Trend Micro Inc

TSE:4704

Earnings Call Analysis

SaaS Focus Drives Growth Amid Expansion

Strong strides were made on the 'road to 2025' with significant growth in subscription SaaS sales of 20% year-over-year, totaling $198 million, which now constitutes 56% of the enterprise business. This surge reflects a successful pivot to SaaS, also underscored by a 20% increase in annual recurring revenue at $745 million. The enterprise sector experienced overall growth of 9%, achieving $354 million for the period. Marketplaces like AWS contribute to this expansion with a 52% increase in business. Customer base and engagement are on the rise, with 32% of large enterprise customers using the Vision One platform and a focus on intensifying their engagement. The consumer business also showed a positive trend with a 5% rise, reaching $103 million in sales, fueled by innovative offerings beyond traditional PC products, paving the way for increased average order value and margin obsession.

Strategic Initiatives and SaaS Growth Ambitions

The business is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by a clear strategic initiative aimed at 2025. This strategy, introduced in 2020 alongside the Vision One platform, focuses on adopting the Software as a Service (SaaS) model which promises to enhance revenue quality, expand opportunities, improve customer health, and increase retention rates. The company has demonstrated positive momentum toward these goals. For example, a 52% year-over-year growth was observed in transactions through the AWS marketplace, reflecting a successful shift towards modern marketplace models. Continued progress in their enterprise business is highlighted by an ambitious target of $2 billion in sales, with $1.5 billion as Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and a base of 500,000 commercial SaaS customers. As of the report, they are on a clear trajectory to hit these marks, with an ARR already at $745 million.

Customer Engagement and Platform Utilization

The company has focused on deepening customer engagement through its Vision One platform with over 32% of their large enterprise installed base now attached. They aim to transition more of their customer base to a 'highly engaged' status, characterized by daily platform logins and multifaceted utilization. This high engagement correlates with increased ARR, with highly engaged customers averaging around $112,000 in ARR. This strategy has already yielded a 100% year-over-year growth in six-figure deals and a 50% increase in transactions in the security operations center (SOC) space, further attesting to the value the platform delivers and the company's efficacy in executing their strategic vision.

Consumer Business Performance and Focus on Margins

Despite computations in the consumer sector, which makes up 22% of the overall business, management remains focused on this segment because of its integral role in threat intelligence. They set a target of $500 million in gross sales with an aspiration of 18 million customers. There's a strong emphasis on increasing the Average Order Value (AOV) and expanding beyond traditional PC security. In the third quarter of 2023, the consumer business saw a 5% year-over-year growth to $103 million in revenue, with key growth drivers identified as mobile, telecom, and business-to-business-to-consumer segments. Additionally, the expansion is being managed with a keen eye on margin enhancement.

Regional Insights and Growth Dynamics

The Japan region, which has traditionally lagged in adopting new technologies, is now experiencing robust growth, especially with the implementation of XDR (Extended Detection and Response). A 42% year-over-year increase in XDR adoption and revenue indicates a positive trend, catalyzed by the realization among businesses of the need for expert support, which in turn drives sales for the company's managed detection and response offerings. In the cloud security domain, the business is growing steadily at 49%, with signs of a shift in consumption patterns towards partner-managed services and the cloud, a transition complemented by penetration into the SMB market with XDR functions.

Cost Controls and Future Outlook

Fiscal responsibility is evident with a year-over-year and quarter-on-quarter containment of selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses at 6%. This cost discipline, juxtaposed against a 10% increase in the previous quarter, has been attributed mainly to reduced travel expenditures and a persistent focus on productivity. Moving forward, the company plans to maintain a tight rein on expenses without the need to increase headcount, leveraging generative AI to boost productivity. One temporary factor aiding cost control has been the lower stock option costs due to a decrease in share price compared to the previous year.

No Revision to Future Guidance Despite Strong Q3 Performance

Notwithstanding the strong performance in the third quarter, the business refrains from revising its future guidance because of its anticipation of variable costs in the fourth quarter associated with revenue fluctuations and semi-annual bonus payments. The cautious approach also takes into account the temporary nature of cost reductions seen in Q3, stressing that one-off factors like reduced stock option costs should not ground expectations for sustained low costs or high profits for the following quarters.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you. I hope you can see the screen. Usually, in my presentation, I always start with the -- first, for the quarterly summary. But this time, it's a little bit different.

There are 2 important pieces of information that I'd like to share with you, beginning with the news release has been already provided. And I just wanted to summarize the content of those news releases.

Starting with the shareholder returns. For FY '23, end of year dividend, and FY '24 share buyback. Targets is the first item. Now, we have been trying to optimize the level of cash that we own and we went through various different approaches for calculation. There are different opinions.

And on the balance sheet, we have certain available 2 restrictions. And based on that, we try to figure out what is the maximum amount that we can return, which is JPY 140 billion, and we have decided to return this to shareholders as soon as possible. And as you can see at the bottom of the slide, this is a combination between regular and onetime dividend, and we want to deliver JPY 100 billion, and then JPY 40 billion in share buyback.

Of course, we still have the fourth quarter to go, which means that in the end, at the end of December, we have to look at the balance sheet and calculate these numbers, which means that these numbers are still subject to potential change. Please kindly understand.

Another item that I would like to share with you. This is the policy for shareholder return going forward. So this time around, we're talking about a relatively large sum of money, but we still have a lot of cash on hand, which means that going forward, the net profit that -- or net income that the company makes should be returned to the shareholders 100% as share buyback or dividend, and the 70% payout ratio will be maintained.

But the balance sheet structure will be changing quite a lot. So there will be some restrictions, but still, we will attempt to return the total net income. And still, we will have plenty of cash left, which means that we can make further business investments. And if there are good opportunities, we may consider M&A. And also, we will consider other possibilities of further enhancing the capital efficiency.

I'm sure that there are many questions related to these 2 points. And what I would like to ask you is to join us on the IR day on the 1st of December and ask those questions that you may have because today, we want to focus on the earnings announcement for the third quarter. So we want to talk about the business performance and businesses and receive those questions today.

And Kevin, will be appearing on video, but he is also participating in Q&A. I think it's 2 a.m. in the morning for him, but he will be answering any questions you may have today.

Now with that, we would like to start with a summary of the third quarter. As you can see, net sales, 13% up. And operating income, up by 58%. This is something that was put it out by our analysts, how is the management going well studying from this fiscal year. We have been controlling things quite tightly, but it will take some time to see the outcome.

And net income, why minus 93%? Well, I will explain that in the next slide. But in the pre-GAAP is growing 13% on yen basis, and 63% growth, and basically 9% growth without the ForEx impact.

Net sales and ordinary income, this was actually a record high. So why did we lower the net income? Well, in order to pay out a dividend, we basically brought over -- we are bringing over all the profits that we're making overseas. And this means, once the subsidiaries overseas transfer this amount to the parent company in Japan, we have to pay a certain amount of tax that's basically JPY 8.1 billion, and this has to be incurred in the third quarter. And this is why we are seeing a temporary decline in net income. But without that, we would have had JPY 9 billion in net income.

And this is minus 33% still. You may remember, last year, in the third quarter, we sold of a subsidiary, and we had a gain from that. So in the absence of that, it looks as if it is lower. But actually, with this adjustment, it is about the same level as the ordinary income.

And then we will look at net sales by region and without the FX impact, as you can see across the board, we are seeing positive growth.

And if we look at this by segment, you can see that in the enterprise area, we're seeing double-digit growth. In the previous quarter, the growth in the enterprise was slow. But this quarter, we have been able to achieve this kind of double-digit growth for the enterprise arena as well.

And then when we look at the pre-GAAP results of each area, then we can see this negative number for the Americas, but there's 2 reasons for this. First is because of the consumer business and unfortunately, there has been an impact here because of that. And this resulted in what you see here.

Meanwhile, in EMEA, we have a very high growth rate of over 20%, and we have 8% growth in Japan. This is not satisfactory to us, but we have continued to see growth here.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, compared to the previous quarter, we had this 2% for consumer. But because of the FX impact in the pre-GAAP area, we have seen this kind of result for the enterprise area.

And for the sales by region as well as the growth in the sales in the enterprise arena, Kevin will be making an explanation.

Meanwhile, for the subscriptions. You may see a decline. But there is just 1 factor. There was 1 contract. And because of that, it was just a single company. The amount was not that great. And so there is no impact on the net sales, although the customer count has been changed.

And meanwhile, for the subscription ARR, we have seen a growth by 20%. That is not satisfactory to us, but we continue to continue see growth in this area.

As for the cost in regard to expenses, if we take advantage, the service cloud area and the size then, this will not go down. And we believe that this aspect is impacting things. And we believe that about half is going into the PoS area. And so in the denominated basis, because of the FX impact, there has been some decline here.

Meanwhile, for the headcount. For the quarter, we are focusing on the people's productivity. As for the summary of the highlights. As already mentioned, there has been record set for quarterly revenues and ordinary income and double-digit growth of enterprise business, also tighter cost control for improvement of operating margin.

For the half year results, this is just the sum of the past 2 quarters, so I'll skip this. And here is the FY projection annual impact. And you may be wondering why the net income has gone down.

There is the tax of JPY 8.1 billion. And so therefore, there is a change in our annual outlook.

And that's all from my side. And Kevin will be giving further details later on. Thank you very much for your attention.

[Kevin Simzer, executive]

Thanks, Mahendra. Hi, everyone. My name is Kevin Simzer, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer for Trend Micro. I wanted to take a few minutes to give you an update on the overall health of our business. I hope you're as pleased as we are to see the top line growth continue, and our operating margin continue to improve.

We believe it all starts with the platform itself. Our market-leading Trend Micro Vision One platform is truly landing with a great deal of success. Not only is it the most comprehensive platform out there with both protection and detection and response across e-mail, endpoint, cloud, network and OT environments.

But we also are unique and we support both an on-premise and a SaaS offering, wrapped with our attack surface risk management that covers both inside the enterprise as well as out with the generative AI built in. It's by far the most comprehensive of any cybersecurity platform out there.

It's not only us that's saying good things about it. We're really pleased to see Forrester recognizes us, in not just the top right position, but also the top right relative to strategy, so our strategic direction.

We continue to get a lot of accolades in terms of our threat defense expertise, and that's measured quite nicely in terms of us being the #1 company for disclosing vulnerabilities on the market by a long shot. It's really in our DNA and how we think.

We've taken the AI that we've built into the platform. Actually, quite honestly, we've been incorporating AI into our platform for a decade. But recently, we added the generative AI capability in terms of our copilot capabilities. Now we've expanded it to include actually AI running our entire business.

Today, you can go on our website, and when customers are calling in, perhaps with some kind of an issue going on with the platform itself, when we generate the knowledge-based article, which gets posted on our website, that's all generated using large language model and generative AI. We've taken it 1 step further into our go-to-market machine, and we're starting to analyze now all of the different inputs that we have from a customer standpoint.

We know the e-mails that they're opening. We know the places on our website that they're accessing. We know the health of the customer. We know exactly when they're logging into our Vision One platform. And we can incorporate all that data and provide a recommendation to our field organization in terms of the next action.

Maybe it's a health check. Perhaps it's an inquiry on a certain new capability. Lots of different things that we could potentially action, and AI is helping to drive us in those directions.

Now several quarters ago, we started to talk about the road to 2025. This is not something new inside trend. In fact, this was introduced in -- just after we introduced our Vision One platform in 2020.

And we wanted to create a set of internal KPIs that we could start to demonstrate that we're getting the flywheel spinning around SaaS adoption. We knew that as customers started to adopt SaaS, that it would be higher protein, top line revenue, all subscription. We knew that our ability to expand would be higher. We knew that our customers would be healthier. We knew that our retention rates would be higher.

And we have demonstrated that, and you're going to see it over and over again within this presentation how we're moving the yardsticks forward. But this was the first step. This was just the first step to get the flywheel moving around our SaaS offering.

In our December 1 IR conference, you will hear more about how we've taken this model and adapted it and expanded it to also include our on-premise offering, which we're super excited about.

For the enterprise business, we set a target of $2 billion in sales, $1.5 billion in ARR with $100 million protected assets across 500,000 commercial SaaS customers. We continue to move the yardstick forward within the quarter, using U.S. dollars and in a common currency. So this way, you can truly get a real idea of the growth within the business.

The enterprise business grew 9% year-over-year, sitting at $354 million for the quarter. And what's really interesting is our subscription sales. That sales on our SaaS platform reaching $198 million in subscription SaaS sales. That's up 20% year-over-year. So now 56% of our overall quarterly business in the enterprise space is coming from SaaS subscription sales. This was an important flywheel that we wanted to get going.

We also measured it in terms of SaaS customers, up at 430,000 SaaS customers, growing 5%, and continuing to get both broader and deeper penetration within those customers with 74 million protected assets. That's up 22% year-over-year. So really showing that our platform is landing.

Another KPI that we built out was annual recurring revenue around the platform, $745 million, that's up 20% year-over-year at the end of Q3. So really nice continued success within the adoption of our platform.

We're transforming in other ways as well. We've been a traditional 2-tier distribution model. And as that model has started to evolve towards what the industry refers to as super marketplaces, we too have been there. We moved quickly on top of this, $113 million in ARR, sitting at 52% year-over-year growth of business transacted through the AWS marketplace. We have customers that have large EDPs and they want to be transacting through the marketplace.

But there's no -- no more important measure than well, how are you doing in terms of attaching your platform? And we look at this in a couple of different ways. One is, is it adopted? And then the second is, how are we doing on usage?

In our enterprise business, we have smaller enterprises and we have larger enterprises. 30,000 large enterprises is the approximate number of our total large enterprise installed base set of accounts. And here, we're showing that Vision One is now attached to over 32% of those 30,000. We're up just over 9,000 customers running our Vision One platform. So that's the first metric, have we attached.

The second measure this usage or engagement score as we refer to it here. We can cohort our customers into 3 different buckets: low, medium and highly engaged. A highly engaged customer is logging into our platform daily. They're using multiple sensor types. They're using our workbench to do forensics analysis and threat discovery, they're really, really getting the full richness of the platform.

And we know that when we get a highly engaged customer, on average, it drives around $112,000 in ARR. So we're fixated on moving more and more of those 9,000 plus customers to highly engaged customers because that -- they're truly leveraging the platform or building a moat because they've got a lot of data that we're consuming and they're leveraging it in a big way. So that's a big priority for the field organization, all the way back into the product development team.

We see it in the numbers in terms of the number of 6-figure deals. So 100% year-over-year growth in terms of 6-figure deals. Now that we're selling in the security operations center, now that we're more strategic with our customers, we're seeing larger deal sizes.

We're also seeing that with SOCs specifically, that the growth in those deals has grown dramatically. So 50% increase in the number of transactions that we did in the SOCs space this quarter. So really, really nice success.

With the macroeconomic conditions, we continue to see protracted sales cycles, many more approvals that are needed in order to land the deal. But that's not getting in the way that we're still able to land these larger transactions.

Finally, from an ARR perspective, sitting at $745 million. We still have our sight set on the $1.5 billion in -- and this is a number that we'll be talking about more during our IR conference.

But what we know today is that we need 2x the number of XDR customers to be attached and deployed. So we know how many we have to achieve between now and the end of 2025.

Another thing that we introduced in Q3 that I'm super excited about is an update to our overall partner program. It included an important set of changes all in support of the MSSPs and MSPs. So we've got a lot of new capability that we're offering up in order to attract those MSSPs. In fact, we introduced this at the start of the quarter. And here we are within the quarter, we ended up with 30-plus new MSSPs already. In fact, I've heard from a partner in Germany, where 1 MSSP has already brought us 18 brand-new customers as a result of us engaging with them. So a really nice way for us to get expanded.

Speaking of customers, here's 3 examples of customer wins. We use this nomenclature of land and expand, landing an enterprise in the U.S. in the financial vertical is no easy feat. Of course, highly regulated PCI compliance was a requirement. We landed them because they were absolutely fixated on a more comprehensive offering, and that's what we delivered.

The second is in Europe, it's a hospitality organization, been an existing customer of ours for a while, strong focus on security. We've been protecting their endpoints, and they were looking to expand to EDR and to e-mail. And they already had an e-mail offering, and this was from another cybersecurity company. This was an example where we consolidated down to fewer vendors. So we ended up providing the more comprehensive platform, and we were able to replace the incumbent e-mail offering.

And then finally, in Japan, a massive consumer electronics company. These folks have been an existing customer of ours for a while. We've been protecting the end points, CrowdStrike have been protecting the EDR. And they were looking to consolidate, and our platform ended up winning out and here we were landing with a really, really nice win, replacing CrowdStrike on -- with our XDR offering.

So 3 good examples of customers that we closed within Q3 that hopefully give you an idea of the types of transactions that we end up doing.

Switching gears to our consumer business. This is 22% of our overall total business, it's our consumer business, an important part of our business, in addition, from a business standpoint, but also provides a great deal of threat intelligence to our overall data warehouse of where are threats happening around the globe because we have so many consumer customers.

We've set a target of $500 million in gross sales, $18 million in customers. And we're really fixated on growing, sort of the nontraditional, the non-PC part of our business. That we've been fine in, but we're looking to expand beyond that, ultimately, to increase our AOV. That's what we're really fixated. Increasing our size of wallet.

We are also pleased with the performance of our consumer business in Q3 2023, finishing at USD 103 million. That's plus 5% year-over-year growth, 17 million-plus customers. And then what's really nice is the growth is coming from our next-generation offerings, which has been our priority.

Our growth strategy has been around mobile, telco, business to business to consumer as well as some future innovations. And I'm pleased that we actually started to see growth in all of these areas. Now these are smaller parts of our business, and we're being very selective to make sure that we pick the most efficient areas as possible because even though we are fixated on driving some growth within the consumer business, we're absolutely obsessed with driving maximum amount of margin within the consumer business itself.

So we see, attaching ourselves in the mobile channel, in particular, in Japan, but some other regions as well. We had some good success in the AMEA region, Asia Pacific, Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa region with select telcos, where we've been attaching through telcos can be very cost effective to drive growth. We've introduced some new identity and privacy protection capabilities, and that's selling through a different set of partners that we haven't worked with before. And this is proving to start to get some traction and drive some growth.

And then finally, what we've seen beyond our traditional set of growth, we've seen our additional capabilities around VPN and password manager. And soon, as we go into Q4, we'll have some more identity protection capabilities, all of those future innovations driving growth for us.

I hope this was helpful in terms of providing some color on the quarter. Look forward to your questions. And I really hope that everyone will end up joining us during our investor conference in December, where we'll be double-clicking on this further and really giving you some good insight how this next wave this next evolution of our strategy will play a big role in terms of continuing to drive our top line growth and doing it in a more operationally efficient way. Thank you.

[Akihiko Omikawa, executive]

[Interpreted] Do have kept you waiting. And I would like to start my explanation with my video on -- this is the status business in the Japan region in the third quarter.

Kevin has already covered FY '23 enterprise and consumer business, left side is enterprise and right-hand is consumer. And the enterprise business, that we have attack surface risk management, Vision One and XDR. And based on that, we are providing a value through cybersecurity platform.

And in addition to the IT budget, we are looking at the risk management for the whole enterprise or security operation center budget. So we are trying to get more from different types of budgets. And also for the consumer business on the right-hand side, we have a beyond device security. We have been depending on mobile and PC, but we want to expand the type of services that we provide, so we can achieve stable growth.

And this is the outcome of enterprise business in Japan. We're penetrating cybersecurity platform and XDR implementation started finally in Japan, lagging behind the U.S. and Europe.

There is some characteristics of the Japanese customers to consider, but now we are seeing good growth. And XDR is increasing by 42% year-on-year. And also when the customer starts to use XDR, what they tend to do is start using additional sensors and additional services around XDR.

This means that sales from these companies are also increasing at the same percentage, 42%. So this is a very positive purchase cycle.

And after the implementation of XDR, some companies begin to realize that they need expert support, they cannot do this on their own. And in XDR, managed detection and response support is provided from Trend Micro, and this is also growing very strongly. And sales growth from this business is 3.5 fold compared to the same quarter last year.

Now really, detailed incident response and other types of support are now provided from Japan. And again, this is impacting our customers in a positive way. We go through partners but we also provide services directly.

In the past, our main business was selling products. But recently, centering around XDR, we can collect information. And we can look at the company risk and decide what needs to be done. We can provide advice in making these decisions. In other words, we are getting more budget from Security Operations Center, which is different from the IT budget, through these new services that we are providing. And this was lagging behind in Japan, but now we are seeing good growth.

Moving on to cloud security. AWS marketplace is very dynamic in the U.S. and Europe. But in Japan, the customers tend to depend on our partners rather than trying to buy something directly from the marketplace. But still, we are seeing a very good growth at 49%. And also SMB business, which is stable, every quarter, number of customers is increasing.

And furthermore, with the Virus Buster, there is mainly on-premise that is facing the end of life. And so therefore, there is a shift to the cloud that is taking place. And managed services by partners are starting to penetrate.

And furthermore, our partners have been expanding on UTM sales. And in the SMB market, we have XDR functions that have started to be deployed. And it had just been 1 company that had been handling this, but now, NTT East had made an announcement on this.

And there will be more partners that will be making efforts to the SMBs by adding the XDR functions for the enterprise market for this area as well. And so therefore, the services will be increased. And for each customer, we believe that there is going to be an increase in the revenues that we can generate.

And this is for the consumer market. We have the beyond device security product. And as shown here, on a year-over-year basis, we have a 56% increase. And there are various functions that are deployed here. And the user interface has been simplified. And from the beginning of October, we have moved forward with this. And 1 month has passed.

And in regard to -- there may be an increase of over JPY 1,000 revenue per customer, that has been increased. And so this is -- started as the standard.

And for smartphones, there is a decrease in the number of smartphone dedicated shops. But we are satisfying their customers, and there's lower churn. And so therefore, there is much emphasis on selling these products.

And when it comes to device security. Therefore, PCs and so on, there's been a new channel developed. There's a lot of small businesses covered. And there are many cases where in the sales channel of smartphones, there are more and more requirements for securities. And so therefore, there is a development of new channels in these areas.

Finally, in the area of security education. We have been working together in security education with police. And there are less proprietary Japanese mobile phones. And as we face an aging population, it will be necessary to carry out security educational events in conjunction with police officials. And we are active in various ways and efforts here.

Second, we have been moving forward with tie-ups with local governments, such as [indiscernible] in Tottori Prefecture and in Awara City in Fukui Prefecture. And we have now agreements in place with those areas.

And with that, we would like to move forward with greater efforts for penetration of security education in these areas.

Those are the activities of Q3. Thank you very much.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] Can you hear me? I was asked to unmute the microphones. So is it okay to ask a question now?

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted]

Yes. Yes, we can hear you, [ Ueno-san ]. We can hear you.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] Simple question. So profit growth was very strong. The result was very positive. But looking at the details, it seems that cost control was quite strong, too. This is Page 8 of your presentation material, SG&A increase, 6%, JPY 57 billion or so. This is controlled to this level.

In the second quarter, it was JPY 52.2 billion, 10% increase. So year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, the third quarter cost was very much controlled. And what are the major factors behind this? That's the question.

And also, in the fourth quarter of next year, do you think this is sustainable? This is something that we can already see from outside because it's a management decision. So those are the 2 questions.

Quarter-on-quarter, why is the cost contained at the same level? And also what will happen to the cost in the fourth quarter and next fiscal year?

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you for your question. First of all, one of the -- there was a reason that the cost was increasing after the pandemic finished, of course, during through COVID-19, there was not much marketing under travel. And once the problem -- that situation changed, the cost increased to a certain level, and we didn't want to increase any further. So we are curtailing the travel expenses and so on.

And of course, the payroll is pretty big. We are now focusing on productivity. These are the 2 big factors, I believe, behind the cost containment.

Well, in February, we will talk about the next year's outlook. But in terms of productivity, well, we want to focus on productivity so that we don't have to increase the headcount. We can use generative AI to improve productivity. That's what we believe.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] I see, so in that case, some of this can continue into next fiscal year.

Now, if you look at the cost on a quarter-by-quarter basis, in the previous year, the fourth quarter was actually quite high compared to the rest of the quarters. And if the situation in third quarter continues, then we should expect a big profit in the fourth quarter in this fiscal year, too. But there was no upward revision. So I wonder if there are any additional factors you're considering for the fourth quarter?

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] Well, for the fourth quarter, there is variable cost involved, and that's related to the revenue. That -- and we also pay bonuses every 6 months. So that's also a variable factor. And that is why we cannot really predict that. And we think it's too early to talk about revisions. So depending on how this plays out, we may revise or not.

So third quarter profit was very strong, but it does not necessarily mean that we will see the same result in the fourth quarter. But we don't have to be too pessimistic, right? But we don't know how the fourth quarter will end. So for the time being we don't intend to revise.

Actually, Q3 cost control, I would like to add a comment to that. Cost reduction Y-o-Y. This is inclusive of FX. And the stock option cost is the only item that has declined.

Q3 last year, well, the stock price actually went up and the stock option cost was quite high. But this time around, it's the opposite way. So this is not very happy situation, but share price went down, and the stock option cost also went down at the same time.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] Excuse me, I have finished asking my questions. So please don't ask me to unmute my microphone anymore.

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] Okay. Let me continue with my explanation. So the stock option cost was high last year, and low this year. So this is a temporary cost reduction in the Q3. This was a big factor for Q3. That's all.

Then [indiscernible] please.

[Satoru Kikuchi, analyst]

[Interpreted] This is Kikuchi. In regard to costs, you've been able to keep it down, and it's a good trend, and we're looking forward to improvement in profits.

But in regard to increasing the head count in the U.S., you continue to be aggressive. And now you have the head count in place. So you'll be willing to try to get business opportunities to develop the market and to secure more customers.

And has that been achieved to some extent? Or have you given up to some extent? Are you thinking of holding back activities? Or is it possible to continue to achieve more without spending too much cost and people compared to the previous explanation in regard to the costs?

In regard to the sales strategy or the marketing strategy, are there improvements? Or if there are any changes in those strategies, could you touch upon this?

[Kevin Simzer, executive]

Can I take that one?

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

Yes. Yes.

[Kevin Simzer, executive]

Okay. Maybe I'll take this question to maybe give a little bit of color just around the globe on the regional performance. And then I'll land with the specific question around the Americas and the U.S.

You know, Mahendra went through it quickly, you will be able to digest it later. But it's wonderful to have a large global footprint like we have. And what we saw across the globe in Q3 was our continued very successful, very strong performance in the Asia Pacific, Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa region, very, very strong growth.

I like to use the pre-GAAP numbers, I like to use the common currency in order to try and really get a sense for how the business is performing. And we saw that in the in that region, really, really strong.

Second up is Japan. Very nice quarter in Japan, strengthened both the consumer and the enterprise business, really strong and healthy in particular, in the enterprise business, seeing our government business start to come back and perform. So that was really nice in Japan.

The third is Europe. And honestly, everything is executing really, really well in Europe, and we can see strong performance continue to come. In Q3, we suffered from some really -- a difficult comparable from Q3 of last year. We had a very, very strong quarter last year in Europe, and it just made the growth that much harder. But we feel like we're executing very well and doing a lot of nice things.

Now in the Americas, the Americas is a big geography. In Canada, we had very healthy double-digit growth. We had a lot of softness in Latin America, in particular in Brazil, in the government business. We saw that being quite soft.

And then in the U.S., we are definitely not giving up. We, in fact, have -- we put a new sales model in place starting in January. And we've been seeing sort of quarter-over-quarter, the performance of the U.S. team improved, we did get some growth out of the U.S. in Q3, and that's coming off of Q1 and Q2 where we actually declined. So we're starting to see the results of that.

There's still more work to do, and we see lots of potential. It doesn't require any more investment, that's for sure, we have lots of investment already in place. And that's our consistent story around our operations, is we're really, really thinking that we've got enough, and we're trying to drive productivity now. I hope that answered the question.

[Satoru Kikuchi, analyst]

[Interpreted] Are there any extra explanation that you'd like to give us, Mr. Negi?

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

No, that's all right.

[Satoru Kikuchi, analyst]

And next, in regard to the Japanese business, there were price increases. And also in the DOCOMO shops, and so on, we're seeing changes. So we'd like an explanation on that.

Compared to the fourth quarter of last year, in pre-GAAP, it seems to be -- things are slowing down. On a year-over-year basis, you're seeing the results going up. But for the Japanese trend, do you think that the pace will be similar to the last 2 years? Or do you think that we've gone through a cycle already.

And when it comes to the carrier shops, there's going to be the impact of the situation there. So what do you see happening in that area?

[Akihiko Omikawa, executive]

[Interpreted] Yes. This is Omikawa. And there are concerns about the fact that many mobile shops are closing. So the sales outlets are decreasing. That is a concern. And also in regard to PC shipments, there is a decline compared to what we anticipated.

And so therefore, in the consumer business, we can't continue to follow the conventional methods. And so therefore, in terms of ease of use or service to the customers, we have been moving forward with efforts.

And we're trying to promote utilization and increasing the unit price per customer. And so it's very slight, but we have been able to achieve some growth. That's the situation of the consumer business.

But there are negative fact -- there are positive factors. And in the small business area, there are mobile security functions of the Virus Buster that is required in the SMB market.

And in that sense, in the newer channels and in areas where there had been a lack of penetration in the past, we have been making efforts with the users there. And also in the consumer area as well, we're trying to increase the value-added elements of our services so that even users who have not used our products in the past, will be able to take advantage of our products more.

So we'll have to continue to keep forward our efforts. And for the commercial market, we had been behind in efforts of EDR. But in the area of XDR, as Kevin had explained, there has been successes that we've achieved in replacing other companies EDRs because there had been the EDR deployments that had been made, and yet there had been a considerable burden imposed on the users.

And so therefore, there are new methods or new sensors that people are seeking. And there's a slight increase that we're already seeing. But once utilization begins, then we believe that, as in the case of Vision One, we will be moving forward with replacements. And we have already been achieving a replacement of CrowdStrike.

And in once our products are used, we do see that there are more solid efforts. We had been slower to start. But in the commercial area as well, we want to achieve greater growth. And so there is the use of generative AI and a data-driven approach that is taken. And we have these weapons that we can take advantage of and we've started our activities accordingly in the Japanese market.

[Satoru Kikuchi, analyst]

[Interpreted] I see. So in the consumer market, from the first quarter of last year, it continues to remain flat. But there's going to be the enterprise market growth that will compensate for this? Or what about the consumer area?

[Akihiko Omikawa, executive]

[Interpreted] Well, we're not going to see explosive growth in the consumer area, as Kevin has said.

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] Next question, please. Checking to make sure that there are no further questions.

Well, I think everybody moves to the earnings announcement by SOFTBANK. Well, next question. I think we heard something from ...

[Kaori Chiba, analyst]

[Interpreted] Yes. This is Chiba from JPMorgan.

Just 1 question about payroll and the outlook. Headcount is declining constantly. And I understand that you're also trying to improve productivity. Will we see same decline in headcount going forward? Or have you stopped shrinking your workforce?

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] We've not really talked about that, but headcount was growing rapidly. That was the comment from the analyst before, and we said we have to hire people after the pandemic. And now we believe, we're at a sufficient level. So we don't have a plan to actively increase the headcount.

[Hiroko Sato, analyst]

[Interpreted] This is Sato. I'd like to confirm about the wording on third page, in regard to shareholders. We understand that according to the chart, there's going to be JPY 100 billion in dividends, and then JPY 140 billion next fiscal period. So there is JPY 40 billion, and another JPY 100 billion of dividends to make it JPY 140 billion total?

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] Well, we have the annual dividend that will be paid out next year.

[Hiroko Sato, analyst]

[Interpreted] Oh, I see. That's what you mean. I see, then it doesn't mean JPY 100 billion and JPY 100 billion. I was thinking, wow, if that's the case, but I understand now what is meaning.

Yes. So when the payment of the -- when the timing of the payment of the dividend happens, then it will be JPY 140 billion.

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] Next question, please.

[Hiroto Segawa, analyst]

[Interpreted] This is Segawa, Morgan Stanley Securities. Can you hear me?

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] Yes, please ask your question.

[Hiroto Segawa, analyst]

[Interpreted] I have 1 question. From your subsidiaries, you'll be extracting the profit, and that pushed up the payment of the consumption tax, corporate tax. Will the situation continue in the next year? Well, will you continue to pay high amount of taxes going forward?

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

[Interpreted] JPY 140 billion, it is based on the balance sheet that we estimate at the end of the fiscal year, and this is a maximum that we can go. And if we want to go any higher, we have to do something really drastic.

So right now, JPY 140 billion, you can already see in the textile this was calculated. And the JPY 8.1 billion is paid in taxes in relation to this. We cannot do the same amount next year. It's not possible.

I mean, we would be overborrowed, and that wouldn't be allowed according to the regulations. So JPY 140 billion is the maximum we can do right now.

[Eva Chen, executive]

[Interpreted] I think your question is about effective tax rate from the past versus when we aggregate all the profits at the center, how much difference does it make?

Well, we didn't allocate -- allow for tax expenses in the past because we did not assume that we are aggregating all the profit to Japan. But now going forward, we will be doing that, which means that we will be paying this tax.

So the tax rate will look different from the past, to the 3 years ago, and those previous conditions, we have paid a certain amount of taxes, and the tax that we'll be paying in the future will be higher than those.

[Hiroto Segawa, analyst]

[Interpreted] Thank you Eva Chen for your additional comments. That was very clear.

[Mahendra Negi, executive]

Yes, I think Eva Chens answer was appropriate.

[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]