CyberAgent Inc
TSE:4751
If you don’t study any companies, you have the same success buying stocks as you do in a poker game if you bet without looking at your cards.
Utilize notes to systematically review your investment decisions. By reflecting on past outcomes, you can discern effective strategies and identify those that underperformed. This continuous feedback loop enables you to adapt and refine your approach, optimizing for future success.
Each note serves as a learning point, offering insights into your decision-making processes. Over time, you'll accumulate a personalized database of knowledge, enhancing your ability to make informed decisions quickly and effectively.
With a comprehensive record of your investment history at your fingertips, you can compare current opportunities against past experiences. This not only bolsters your confidence but also ensures that each decision is grounded in a well-documented rationale.
Do you really want to delete this note?
This action cannot be undone.
| 52 Week Range |
802.1
1 121.5
|
| Price Target |
|
We'll email you a reminder when the closing price reaches JPY.
Choose the stock you wish to monitor with a price alert.
This alert will be permanently deleted.
CyberAgent Inc
You don't have any saved screeners yet
It is time. So we would like to begin the financial results briefing for CyberAgent for FY 2023 first quarter. Please refer to the disclaimer included within the briefing material with respect to the online financial briefing results we will be sharing with you today. Our CEO, Fujita, will now introduce this quarter's results.
So I will take you through the FY 2023 first quarter financial results. For us, the first quarter has ended, but it's been a while, I don't know how long it's been, since we have marked operating loss for the quarter. This is due to the large investment in the FIFA World Cup for 2022 that we incurred this quarter, but we are on track in terms of our company's plans. So this is just a one-off transient loss. Second quarter onwards, we should back to our usual levels. So we hope that you will be patient in that time.
With respect to Media, ABEMA, due to the FIFA World Cup, has grown significantly. This is also due to Japan national team's great performance, but the users have praised our service, and the content holder has become quite interested in ABEMA. And advertisers as well has become quite interested as well. They were quite happy. And although this has not been reflected in the results, however, the intrinsic value of ABEMA has significantly increased and enhanced.
Next, moving on to the Ad Business. This has, for the most part, tracked well. Moving on to the Game Business. This was actually bad timing because it was in -- at the same time as the FIFA World Cup. But because we didn't have any anniversaries happening in this quarter, we saw a decrease in sales in OP. But I will explain this in the next few pages. The next quarter onwards, this should be improving significantly.
Now consolidated sales for the quarter. The achievement rate against the forecast is about 23%. So we finished 1/4 of the year and we're at 23%. So for us, we're on track. So the top line, people may think that if the top line is not doing well and if we're recording a loss, it might be dangerous. But our top line is doing well, so we're doing -- we're on track. As I mentioned earlier, this is just a one-off transient costs. So just because we recorded a loss, we hope that our long-term supporters will not panic and abandon us. We -- next quarter onwards, we will be back on track.
And in terms of SG&A, the issue is on the same levels. In terms of the number of employees, we have not seen any major changes as usual as well. And this is the PL, and no major changes with respect to the balance sheet either. In terms of the forecast, we have announced that the OP will be around JPY 40 billion to JPY 50 billion. So we -- the first quarter performance is as we had expected. And we will be celebrating our 25th year, and we continue to increase our operating profit. So we believe that we are progressing as we initially expected.
Moving on to the individual businesses. First, the Internet Ad Business, for the most part is doing well. The economy has fluctuated, and there are some sensitive advertisers who've reacted to the economic conditions. But for the most part, we are doing well. Especially, in terms of the sales environment, it's not that bad. So we are increasing the number of employees to prepare for the future. And as you can see, we are working on digital transformation with large companies. And of course, we will start to -- this will start to bear fruit later on. But we believe that this will contribute to the enhancement or increase of our sales for the Internet Ad Business.
With respect to the Game Business. In the first quarter, if you look at the first quarter in FY '21 and '22, every year the first quarter tends to be slower, the performance seems to be smaller because -- and this is OP as well, because our game releases, as you can see in the red flags, were going to be celebrating anniversaries in January and in March. So basically, we don't release titles from October to December, we usually release them from January until March. So we will be celebrating many title anniversaries in the second quarter.
So we believe we will be recouping significantly in the next quarter, and we should be back on track at the normal level. Going forward, Tokyo Revengers we released last month, and this is marking a great start. And other than that, we have Jujutsu Kaisen and Final Fantasy. Interesting titles are on the horizon and these will be released in the future.
In the Media Business, the sales is growing strongly. The World Cup -- many people may think that a successful World Cup means that this will be reflected in the sales immediately, but we broadcasted the World Cup, actually we offered it for free and we saw the advertising slump before the World Cup began. So the environments running this business is quite good. And the World Cup after -- this is the reason why that we booked operating losses, but we can't tell you how much the investments were -- costs were because we have to -- there are confidentiality obligations. And the number of downloads has continued to increase steadily. And with the World Cup, this has jumped significantly.
During the FIFA World Cup, we saw a WAU of 34.09 million, but remaining -- or the number of people who are continuing to watch was -- has been very important and this has actually surpassed expectations. More people are continuing to watch our service. And many people who watch ABEMA for the first time and experienced -- had a great experience. The fact that we were able to welcome new users is actually significant for our business going forward, and we hope that many users will be returning. So the FIFA World Cup for the CyberAgent group was a huge event for us as a group, as a whole.
This is the ABEMA by numbers. During FIFA World Cup, we saw young men, especially, watching the FIFA World Cup, especially the [ M1 ] tier. And in terms of the viewing style, real time was 56%, but on-demand was 44%. And for sports broadcasting, this was -- this is quite significant. And of course, because many of the games were in the middle of the night, but people were able to replay on demand or timeshift replay as well.
And many advertisers -- some advertisers came to us and said they wish that they had actually paid for us on on-demand, so it was quite new for the sports broadcasting. And in terms of breakdown by device, I actually watch on TV quite a lot and I thought that would be the case as well. But smartphone was 43%, so still a large portion of users are still watching on mobile devices.
The reason why we bought the -- we acquired the FIFA World Cup broadcasting rights is because that was -- we wanted to make -- to people to experience the convenience and the high quality as well. And people said that highlight replay or timeshift replay was very convenient. So these kind of features were offered before the FIFA World Cup. But finally, people started to realize. But being able to broadcast at the same resolution as the [indiscernible] TV is something that we worked on, all of the team members who worked on before the World Cup. And we were able -- we prepared beforehand, but we were able to communicate the allure and the appeal of our service well during this period.
And of course, this does not tie to reflect the sales immediately. However, many people are offering -- many companies are offering content to us as well. So our content portfolio is expanding as well. And there are other celebrities coming to us wanting to take part in our advertising or on the programming, and there are more advertisers also approaching us as well. So those kind of aspects improved significantly. And especially variety and sports grew. So these are content that have a high affinity with [ M1 ] tier.
And in addition, we added a new boxing channel, sports channel. There are a lot of matches happening all day, and so it actually has a high affinity with a service like ours. And boxing is quite popular, so we know now, so we would like to continue to focus and strengthen this area. And Pay-Per-View, yes, it has become a standard or a part of our standard service for ABEMA. And we did -- we thought that the Pay-Per-View card box -- boxing card actually wasn't that strong, but it was actually. We saw a lot of viewers.
And Shogi, Japanese chess, we are broadcasting this on Pay-Per-View. And the first match was broadcasted at on YouTube free. However, we can't tell you how many, but we saw many people purchasing our Pay-Per-View service who watched the Shogi match. So as a watching format, Pay-Per-View is becoming routine for many of our users. And this is how the ABEMA performance is tracking. So of course, the FIFA World Cup success, we will see the results of that in the future. But we believe that the positive influence is starting to show.
WINTICKET is one of the peripheral businesses, and it's continuing to grow strongly as it has done before. And of course, there's a high affinity between this and our broadcasting. And also, BABEL LABEL has become for group and has signed a 5-year contract with Netflix, and they will be introducing our world-class content to the rest of the world. It's not really realistic to actually take ABEMA abroad and make it global like Netflix, but Netflix will be an important partner for us to share our world-class content globally.
And in terms of our mid- to long-term strategy, it has continued to remain the same and we're focusing on this. ABEMA, we will continue to grow and enhance and increase monetization. And in terms of Ads, we are strong in digital and Internet. So we would like to continue to increase market share by maximizing our strength. And with the Games as well, we would like to continue to make successful long hit -- long-run hits. And we haven't said anything new, but this -- we hope to continue to progress -- make progress.
And in terms of this graph, we tend to make large investments and recoup on these investments. And of course we're not in the black yet, but we are -- have made a shift towards starting to make profits and increase our sales.
That's it for myself. Thank you very much.
This concludes CyberAgent's FY 2023 First Quarter Financial Results Briefing. Please contact the IR office should you have any questions. Thank you for joining us today.