Rakuten Group Inc

TSE:4755

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[アルトマン 京子, executive]

Welcome to Rakuten Group's 2021 Second Quarter Financial Results. We recently made a huge leap forward by taking our mobile business global with a technology that has been recognized as an industry game changer. We're now set to build out Europe's first fully virtualized Open RAN network. At the same time, our Japan mobile business is acting as an entry point for new customers into our unique ecosystem, consisting of other core businesses, such as e-commerce and FinTech.

In our second quarter, we saw an increasing number of customers sign up for our mobile service, get a Rakuten credit card, open a Rakuten bank account, then shop on Rakuten Ichiba. This as a result of a powerful marketing point program combined with data and AI. Overall, we delivered another quarter of double-digit growth in consolidated revenue despite the high hurdle of accelerated growth we experienced last year.

We continue to invest in our mobile business, resulting in a consolidated loss, but the investment is backed by a sound financial strategy that balances investment with long-term growth. And we continue to have solid options for funding.

For the details, we have all of Rakuten's top leaders here to share the latest. But first, please welcome our CEO, Mikitani.

[Hiroshi Mikitani, executive]

Thank you for joining Q2 2021 Financial Results Conference. I would like to touch upon the key highlights of our achievement in Q2 of this year and as well as talk about what we are doing with regard to Rakuten Mobile and our communication platform business expansion.

First of all, Rakuten diversified ecosystem enable us to make a solid growth even under this very difficult condition. The 2-year CAGR of shopping has grown about 23.6%, and we are targeting to achieve JPY 5 trillion of annual GMS for domestic e-commerce. Our ad revenue has grown 26.2% in outpacing industry.

And also, our FinTech in general are doing very, very well. And especially our credit card shopping transaction value has grown plus 34%, and we are having more than 20% market share for credit card transactions. And we also made groundbreaking global deals with Rakuten Symphony, acquisition of Altiostar. And also, we have announced a very big deal in Europe, together with 1&1 Drillisch.

As for Rakuten Mobile, we have what we call Triangle Strategy. We are trying to get 3 birds with 1 stone. One is a stand-alone business, which is -- can be a very, very profitable and very sizable business. And we came up with a very aggressive attractive price plan. And we are also trying to nurture our ecosystem through mobile subscription, which we have already demonstrated, we can significantly increase the lifetime value of the customer through mobile service as well as acquiring new customers to Rakuten Ecosystem.

And third is expansion of Rakuten Communication platform by setting what we have developed for Japanese mobile connectivity service to external mobile companies. As you can see on this chart, our customer acquisition is doing very well. We are about to reach the 5 million subscribers. As you know, Rakuten Card became the biggest credit card company in Japan, but we are outpacing by 4x. And we are very, very confident not only we become first sustainable mobile operator, we are envisioning to become #1 mobile operator in Japan.

As for the price plan, we came up with a very aggressive plan, up to 1 gigabyte totally free and maximum JPY 2,980 with the data unlimited. So it doesn't matter how much data you use, it's maximum you pay is JPY 2,980 pretax for months.

And with regard to quality, we have really evaluated by third-party independent research companies, and we are evaluated as good as our competitors in Japan. Once they join Rakuten Mobile, our subscribers started to use and consume a lot more data than before, 2.3x. The reason why we are so confident about our growth as a mobile service, as a stand-alone, come from several points. One is the low cost and investment. Our cell site development is much faster than our competitors. Our engineers, our team is much smaller than our competitors. And our deployment speed of the new features are much faster than our competitors.

As you know, our point program is the most popular point program in Japan. As you can see, the smartphone users ranked us #1 preferable point program. And if you go to see the synergy between mobile subscription and e-commerce, we see like 62.9% of Rakuten Mobile subscribers use Rakuten Ichiba, our e-commerce shopping, versus others are like maximum 26.7%. Not only we share the ID program, but we also have developed the RCS and in the future will be UCC communication platform called Rakuten Link. And as a matter of fact, not only nurturing the synergy among the Rakuten existing users, Rakuten Mobile has become one of the most important customer acquisition venue for Rakuten Ecosystem. The impact of the -- to the e-commerce uplift is significant. So again, we are proving the synergy between our mobile subscription service and our ecosystem is very, very significant.

And let's move on to the third part, which is very exciting news for our shareholders, which is we are growing our communication platform business. The -- as you have already heard, we already announced one very big project together with the new greenfield MNO in Germany called 1&1 Drillisch. This is the first ORAN network development outside of Japan, and we are extremely excited that we are going to provide end-to-end solution to 1&1 Drillisch. I think this is really the opening the gate to the new era of mobile network.

Also, we announced the acquisition of the Altiostar. We used to have 60% -- over 60% of our Altiostar, but we have decided to acquire 100% of this very important virtualized radio access network software company by 100%, and the synergy between us and Altiostar is going to be very, very significant.

We know that by adopting the fully virtualized contact platform, the MNOs can reduce their initial capital investment by about 40%. And we believe addressable market size is somewhere around $130 billion to $150 billion in 2025. So we are talking about significant business opportunity through Rakuten Communication Platform.

We are making significant GMS growth for our e-commerce business in Japan. We are targeting to reach JPY 5 trillion of GMS by the end of this year. And our 2 years CAGR of the shopping EC GMS has shown plus 23.6% Y-o-Y growth. Last year, we had an extremely strong special demand from coronavirus. So we are using 2 years CAGR as our indication of the growth. And our -- the quality of our service is improving significantly. NPS score of Q2 for Rakuten Ichiba e-commerce has improved 9 points from the previous year.

Together with our e-commerce business, our ad business is growing very, very fast. Our advertisement revenue for 2020 was about JPY 129 billion and growing 15.7%. But this Q2, we are growing about 26.2% with JPY 38.1 billion of advertisement revenue. We believe we'll be able to reach JPY 200 billion of other advertisement revenues in the very near future.

Almost all businesses in our FinTech sector are growing very nicely. Rakuten Card member has reached 23 million, Rakuten Bank accounts has reached 11 million and Rakuten Security accounts reached 6 million. Especially Rakuten Card, as you can see, despite the fact we are in the midst of still very difficult pandemic situation, we have shown plus 34% Y-o-Y growth. And you can see the oxidation of Rakuten Bank deposit balance has surpassed JPY 6 trillion. As for Rakuten Securities, you can see the chart, we are growing much faster than our competitors. And in terms of number of accounts, we will become probably the biggest brokerage firm in Japan in the very near future.

Also, our insurance business, Rakuten Life Insurance and Rakuten General Insurance is making very, very stable and steady growth with plus 34.2% and plus 26.2%, respectively.

Lastly, I would like to touch upon our overseas business expansion. Rakuten Rewards business growing very, very nicely. In this chart, you see that maybe we are seeing the negative growth. But as a matter of fact, this is because of the travel industry. And excluding travel industry, we are growing very, very nicely. And our content business started to contribute to our bottom line as well. And especially Rakuten Viber has started to make meaningful profit. So we are very happy that all these global content business now are growing very, very nicely. So -- and then in the future, we would like to create similar ecosystem, which we have developed in Japan, in each respective regions and countries.

So that's it from myself. I hope you will enjoy the rest of the presentation. Thank you very much.

[Presentation]

[Unknown Executive]

[Foreign Language]

[Kazunori Takeda, executive]

Domestic e-commerce GMS showed double-digit growth in the second quarter despite the added impact of last year's stay-at-home demand. The trend of shopping e-commerce GMS remained unchanged and has expanded from the previous year. Here are the results of revenue and operating income. Many businesses centering on Rakuten Ichiba performed well. And in the logistics business, operating losses were reduced as a result of improvement activities.

Here is a waterfall chart of operating income. The marketplace-type business of Rakuten Ichiba and Rakuten Travel as well as the Logistics business all showed an improvement. The continuous growth of Rakuten Ichiba is a result of efforts accumulated with the merchant, with the aim of creating a more attractive marketplace for users. The number of Rakuten Ichiba users increased greatly throughout 2020 due to our various initiatives and the acceleration of digital transformation. The trend currently remains unchanged. And the user retention is steadily progressing.

In addition, user loyalty being cultivated and the Rakuten Ichiba users demographic comprising our most loyal user is expanding year after year, and the growth ratio is accelerating. We aim for future growth of increasing the number of users with high loyalty. The expansion of e-commerce users, not limited to only Rakuten Ichiba, has led to higher cross-use with each of our e-commerce services. We aim to maximize lifetime value per user by increasing cross-use for each user. The number of users in each business steadily increased and not only is the user of Rakuten Ichiba expanding, but other e-commerce service as well.

Our commerce business provides e-commerce services that cover various items in household consumption, giving us a great advantage in the e-commerce market, which is expected to expand further in the future. We have been working on our logistics strategy since the 2017 delivery crisis in Japan. Measures such as the introduction of a common free shipping threshold are also contributing to overall growth. The number of Ichiba merchants that have introduced these measures have reached about 90% of the overall total.

Going forward, we will continue to build our own logistics network, a key component of ensuring sustainable growth with the aim of providing more convenient e-commerce services to customers. As a result of these efforts, the Rakuten Ichiba's Net Promoter Score improved throughout 2020 and is already trending upward even now.

[Presentation]

[Noriaki Komori, executive]

On July 1, 2021, we completed the establishment of JP Rakuten Logistics, a joint venture with Japan Post. And it becomes an equity method affiliate of Rakuten. We aim to build on efficient logistics platform by utilizing Japan Post Logistics Network and Rakuten strength in data analysis and AI technology. Furthermore, with last mile delivery, we aim to improve delivery efficiency and to reduce the cost per delivery.

In addition to the existing fulfillment centers, we plan to operate 3 new fulfillment centers by 2023 in Tama, Yao and Fukuoka. We aim to build an efficient distribution network by transferring control of these fulfillment centers to JP Rakuten Logistics and seamlessly incorporating them into the delivery network of Japan Post.

In addition, in the second quarter, we entered into a partnership with Daifuku, a leading material handling company. In the future, we aim to collaborate fulfillment center planning and work to reduce the time and cost it takes to get each fulfillment center up and running to boost operational efficiency. As a result of continuous investment in the logistics business and a strong e-commerce performance, both shipment volume and the number of merchants using Rakuten Super Logistics, both steadily increased in the second quarter. This is despite high year-on-year hurdles arising from the stay-at-home trend, which began early last year.

Next, I will share our business update on Rakuten Seiyu Netsuper, our online supermarket joint venture. While the total sales of a supermarket in 2020 was about JPY 24 trillion, e-commerce conversion ratio for food-related product was only about 3%. So there is still much room for expansion in this market.

We aim to expand the GMS of Rakuten Seiyu Netsuper to at least JPY 100 billion in 2025. Rakuten Seiyu Netsuper ships from both fulfillment centers and offline stores. GMS in the second quarter increased by about 25% year-on-year. While shipments from stores are steadily increasing, shipments from fulfillment centers have recently increased significantly by about 74% year-on-year, partially due to the expansion of operations at our fulfillment center in Kohoku, Kanagawa prefecture. In order to respond to growing demand, we plan to start full-scale shipment at our fulfillment center in Ibaraki City, Osaka prefecture from next year. This will greatly expand the service area in the Kansai area, where we'll continue to consider opening additional fulfillment centers to meet the large demand.

[Presentation]

[Masayuki Hosaka, executive]

The FinTech segment achieved strong growth in both revenue and profit. By the promotion of cross-use across FinTech businesses, our customer base continue to expand and more customers used our services as their main account.

With Rakuten Card as a hub, we are building a stronger FinTech Ecosystem. We promote cross-use from Rakuten Card to other services. And so the customer and the profit base of each FinTech company can expand, building an ecosystem centered on a credit card company that provides payment service to these many customers is very unique, no other company has this. The pace of expansion of our customer base is accelerating. This is due to the progress of the shift to online and the effect of our FinTech Ecosystem.

As the core of our ecosystem, Rakuten Card shopping GTV increased by 30% year-on-year, driving FinTech business performance. As a result, our market share of shopping GTV expanded to 21.1% as of May 2021. With the spread of cashless payment, customers can now have a second Rakuten Card as of June. Customers can select a card from different international brands and more Rakuten points. Rakuten Card is already widely used as our main card. With this measure, we aim to take more credit card market share from other companies and expand our wallet share with our customers.

[Hiroyuki Nagai, executive]

Here are Rakuten Bank's financial results for the second quarter. Banks continue to face a difficult business environment due to the Bank of Japan's negative interest rate policy and the impact of the pandemic. But Rakuten Bank secured higher sales and profits by significantly increasing service revenues due to growth in the number of payment transactions. In addition to the tailwind brought on by consumer shifting online, Rakuten Bank has significantly increased its number of customers by continuously making its services more convenient and effectively leveraging the Rakuten Ecosystem.

After reaching 10 million accounts in January, first for domestic online bank in Japan, the number of new accounts opened has accelerated even further, surpassing 11 million on July 4. We added 1 million accounts in the shortest amount of time in Rakuten Bank's history roughly 6 months. The balance of deposit also exceeded JPY 6 trillion in June.

After surpassing JPY 5 trillion in December last year, the number of accounts has grown. The amount of deposited money being moved from other banks has further accelerated and the balance of deposit has increased by JPY 1 trillion in about 6 months.

The acquisition of payroll accounts is an extremely important factor in measuring the usage of Rakuten Bank as the main account. This is the basis for future profit expansion. And the pace of acquisition of these payroll accounts has increased even further, with the number of payroll accounts increasing by 65% year-on-year.

Customers are taking note of these benefits and spreading the word and Rakuten Bank's popularity is growing as a result. Rakuten Bank will continue to increase the number of customer accounts, which when used as a customer's main account will help to accelerate business growth.

[楠 雄治, executive]

Here is the second quarter result for Rakuten Securities. You can see that revenue grew by double digits year-on-year despite a decline in overall trading volume of both Japanese and U.S. [ securities ] compared to the first quarter. We have succeeded in attracting investment business through measures utilizing the Rakuten Ecosystem. The number of new accounts is steadily growing, hitting 6.24 million at the end of June and closing in on the #1 industry portion.

Rakuten Securities is working to expand its asset building services in order to cultivate a wider range of customers. This increased younger people and investment business and the expansion of our customer base is the best in the industry. Thanks to synergies with the Rakuten Ecosystem, the number of investment trust account has increased to 1.64 million and the monthly saving amount increased significantly to JPY 58.9 billion.

As a new initiative for beginners, who are new to asset building, we have started offering Raku-Raku Investment, our low advisory service. This service can propose an optimal portfolio, appropriate for each individual by having customers answer a few questions. Point investment, credit card payments and NISA cards are also available, facilities which have not been supported by Raku-Wrap Service. This lowers several potential hurdles standing in the way of investment for beginners.

Meanwhile, for active traders, we have started offering real-time spreadsheet as a new feature of the MARKET SPEED II trading tool. It's now possible to import investment information and press orders using Microsoft Excel. System trading can be done without any programming allowing for easy customized transactions. Rakuten Securities will continue with its customer-oriented approach, striving to be the most popular online securities for the wider range of people, from general consumers to day traders.

[Yuzo Hashiya, executive]

Here is the insurance business earnings results. Rakuten Life insurance revenue was up 13% year-on-year. General Insurance continued to optimize insurance underwriting. So overall revenue was decreased. However, we made operating income healthy growth plus 22% year-on-year. There are 2 factors leading to increase in profit. First one is the strong run of the online sales. And the second is face-to-face sales have grown by our co-existing COVID strategy. As for [ DX ], we have added new function to our AI assistant and improved sales activity efficiency.

Today, I show you just part of a new function. "ARIA, please make insurance plan for this customer."

"Okay. I've created an insurance plan and sent it to the customer."

Thank you, ARIA. I have shown here voice commands can be used for a variety of tasks. And I introduce transformation achievement. Comprehensive Insurance Center is seamlessly deploying marketing, operations and systems across 3 insurance companies. As a result, new sales have increased 1.7x, marketing efficiency 1.3x and cross-selling 14x. I'm so excited to see future growth.

[Koichi Nakamura, executive]

Rakuten Edy, our e-money service, based on FeliCa technology, will celebrate its 20 anniversary in November 2021. The cumulative number of cards issued has exceeded 100 million. And with the initiatives, like partnership with multiple supermarket chains across the nation, Edy uses expanding the e-money for everyday life. Based on the long history of accumulated expertise and technology, we are able to provide safe and secure services to both users and affiliated retailers.

Rakuten Edy's expertise has also been applied to Rakuten's online e-money called Rakuten Cash. While ensuring tight security of transactions, we have released cutting-edge services, such as the use of crypto assets at participating brick-and-mortar retailers. Interchangeable balance management between Edy and Rakuten Cash is also planned. This will make Rakuten Cash available for use at 5 million online and offline locations, including a variety of Rakuten services.

By positioning Rakuten Cash as a strategic hub, we will connect group asset and expand payment services unique to that distinguished Rakuten from the competition. In addition, in the near future, we plan to release a new user interface for the Rakuten Payer that will offer options to cater to diverse user needs. Cross-use will become easier through the additional function icons at the bottom of Rakuten pay apps visual interface, offering services related to payment and authentication.

Please look forward to the evolution of the app to convenient and useful functions, such as point management, digital receipts, check-in functions, convenient coupons, Rakuten card transaction history and Rakuten bank balance confirmation. Rakuten Payment will continue to work to improve user experience through the expansion of services.

[Presentation]

[Yoshihisa Yamada, executive]

In June 2021, Rakuten Mobile won 2 Global Mobile Awards for its communications technology at the world's largest mobile-related trade fair, the Mobile World Congress. The GLOMO Awards are widely recognized as the most prestigious awards in the mobile industry and show that Rakuten Mobile's technology is rated highly by global standards.

Our domestic network quality has been highly evaluated in reports by third-party organizations. This report by umlaut evaluated networks around the world. Rakuten Mobile's Network scored 926 out of a maximum of 1,000 for overall network quality. The results show that Rakuten Mobile's Network can match other networks, and we will continue to work to improve the quality of our network.

In terms of customer acquisition, the cumulative number of applications exceeded 4.4 million at the end of the second quarter. Despite a decline from April, when we saw last-minute demand at the end of the 1-year free campaign, customer acquisition is proceeding smoothly in line with expectations.

Let's take a closer look at the customer acquisition situation. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications conducted a survey for users who transition to new rate plans announced and started by each company after this winter. Except for migration between plans in the same company group, more than half of the target people chose Rakuten UN-LIMIT VI as the migration destination plan. You can see that it is very popular compared to other carriers. The proportion of customers coming from other carriers is gradually increasing. This graph shows the trend of the proportion of applications from those creating a new phone number versus MNP, or mobile number portability transfer. The percentage creating a new phone number, which was high at the time of launch, has continued to decline. And instead, the percentage of MNP applications has increased significantly. MNP customers tend to have overwhelmingly higher data consumption, ARPU and LTV and lower churn rates than customers creating new phone numbers.

We expect the value of the mobile business will increase in the future as the ratio of MNP users increases. The population coverage of the Rakuten mobile 4G network exceeded 90% as of June. Due to the shortage of semiconductors amidst the pandemic, the 96% population coverage target, which we initially aimed to achieve in summer, is now expected to be achieved within this year. However, considering that the population coverage rate has already exceeded 96% in terms of base station sites, where contracts have been concluded, the network build-out is not a major concern. There is no impact on the base station deployment plan submitted to the MIC.

Here are the earnings results of Rakuten Mobile in the second quarter. On the sales side, following the end of the 1-year free campaign, we are starting to see revenue as some users started paying service fees. On the other hand, transition from Rakuten MVNO to UN-LIMIT VI is progressing and work to decrease revenues as it is subject to a 3-month free campaign.

In addition, revenues at Energy business decreased due to seasonal factors. In terms of costs, network-related costs and roaming costs increased due to the large number of base station build-outs and the increase in the number of subscribers. But the cost for point grants related to new applications declined compared to Q1 when we had the impact of last minute surge in applications.

In the future, revenues from RCP will also be expected. We will continue to invest in mobile and fund the investment through various means, including securitization of receivables and leasing.

[Tareq Amin, executive]

Today is a milestone event to share with you. We are starting the second phase of our journey at Rakuten, and we will introduce our new entity named Symphony.

During the last 3 years, which we called Phase 1, we created the world first cloud-native, affordable and unlimited mobile data to around 4 million customers. You are with us through this amazing journey, starting with getting initial bandwidth, launching the network in Japan and transforming the industry step by step. In less than a year of commercial operation, we were ranked in the top tier of the mobile industry.

Now we are venturing into Phase 2 of our journey with Rakuten Symphony. It is our aim to create the world's largest cloud-native telco platform provider. And we'll achieve that by driving customer success with agile product development and industry delivery. Rakuten Symphony will enable cloud transformation with global industrialized delivery.

Our confidence to make this happen stems from the fact that we learn faster than anyone else in the industry. We use Rakuten Mobile as our living lab and learn new improvements every day. Some of the key numbers to support our learning agility are: We introduced 10 to 15 new network features per month at Rakuten Mobile; we write 5 automation scripts per day; we have over 2,000 software developers writing all our experiences into code; and we are training 1,500 people in cloud a new technology on a weekly basis.

While we are executing our agility, we are laser-focused on where we can make an impact. At Rakuten Symphony will be organized around 5 unique business opportunities: one, unified cloud, world only cloud architecture that can support telco-grade real-time transactions at scale; two, network functions from our ecosystem partner solutions optimized and integrated for top performance; three, intelligent operations, our leading-edge automation portfolio, based on Rakuten Symphony assets; four, digital experience, our BSS and marketplace solutions to offer best of experience to operators and revolutionize telco purchasing; five, Internet and ecosystem services, our DNA from Rakuten Group, which enable us to offer all new monetization opportunity to client operators.

We're also pleased to announce the acquisition of Altiostar, the industry leader whose spearheading ORAN Development and Innovation. We are excited about the opportunity, the full integration of Altiostar into Symphony will bring to our customers. Altiostar brings phenomenal engineering capabilities and a global footprint that will help us reach our customers. Rakuten Symphony will define the telco landscape with its unique approach, broad consolidated application portfolio, already [ 48 SOP ] are interconnected enriching each other; flexible and easy to integrate solution, removing product integration complexity; transparent prices, no more secrets, open book for component level pricing and products for life cycle efficiency; automation everywhere, efficiency, productivity through automation.

We started to see the early sign of success. We are in the advanced talks with several clients in U.S., Europe and Middle East. Our ambition, vision and unique capabilities are becoming recognized and welcomed by a majority of the world's leading operators. Nothing but a large-scale client win can be the best testament to what we are achieving in the market now.

We are selected as the prime network design, development and deployment partner for 1x1 in Germany. This is a multiyear contract in one of the most competitive markets of Europe and 1x1 selected us as their prime partner. I'm inviting all of you to join us in Phase 2 of our journey by taking the experience from Rakuten Mobile and creating Rakuten Symphony to go global.

[Naho Kono, executive]

More than a year has passed since the pandemic began. Rakuten continued to enjoy a high-growth rate, responding to changes in people's lifestyles. Monthly active users of the Rakuten Group continue to grow at the high rate year-on-year, even though the impact of the pandemic started to rise the number of active users a year ago.

In addition, various measures to promote cross-use between services has been successful. The percentage of users who use 2 or more services exceeded 50%, and this number continues to increase steadily.

Mobile is expected to the driver that will further accelerate the growth of our ecosystem compared with their card holder acquisition pace of Rakuten Card. One of the main businesses of Rakuten, the acquisition pace of Rakuten Mobile subscriber has been more rapid, 4x faster than Rakuten Card holder acquisitions.

Many customers are already using mobile service. The percentage of new Rakuten Ecosystem users among mobile subscriber has gradually increased to a cumulative total of 19%. New Rakuten Ecosystem user are customers with the high potential to use number of Rakuten services. So Rakuten Mobile, which added new users to the Rakuten Ecosystem, is one of the growth driver of ecosystem.

Here is the graph showing the change in the membership rank of mobile subscribers before and after subscribing to Rakuten Mobile. You can see that the Diamond Rank membership ratio increased by 10 percentage point 6 months after subscribing to Rakuten Mobile. It can be said that mobile subscription is an opportunity for us to increase customer loyalty and encourage cross-use of services.

Lastly, here is data showing changes in the average cross-use before and after our new mobile subscription. Within 6 months after subscribing, the average number of services crossover increased significantly, indicating that their mobile subscription in the trigger for starting to use other services. In this way, the contribution of Rakuten Mobile to the ecosystem has already been clarified from various data points. Rakuten Mobile, which provides best mobile plan for everyone, not only functions as an entry point to the Rakuten Ecosystem for those who have not used our services before, but it also encourage to use of each service and accelerate cross-use.

[Makoto Arima, executive]

Our ad revenue grew steadily in the second quarter. Here is a breakdown of the ad revenue growth rate in the second quarter. The area on the left side of the chart as utilizing Rakuten's own ad inventory expanded steadily due to the strong performance of our e-commerce services. Ad sales to external advertisers drove the growth of the entire business. In particular, sales to key clients such as major consumer goods manufacturers on Rakuten Ichiba expanded tremendously.

We are also promoting offline marketing initiatives. We have access to more than 100 million Rakuten IDs, which allows us to promote sales to those users and send customers to offline stores. And by analyzing the purchase data of those users and continuously keeping in touch with them, we are improving customer loyalty. Furthermore, we are cultivating our new customer base by delivering us to Rakuten users with similar customer attributes. The more Rakuten members connect with offline service through Rakuten Pay and Rakuten Point card, the more closely we can determine online as that lead to purchases.

Furthermore, through Rakuten Pasha, a service that allows users to earn Rakuten points, when they take a picture of the receipt after purchasing eligible products, it is possible to accumulate highly detailed purchase data for each receipt, enabling offline marketing from the original point of purchase. Currently, Rakuten Pay and other services can be used at approximately 5 million locations across Japan, including offline and online, both of which are continuously expanding. In addition, Rakuten Pasha is being adopted by major manufacturers as a sales promotion measure. And the scale of data is expanding steadily through the accumulation of around 9 million receipts per month.

Going forward, the fusion of online and offline shopping is expected to progress even further. The annual cost paid by manufacturers for distribution promotion support is considered to be about JPY 15 trillion, including discounts, sponsorships and rebates. By leveraging our verse of both online and offline data, we will support companies not only with advertising, but also in-store sales promotion.

[Takuya Kitagawa, executive]

Rakuten's core mission is to empower people and society. And to date, we have supported the growth of merchants, hotels and so many important partners through our platform. We would like to take this mission to the next level by empowering makers and brands through branding support.

In recent years, the time we spend watching TV has been overshadowed by the increasing amount of time we spend on the Internet, especially on our smartphones. This demonstrates the enormous impact the Internet smartphone has on people's behaviors. As a result, this shift also caused for changes in the way companies brand themselves. We want to partner with makers and brands in this digital age by providing them with new approach to branding based on rich data.

The key value proposition we can provide is customers demand signals discovered using AI. Capturing customer demand is a cornerstone of any business. When you know what customers want, and you can find the market gap between the demand supply. This is a golden opportunity to create value for customers because customers leave traces of their wants on Rakuten's e-commerce services.

We have a unique opportunity to understand customer demand through the enormous amount of data received. AI plays a critical role in this since classifying and quantifying long tail demand customers is very challenging due to its variety and volume. With the unprecedented progress of deep learning and its application in natural language processing, we now have opportunity to capture this demand for the first time in history. The potential is beyond exciting. We combine this market insight with our AI solutions for digital marketing, such as AIris and customer DNA in order to support makers and brands. This will lead to the empowerment society as a whole by helping to meet customers' niche needs. With our speed [indiscernible] culture, we have already conducted POCs in partnership with makers and brands that have yielded successful results in creating new markets as well as expanding current market share. We are building a new branding platform with data and AI that will open enormous opportunities for our partners.

[Yasufumi Hirai, executive]

Rakuten currently operates smart data centers across several regions, Japan, North America and Europe. In order to provide a secure service environment, comply with data privacy protection and deliver safe and reliable services to our customers, we are strengthening our IT business continuity plan in each country and furthering the establishment of a consistent security perimeter worldwide through our own global IP backbone network.

In 2021, we started building our own Rakuten data center in Japan, a new first for us. At the data center, we aim to dramatically improve energy efficiency, and at the same time, use the renewable energy as much as possible. Combined with the massive 5G mobile technology that Rakuten is rolling out in Japan, we expect new business opportunities to become a reality in the future.

[Presentation]

[Kentaro Hyakuno, executive]

The Rakuten Group, as part of Japan's first mass vaccination model supported by Industry, Academia and Government, began administrating vaccination at Noevir Stadium in Kobe City on May 31 in collaboration with Kobe City and with the support from medical professionals. With an average of 2,000 vaccinations per day as of June 29, our cumulative total more than 110,000 vaccinations has been administrated. Approximately 10% of all vaccinations in Kobe City were done at Noevir stadium.

We have successfully applied this Kobe Model to the Rakuten in-house vaccination project, and we will further contribute to the nationwide vaccination effort by offering our expertise to local governments, companies and organizations. Rakuten is also offering vaccination opportunities at the centers in Tokyo, Sendai and Fukuoka, targeting small and medium-sized companies and partner companies and whom in-house vaccination program are logistical challenges.

Rakuten's vaccination centers have operated safely and provided highly effective service, maximizing a limited number of vaccination while minimizing waste and vaccinating a large number of people. During 2 months of operation, there has been 0 incident, and the time from reception to vaccination has been reduced to 3 minutes and 30 seconds. With this safe and efficient system, more than 230,000 vaccinations has been administrated between Kobe and the Rakuten models.

Productivity has been steadily improving even as the Rakuten Group has expanded. Excluding our Mobile, Logistics and Investment business, operating profit per full-time employee and total gross margin grew by about 40% to 50% year-on-year. We are also striving to improve productivity in the corporate division. While working on Kaizen activities and cost reduction, the number of personnel supported by each corporate staff member increased by 11% year-on-year.

As an initiative to improve productivity, we have been continuously improving Kaizen activities with our participation of all employees. During 2021, we have accelerated these activities with approximately 3,600 people participation in Kaizen activities and approximately 700 examples of improvements were made available. This knowledge was shared internally and made a JPY 1.7 billion profit contribution.

In the second quarter, we worked on the Kaizen activities from mass vaccination operation at Noevir Stadium in Kobe. The lead time for vaccination has reduced by 10%, and number of vaccinations tripled after the first day of operations.

Rakuten continuously measures Net Promoter Score as an indicator used to evaluate and improve customer experience. As you can see, the Net Promoter Score of the Rakuten Group was negative versus competition as of 2017, but has been continuously outperforming the competition since 2018. And the score in the second quarter was up 10.4 points. Rakuten participates in many events, so people can learn more about Rakuten. These activities has led to an increase in the popular place of employment ranking for new grads to fourth place this year. Also for the mid-career recruiting market, Rakuten steadily improved its ranking from third to second place in 2021 by carrying out continuous recruitment branding activities.

[Masatada Kobayashi, executive]

With the corporate slogan, Walk Together, Rakuten aims to create a sustainable future through corporate activities that meet our stakeholders' expectations. In order to ensure our ability to provide more than 17 labor services, we identify our materiality, that is to say the ESG issues that are of particular importance to the Rakuten Group.

Beginning of this year, we updated this materiality to reflect our latest business developments and changes in stakeholder expectations. The materiality analysis resulted in the identification of 4 priority areas growing with our employees, providing sustainable platforms and services, addressing global challenges and business foundations.

These will be central to cross organizational discussions and improving the sustainability of our operations and services. Rakuten Group Inc. joined RE100 International Initiative in 2019 and set the target of adopting 100% of renewable electricity for all its business operations by 2025. Our road map consists in increasing our renewable electricity ratio by 10 points every year. And in 2020, in line with this road map, it reached 64.8%.

Regarding employee engagement, as it's still difficult to have face-to-face interactions in the current circumstances, most of our initiatives are now conducted online. For example, our Rakuten Shugi training is provided to all newly hired employees remotely. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, we provided an award-winning app called Rakuten Shift that is designed to raise employee awareness of sustainability. By providing learning opportunities through this app, we aim to make a positive impact on society, proposing daily sustainable actions that anyone can take.

In order to increase management transparency, Rakuten has hired a Board of highly independent corporate auditors who are responsible for auditing functions. The majority of this board is composed of external corporate auditors. Our Board of Directors includes external directors, all of whom are highly independent and experts in their respective fields. We also report and discuss issues and progress on sustainability activities with them on a quarterly basis. As a result of our productive efforts and transparency, Rakuten has been selected as a constituent for all of the ESG indices listed here.

Rakuten will continue to improve the quality of our governance and sustainability initiatives under the banner of our corporate slogan, Walk Together, in order to empower society for the long term. Thank you.

[Kenji Hirose, executive]

Here are our earnings results for the second quarter. Revenue increased by double-digit year-on-year due to strong growth of Rakuten Ichiba and FinTech businesses as well as the growth of Rakuten Travel and other businesses, which were hit extremely hard by the pandemic last year, but have since started to recover.

In the Mobile business, non-GAAP operating losses increased due to front investment in future growth, such as the accelerated rollout of base station installations and subscriber acquisition. At the same time, operating income, excluding our Mobile Logistics and Investment businesses, increased significantly year-on-year. In terms of non-GAAP operating income by segment, FinTech and Domestic E-Commerce are two examples, which increase the profits and drop our overall business performances. Rakuten Ichiba achieved an increase in profit despite high year-on-year huddle set in place last year by the huge inflow of new users and the increased user retention.

With regard to our other Internet services, Rakuten Rewards and our Sports business are 2 examples of businesses whose profit increased significantly. As you can see, operating income, excluding the Mobile, Logistics and the Investment businesses, is showing strong growth, and the earnings power of Rakuten is clearly increasing. In the Mobile segment, revenue and profit decreased slightly compared to the first quarter.

In terms of sales, we are starting to see the contribution from the customer who became paying user after completion of the 1-year free campaign. And while telecom sales are increasing, we are seeing strong progress in the number of customers switching from Rakuten MVNO subscriptions, which means MVNO sales also declined slightly.

In the Energy businesses, electricity usage decreased due to seasonality, which led to a decrease in sales. In terms of costs, depreciation costs continue to increase along with a number of base stations, although the amount of data used in the roaming area per subscriber has decreased due to the expansion of our coverage area. The overall roaming cost has increased slightly due to the increased number of subscribers.

On the other hand, in the Energy business, the wholesale electricity price improved significantly. In the near future, with the 1-year free campaign that started in April 2020 and the 3-month free campaign that began this April, both coming to an end, an accelerated increase in telecom sales is expected.

The Rakuten Group will continue to ensure through financial management that takes into consideration the balance between financial soundness and the growth investment. First, as a measures to strengthen our balance sheet, we strengthened our capital through a third-party allotment of shares and the issuance of the foreign currency-dominated perpetual subordinate bond, et cetera. As a result, equity ratio on a consolidated basis improved about 3 points compared to the end of last year.

Next, we see the best exit opportunity for minority investments, and most recently sold our stake in the U.S. FinTech company, Upstart, with very good returns. In addition, we will continue to select and concentrate on promising businesses while determining the [indiscernible] in the Rakuten Ecosystem for each business.

In addition to equity finance, we have demonstrated our flexibility in implementing a variety of financing methods, including bank loans, domestic and overseas senior and subordinated corporate bonds, domestic retail corporate bonds and asset financing. We have an extremely good relationship with our banks, and we have a wide variety of financing methods available for strategic upfront investment. We will continue to give due consolidation to financial soundness and exercise flexibility in our effort to raise funds.

Membership value, which the Rakuten Group has set as an important KPI, increased tremendously in our e-commerce-related businesses due to last year's pandemic. Notably, it also increased in this second quarter despite high year-on-year performance hurdles. We will continue to aim for the expansion of the Rakuten Ecosystem and increase our corporate value.

[アルトマン 京子, executive]

Thank you for watching our 2021 second quarter financial results video. At Rakuten, we have a number of core principles, which we use to evaluate performance. One of them is speed. From the speed in which we're building out our mobile network to the speed at which we're accumulating new FinTech customers, it's all in record time. This quarter, we're especially proud of the speed at which we move to help Japan accelerate the rollout of vaccines nationwide. Our team members volunteered on the front line to create an innovative model for safe and swift vaccination in the hope of expediting Japan's economic recovery. Rakuten's mission after all is to empower society through innovation.

Thank you again for watching.