Casio Computer Co Ltd

TSE:6952

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q4

[Yuichi Masuda, executive]

Let me start with the consolidated results for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024. That's shown in a table on the left. Net sales were JPY 67.5 billion, up 8% from the same period last year. Operating profit was JPY 2.4 billion, up 43% year-on-year. Operating profit margin, OPM, was 3.5%. Ordinary income was JPY 3.8 billion, up 47%. Net income was JPY 1.9 billion, an increase of 128%. And EPS was JPY 8.29.

The table on the right shows the results by segment. The Timepieces segment posted an increase in both sales and income. OPM was 10.2%. In the Consumer segment, net sales rose while operating profit dropped by JPY 0.1 billion. The System Equipment segment reduced operating loss to JPY 0.1 billion. Adjustments decreased by JPY 0.2 billion from the previous year to minus JPY 1.5 billion.

The table on the left shows full year consolidated results for the fiscal year ending in March 2024. Net sales were JPY 268.8 billion, up 2% from the same period last year. Operating profit was JPY 14.2 billion, a 22% decrease year-on-year. OPM was 5.3%. Ordinary income was JPY 17.9 billion, down 8%. Net income was JPY 11.9 billion, down 9%. And EPS was JPY 50.91. ROE is not shown here. It's 5.3%.

The table on the right shows the results by segment. Despite the decrease in profit in the fourth quarter, the company-wide operating profit for the full year fell by JPY 4 billion year-on-year. I will explain why. First, this table compares the fourth quarter results against the plan as of early February, when we released the third quarter results. The JPY 4 billion shortfall in the operating income is primarily caused by JPY 2.6 billion shortfall for the Timepieces segment and JPY 1.6 billion shortfall for the Consumer segment.

In the Timepieces segment, we were aware of this situation because the Chinese economy plummeted at the end of last year. Even so, we did not change our initial plan, anticipating the effect of a major event in Southeast Asia, which has been delayed to the fourth quarter. However, the economic downturn in China was more serious than expected. This impact was felt not only in Mainland China but also in the ASEAN region. It dampened the demand from tourists and resulted in a large gap against the sales plan, especially for G-SHOCK.

In the Consumer segment, it took time to adjust the inventory of sound products. But the main culprit was the large gap in the sales of electronic dictionaries. The restarting of school sales after pandemic also helped. Our survey indicated consumer appetite for electronic dictionary did not fall much from the pre-pandemic time. So we kept the initial sales plan unchanged, but we actually fell far short. I deeply regret that my market assessment was not thorough enough.

I will now detail the fourth quarter results by product category, focusing on the main points. First, the Timepieces. Sales grew from the previous year, but they fell short of the initial plan due to the negative impact from the sluggish Chinese market and the drop in the number of physical stores in North America. The pie chart on the right shows sales by region.

Next, this slide shows the fourth quarter results and overview of the Timepieces by product model. G-SHOCK sales share to the total sales dropped to 49% in the fourth quarter. As mentioned earlier, this was mainly due to the sluggish sales in China, where G-SHOCK has high share to the total sales, and the decline in the demand from the tourists in ASEAN region. On the other hand, Casio brands such as Casio Vintage series have been performing well globally, especially in Europe. As a result, the share of G-SHOCK to total sales dropped.

Next, fourth quarter results and overview of the Timepieces business by region. Overall sales were up 2% from the same period last year on a local currency basis. The slide shows year-on-year changes in sales by region. North America saw a decrease in the number of physical stores. China and the ASEAN region deviated from the plan due to the regions that I stated earlier. Meanwhile, sales in Europe remained strong, especially for G-SHOCK.

Next, a summary of the results for EdTech or education business and sound or electronic musical instrument business. Although the pent-up demand for scientific calculators had run its course by the end of the first half, the results were almost in line with the initial profit plan. We have restarted the school sales events for electronic dictionaries after the pandemic, but we fell short of the plan. The sound business continued to face a challenging business environment. We launched a new CELVIANO electronic piano model in February. It has won good market reviews. As a result, we were able to strengthen our mid- to high-end price range products.

Next, I will talk about the fourth quarter results of the System Equipment business by product. We will discuss [ this system equipment ] structural reform when I talk about the medium-term management plan. I will focus on the fourth quarter results for now. In the HR solution business and the small business support business, or SMB, we will continue to promote a recurring business along with the replacement drive for existing customers. We suspended the new development and the sales activities to add new customers for handheld terminal or PA. As for electronic cash registers or SAs, demand for invoice system support continued. That will do it for the fourth quarter results and overview by product.

Next, I'll move on to our medium-term management plan that we announced the previous year. In May last year, we announced a 3-year plan through fiscal 2025. It calls for maximizing corporate value in fiscal year 2030 with a focus on the strengthening profit base in the first half of the 3-year period. Under the plan, we would take measures to improve profit and strengthen foundation as well as efforts to restore profitability through strategic investment in growth areas.

I would like to use the main KPIs to summarize the progress in the first year of the plan. As you can see, overall, key KPIs remain at the level of fiscal year 2022. The Timepieces business expanded strategic investment, which has been restrained. In doing so, we aim to regain our earning power while enhancing our G brand recognition and expanding sales of high price range models. However, the protracted decline in consumer demand in China dampened sales in neighboring countries as well. As a result, the share of premium lines, India, ASEAN to the total sales remained at the level of fiscal 2022. Swiss watches and other high-end brands have been very strong globally, but G-SHOCK's premium line, which is considered a mid-price range by the industry standard, was affected by unfavorable external factors.

Next, in EdTech, sales of scientific calculators increased. However, sales volume remained at the level of fiscal 2022 because of the drop-off from a strong pent-up demand in the first half offset strong sales of scientific calculators. As explained earlier, demand for electronic dictionaries has shrunk more than expected due to the penetration of tablets in schools. In the sound business, we work to enhance the brand recognition of Privia. The prolonged slump in the digital piano market, however, prevented us from making up for profit decrease on the market, weaker sales just by cost reduction and other measures to lift profit.

I will talk about the System Equipment business later when I talk about the structural reform. In the light of poor results against the first year of the midterm plan, we will implement further structural reforms and revise our growth strategy based on our business portfolio.

I now would like to report on the results of the strategic instruments in Timepieces business. The strategic investment was aimed at creating synergy across the areas. We appointed a global ambassador in North America and held SHOCK THE WORLD events in certain nations on the occasion of G-SHOCK's 40th anniversary. Therefore, it's led to great success in India, a virgin territory for G-SHOCK. However, they made only a limited impact in North America, where G-SHOCK is already a well-known brand, and ASEAN, a region that was affected by the slowdown of the Chinese economy. D2C, directed management e-commerce, sales promotion yielded solid results. Based on the reasons we learned, we will switch our brand investment this year from the promotion of cross-regional events to the promotion tailored to individual markets to make our investment more effective.

From here, I'll go over our business portfolio and talk about our portfolio policy. In principle, we raised funds from the investors on the stock market, allocate and invest the funds in each business and increase corporate value with returns on investment. We've created this portfolio based on the growth potential of each business and our ability to earn.

Let me begin by outlining our business strategy for renewed growth. The timepieces and scientific calculators business have entered the mature stage. But we are aiming to strengthen the business foundation and expand into peripheral areas through strategic investments including M&A as well as organic growth investment. Potential growth businesses such as education apps and HR businesses are still small in scale. Even so, we will make strategic investments to accelerate their growth while keeping a close eye on the competitive landscape and business condition. The aim is to establish our position in the market. The acquisition of Libry in the education app business is part of this effort.

Next, let me talk about unprofitable businesses. We have determined that it will be difficult to grow the PA and SA in the System Equipment business from mid- to long-term perspective. We will, therefore, implement structural reforms. In PA business, we will suspend the new development and the sales activities to add new customers for handheld terminals. We will gradually wind down the business. Eventually, we will be only responsible for providing products and services to the existing customers. It's a business which supplies electronic cash registers and cloud services for stores will also be phased out. In both businesses, we will remain responsible for supplying and supporting our existing customers.

In the electronic dictionary business, the market is shrinking faster than expected. Based on our business portfolio policy, we will quickly determine the direction of these businesses and implement measures to improve profitability.

For the sound business, we will aim for developing our unique position in the mid- to high price range. To this end, we will increase the share of the Privia Upper Grade and the new CELVIANO to total sales. But these measures alone cannot eliminate large deficit. We will also work to optimize our profit structure by reducing fixed cost and improving the cost to sales ratio.

In addition to the structural reform of the System Equipment business, which I just described, we've found out that the balance of fixed cost has been turning for the worst. We will work to optimize the personnel structure to further strengthen management base as part of our efforts to improve the business structure. For example, we are working to reduce fixed cost by cutting about 500 jobs group-wide. Expected reduction in this cost next fiscal year is about JPY 5 billion. In addition, we will do share buyback worth JPY 5 billion this fiscal year to achieve strong governance and more shareholder return.

Considering the severe business conditions of the previous fiscal year and the structural reform described above, we are revising our midterm management plan. We had to lower our targets for the current fiscal year. Revised targets are JPY 275 billion for net sales and JPY 16 billion for operating profit. We will take bold measures to improve our earnings structure by withdrawing from unprofitable businesses and pushing structural reforms. We will make a business structure leaner to put us on a growth track from the next fiscal year. In our plan for the fiscal year ending March 2026, we have lowered the net sales to JPY 290 billion and operating profit to JPY 26 billion, which corresponds to an ROE of 8%.

The slide shows the net sales and operating profit plan by segment. The expected profit for the sound business for the fiscal year ending March 2026, in particular, expects a significant year-on-year improvement. This plan was developed assuming JPY 5 billion reduction in company-wide fixed cost. We also believe that the effect of reducing company-wide fixed cost will help improve profitability of electronic dictionary business, which is a big issue for us now. PA and SA businesses will see losses for some time as these unprofitable businesses phase out operations. These businesses are separately managed and disclosed, as you can see in this table.

I will now explain our revised growth strategy based on the business results in the previous fiscal year. First, the Timepieces business. The impact of the economic slump in China was the direct cause of the gap from the initial plan. This was an external cause. So we work to identify internal causes during a review of strategic investment. We found out the novelty of G-SHOCK's metal strategy has received during the 3 years of COVID.

The graph on the right shows Timepieces business sales since 1990. As you can see, G-SHOCK's unique evolution derived from the toughness-based technology has had an impact on the market by creating a new design category that did not exist before in the industry. This has led to a significant business growth. The metal strategy that we started in 2018 has sort of buckled by the pandemic. We believe the freshness of the strategy was undermined partly because of a weaker effectiveness of strategic investments made in the previous fiscal year. We are now working on the development of an evolutionary design category based on toughness technology under a new strategy.

In addition, we will again work on the expansion of the metal strategy. Since this is related to product development, I will refrain from commenting here on specifics. Along with product development, we will once again expand the G-SHOCK metal series by enhancing the freshness of our metal strategy. However, we will again review KPIs related to the expansion of the entire G-SHOCK metal line, not just the Premium line, which has been our traditional KPI.

We will try to expand our business region. We assume a considerable amount of time will be needed for the Chinese market to recover given the current situation. So we will focus on India and ASEAN. Especially in ASEAN, we will strengthen promotions tailored to each country by ensuring that the local demand is met. The initiative would lessen the influence of demand of Chinese tourists on the region. India's response to various promotional programs has been extremely positive. So we want to further strengthen and expand the business there. We will also continue to expand our directly managed business.

Next, sales volume of scientific calculators did not grow in the previous fiscal year due to a drop-off from the pent-up demand in the first half. However, our basic strategy remains unchanged. We will continue to expand sales volume using KPIs shown here and to take measures described here. In the area of educational apps, we will build an agile development system in collaboration with Libry, which we acquired in the previous fiscal year to boost the number of apps installed. As I have already mentioned, we will determine the direction of electronic dictionary business as soon as possible and improve profitability.

Lastly, the sound business. We have been working to promote the value of Privia as a lifestyle piano on a global scale following the release of Privia Upper Grade last year. In the current fiscal year, we aim to increase sales of new CELVIANO with an aim to add value to mid- to high price range and to push up overall profitability. We will work to optimize our cost structure, including measures such as fixed cost reduction and supply chain reinforcement. At the same time, we will closely monitor the progress of business profit improvement. To this end, we will ensure appropriate business operations by setting KPIs and implement the PDCA cycle in a short period of time.

Next, progress on the capital allocation. There is no change in the basic policy that we presented last year, namely to give priority to investment for business growth while positively considering shareholder returns. We have additional JPY 10 billion for cash distribution. We allocated JPY 5 billion to shareholder returns and another JPY 5 billion to increase strategic investments for alliances and other purposes. There is no change in our policy to consider allocating the unused portion that have been earmarked as strategic investment to shareholder returns. Regarding financial indicators, we have made revisions as described here based on changes in sales and profit levels for the final year of the midterm management plan.

Lastly, in the light of changes in the business environment, we formulated new material issues or materialities. The most important related issues are sustainable corporate growth and value creation. We also added value creation through business, the enhancement of management capital and the strengthening of management foundation. We have rearranged 8 materialities into these 3 groups. We'll set KPIs and turn a steady PDCA cycle with the aim of resolving business issues and achieving the SDGs.

I will talk about the initiatives for human capital management. They are needed because we need to adapt to the changing business environment as we press ahead with the structural reforms this fiscal year. We have been promoting health management for employees to maximize their potential. Various measures we implemented to this end were awarded with a White 500 certification last year. We will also improve our organizational capabilities to spontaneously and promptly respond to changes in the business environment such as digitalization. We will secure and train self-reliant human resources and consolidate their talent. We will continue to strive this fiscal year to establish human capital management that will lead to great success.

Thank you very much for your kind attention.

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