY 775.8 (sic) [ 175.8 ] billion, operating profit was JPY 16.6 billion, recurring profit was JPY 14.9 billion, and net profit in Q2 was JPY 9 billion. We announced the full year plan last December, and we overachieved all the numbers. We were able to finish this Q2 with a very strong performance.

This is the results by business segment. Parking Business Japan achieved net sales of JPY 85.6 billion. Mobility business was JPY 52 billion. And Parking Business International achieved JPY 38.4 billion. Again, we exceeded the plan in all business segments.

Please go to Table 3 on the right. This is recurring profit by business. Parking Business Japan achieved JPY 16.7 billion and Mobility business achieved JPY 9.7 billion. For both Parking Business Japan and Mobility business, we overachieved the plan. However, we were originally planning JPY 0.1 billion of recurring profit for Parking Business International, but the result was negative JPY 0.3 billion at the end of Q2 this year.

From here on, I will explain each business. Both sales and number of times parking were very sluggish since fiscal 2020, during the pandemic, but we have seen smooth recovery as we broke out of COVID-19 last and this fiscal year. Net sales are trending strongly. Compared to last fiscal year, mainly fiscal year ended October 2023, number of times parking is about 160 sites higher. As such, development of sites are progressing well as of the end of Q2 this year.

Next, I will talk about Mobility business. Net sales were JPY 52 billion, which exceeded the original plan by JPY 1.3 billion. From before, net sales of Mobility business includes usage fees for car-sharing, which means sales generated by service operation. The cars are depreciated over a 4-year period. And once 4 years have passed, we sell the cars in the used car market and make gain on sales, which is also included as a part of net sales. As such, out of net sales of JPY 52 billion this period, service operations generated JPY 48.9 billion, 22.4% increase year-on-year. However, sales and disposal of vehicles decreased to JPY 3 billion. Last fiscal year was JPY 5.5 billion, so it almost halved.

Despite the decrease in sales and disposal of vehicles, service operations grew, and as a result, net sales increased. Meanwhile, looking at business profit, it is similar. Out of JPY 9.7 billion of business profit, service operations generated JPY 8.8 billion. Sales and disposal of vehicles were JPY 0.8 billion. Service operations grew 58.1% year-on-year, while sales and disposal of vehicles shrank to 35%, which means roughly 65% decrease.

Despite the decrease in sales and disposal of vehicles, service operations increased profits. And in total, profits increased. This is a good trend we are seeing. Rather than generating profits by sales and disposal of vehicles, service operations expanded profits, which was a prominent trend in Q2.

Looking at the individual parts of the Mobility business, Chart 5 on the left shows the trend of usage fees per vehicle per month. It was JPY 120,700 per vehicle per month. Compared to Q2 of fiscal year ended October 2023, it is an increase by 5.6%.

The graph on the right shows the breakdown into unit price per use and number of users per month. Comparing year-on-year, unit price per use increased by JPY 136 to JPY 4,400. As for the number of users, although it was only an increase of 0.7x, it increased to 27.4x, so both the unit price and number of use increased. As a result, net sales per vehicle increased to JPY 120,000. Having sales of JPY 120,000 per vehicle is the highest ever since we started our car-sharing business.

Mobility business is growing very steadily now. Page 8 shows a unique case in the first half. This is a case of a rollout of business model of providing service platform of our Mobility business. In the results presentation for the full year last December, I talked about our case of collaboration with West Japan Railway Rent-a-Car and Lease Company. This is a similar initiative we are taking with Hakone Car Share. We are collaborating with the city of Hakone and Hakone DMO in this case. We are offering our car-sharing platform to them, which is being operated under the brand of Hakone Car Share. So this will be the second case where we are offering our car-sharing platform. And this has already started. It was launched in May, and we were able to have a good start. This business will be ramping up at an early stage, and Hakone City commented that they are pleased with the results. For this business model of offering our platform, we plan to expand to multiple fields.

Next, Page 9 shows the performance of Parking Business International. We have net sales and business profit by country. There are some impact from foreign exchange, so please take a look at the right-hand table, which shows the performance in local currency.

Net sales in the U.K. on the left, for example, shows growth rate of 122.4%. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange on a local currency basis would be growth of 107.6%.

For Australia, the growth rate shows 110.1%. But on a local currency basis, the growth rate was 104.2%. As such, it is difficult to see the real capability on a Japanese yen basis. And that's why we have the numbers on the right on a local currency basis. But having said so, Table 5 on the left has business profit and loss.

The U.K.'s original plan was negative JPY 0.9 billion, but the actual result was negative JPY 0.8 billion, so it was an improvement of JPY 0.1 billion. Also, Australia's plan was JPY 0.7 billion of business profit, but, in the end, it was almost JPY 0 on a local currency basis. So Australia is facing challenges now.

As for other areas of Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, against the original plan of JPY 0.8 billion, achievement was JPY 0.9 billion, so it is performing almost in line with the plan. At the end of October, which is the end of the second half this year, we need to watch closely how Australia develops. In order to improve the situation, we will have a total of 2 new persons sent from Japan to rebuild and to reenhance sales activities. Through such efforts, we plan to make improvements.

Next, on Page 10, we have the status of development of localized times parking facilities. The U.K., Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, regions other than Taiwan, before we acquired companies locally, there were properties that each of the countries were developing on their own. For such existing properties, we are now proactively opening localized times parking facilities. We are now focusing on developing many outdoor small, flat parking space and disbursing them. Many of the facilities held before our M&As are large-scale, long-term contracts. We are now shifting to localized times parking facilities and aim to reduce the ratio of existing types of parking facilities.

Profitability is higher at localized times parking facilities. So, by reducing the ratio of current type of parking proactively, we intend to improve profitability. This is what we are focusing on right now.

We are making a lot of efforts on development. But so far, in terms of space, the localized times parking facilities account for a very small portion only.

Taiwan, as is shown at the right bottom table, shows high ratio of localized times parking facilities at 98.4%. As for Taiwan, as early as in 2006, we were directly managing the business ourselves and have developed localized times parking facilities, so the ratio is very high.

And other countries are still very small in terms of the ratio. So by accelerating the speed of development, we intend to reduce the ratio of existing type of facilities. We'd like to speed up this process.

This concludes the briefing about the consolidated results for the first half.

Now, Page 11 shows the financial status. It is a bit busy, but I would like to explain about Table 9 on the left. The second line from the bottom shows shareholders' equity ratio of 25.6%, which is an improvement of 2.7 points from last year. I will delve into the details later, but we are aiming for 30% and are making good progress towards that.

This was the overview of the business in Q2 and the financial status. From here on, I will talk about the full year plan.

We are maintaining the midterm plan announced last December. As I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, net sales and profits at all levels are on pace to exceed the initial plan. If the pace is maintained, it is natural to think of revising the plan. However, looking at individual businesses, the accident rate for May in the Mobility business is a little high. We would like to determine a little bit more whether this is a transitionary factor due to the Golden Week holiday or not and whether this trend will continue or not. If it is a transitory factor, then, of course, we will see positive results in the midterm business plan, but we want to monitor the trend for another 1 or 2 months. Even if we revise the plan, the figures will be affected by whether the trend is transient or continuous. So we would -- we have decided to leave the plan unchanged at the second quarter. If the accident rate in May is a transitory phenomenon caused by the Golden Week holiday and if the business performance continues at the same pace as in the first half of this year, we would like to consider revising the full year forecast when we have more certainty.

The concerns in revising the full year forecast include the accident rate in the Mobility business, which I mentioned earlier, and the fact that the costs in the overseas business remain high. How will these cost reduction measures take effect in the third quarter? Once we have a clear picture of these points, we will be able to see the figures for the landing points. Therefore, we would like to see the situation for another 2 months, June and July. For this point of view, we decided to maintain the full year plan unchanged in the second quarter.

Next, other topics, we have been receiving many questions recently from many investors in Japan regarding pricing strategy. As you know, Japan has been experiencing inflation and, in this context, we are often asked whether we are considering raising fees in both Parking and Mobility business.

First of all, for hourly parking business, we have been using an online system called TONIC since 2003. We are constantly using TONIC system to maximize our net sales. We are currently operating over 17,000 sites. And, on average, most of those sites revise fees at least once within 12 to 18 months. We have always set our fees to maximize our net sales since the introduction of this online system in 2003, so we have not and will not raise our fees uniformly across the company.

In the Parking business, each location differs, and it is a characteristic of hourly parking that, if fees are raised too high for a particular location, customers will leave and sales will decline. So it is very important to set fees close to the maximum that is acceptable to the users of that parking facility. We set the prices meticulously so that the users of that parking facility do not find fees unacceptable. Therefore, we do not raise rates or prices uniformly across the company as a matter of policy with respect to the Parking business.

I have been asked the same question about the Mobility business, but the ideal is different from the reality, or rather it is very difficult. In Japan, we are aware that we have a dominant position in a car-sharing business. Hence, we believe that we are in a price-leader position to some extent. There are several other companies in the same industry.

To make a long story short, we would like to maintain the current level of prices. If we raise our fees, of course, they will raise their fees as well. We would like -- this would make it easier for them. Currently, their rates are set close to the levels of ours. But if we raise our fees, other companies will follow suit.

As you know, we already have properties for our parking lots, so we have a cost advantage. For other companies that do not have such properties for parking lot, their costs could be higher, so they would like to raise fees. But because of market prices, they cannot and set the similar price level of ours. Given this situation, raising just fees will not be an advantage against our competitors.

Let me be honest with you, at the risk of being misunderstood, we would like to increase the utilization ratio even if we had to consider reducing the fees because we want to increase recognition as a public transportation service provider, a service that can easily be used by anyone at any time. The anyone/anytime includes students. We have a large number of young people using our service with about 50% of our members in their 20s and 30s, but we would like to see more young people use our service. Of course, rate of inflation is rising nowadays, but this inflation is not a good inflation. In materials, prices are rising, which is causing an inflationary trend. I am aware that rising prices in response to such external environment is not likely to result in a price increase that leads to a high operation.

We have received a number of questions asking whether we should raise prices because of inflation. But considering various factors, we believe that raising prices now would not be a good idea. In other words, maximizing sales in the Mobility business is the same as in the Parking business. We are always thinking about maximizing net sales and believe there are other ways to do it. In fact, net sales per vehicle are increasing every year, and we do not consider the current JPY 120,000 to be the upper limit. We will raise the level furthermore.

It is true that it is easy to increase sales by raising fees. But as I mentioned earlier, there is uncertainty as to whether or not the increase will be accompanied by actual sales. And also, increasing sales by raising fees do not accumulate any business know-hows.

We would like to focus on creating various sales promotion measures, services and so on, while keeping the fees unchanged in order to increase the number of users. We are not considering an easy increase in fees at this time because this is our belief, and we want to focus on this approach for the time being.

The other financial strategies in the Mid-Term Management Plans are shown on Page 17. In individual IR interviews, we have received nuanced questions about our future financial events such as whether we will be raising funds through equity financing, but I mentioned at the FY 2023 full year financial briefing last December, and before that as well, we will be using our cash on hand and bank borrowings. We are not planning to raise any funds through equity financing or other means. As stated here, we are confident that our cash on hand and bank loans will be sufficient to cover our needs. We have not changed our position at all.

With regard to the capital structure, as we explained at the FY 2023 full year financial briefing in December and at subsequent individual IR meetings, that our target is 30% shareholders' equity ratio. However, I regret that the nuance was focused too much on 30% and meant approximately 30%, not 30% at all cost. And it is not that 29.9% is not acceptable. I would like to say this point once again. As a new point for our basic policy on shareholder returns, we will adopt DOE as the standard. By adopting the DOE as a standard, we will be able to return profits to shareholders, being mindful about the total dividend payout ratio. For capital efficiency, we will pay attention to the spreads between ROIC and WACC.

I would like to make a clear announcement at this time. For your information, our DOE for the last 10 years is shown on Page 18. And as you see, average DOE so far was approximately 11% to 12%. In 2016 and 2017, we had DOE in the mid-13%, like 13.5% and 13.4%. We would like to return to 10% level as soon as possible. And beyond that, we would like to improve the DOE to the pre-COVID pandemic level of the low 10%, which is the level of 2011, 2012 and 2013.

When we announced FY 2023 full year financial result last December, we said that our target for the dividend payout ratio was 50%. But from now on, we will consider the dividend on equity basis. If the payout ratio is 50%, the remaining 50% will be accumulated every year. So we would like to increase the total dividend payout ratio by combining the remaining portion with share buybacks. We will continue to consider shareholder returns based on DOE.

This is a brief summary of fiscal year 2024 first half financial results and the forecast for the full year. Thank you very much for listening.

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