Thank you very much for attending this SBI Holdings full-year results announcement. At the venue, we see dozens of people and I understand that more than 110 people are participating online as well.

Without further ado, let me start. We have quite a big volume of documents, I would like to go through numbers briefly.

Consolidated performance: revenue ¥1,896.6 billion, up 31.4%; pretax income ¥516.7 billion, 83% up; and profit for the period ¥430.5 billion, were up 127.6%; in which profit attributable to owners of the company ¥427.6 billion, +163.7%. Each of them are record highs.

Especially the ROE has been my focus, 28.0% year-on-year, it's a big increase. Usually the Japanese banking industry for FY2024 average was 7.25%.

What about US? JPMorgan Chase, even JPMorgan Chase 16.69%, Morgan Stanley 16.52%, Goldman Sachs 14.91%.

The other banks, big financial companies representing the US market, compared to them our ROE is better. The comparison of consolidated performance with major securities groups, as I mentioned earlier, we have covered their numbers.

The Nomura ¥362.1, ROE 10.1%; and Daiwa ¥175.3 billion, 10.3%; and SMBC Nikko ¥94.4 billion, 7.5% ROE; and the Mitsubishi UFJ ¥64.3 billion and 10% of ROE. So 28% of our number is really a surprisingly good number.

Looking at Nikkei Index, the three largest securities and so on, this way of writing of conventional media, but even the new medias and the conventional medias, all of them are using the internet. I'm wondering why Nikkei continues to write such stupid articles.

The other day I met with the commissioner of the FSA. I told him that we need to do something about it.

It's so shameful. The net and real are now fused, and the business model which does not allow it, they will just go under and it's not good for readers either.

On SNS we put up this table here on SNS as well. The newspaper companies should do a better job.

Now this is performance by segment. Financial services business is dominant result.

¥425 billion the pretax income, and asset management business 8.6, PE investment business ¥82 billion, crypto asset ¥21 billion, next-gen business ¥22 billion. This year we acquired our own shares totaling ¥50 billion.

The dividend is increased by ¥10 or ¥95 per share. The total amount of share repurchases at ¥50 billion and total payout ratio is 26.1%.

Moving on to shareholder benefits, XRP and ALA, these are the choices. XRP, as to XRP, it started in March 2020 and the weighted average of six times, 58.5, 58.8 rather is now ¥214.45.

That means that the unit price is now fourfold. XRP is more effective as benefit.

Then you can buy ALA, that would be the best scenario. This is the by-segment performance, financial services business, we have covered the numbers already.

The breakdown, the banking business is growing very rapidly at +134.5%, the securities business ¥83.2 billion, up 14.8%, insurance ¥79.6 billion, +1,235.5%, and other. SBI Shinsei Bank, and we have banking operation in various parts of the world, not necessarily 100% stake though, but we have the big stake as big as it can be.

This is SBI Shinsei Bank's performance. On all the lines, numbers hit record highs.

The ordinary business profit ¥156.6 billion, +20%, profit before income tax expense ¥122.1 billion, up 22%, and profit attributable to owners of the company ¥113.4 billion, up 34%, this is on J-GAAP basis. On a IFRS basis, ¥106.1 billion or +29%.

The treatment of upfront fees could make difference between the two accounting basis. SBI Shinsei Bank is growing very steadily, number of customers, now we have 4.33 million accounts, and when they joined the group in December 2021, that 3.04 million has now increased to 4.33 million.

The total amount of deposits, ¥17.3 trillion, and the 18 billion, trillion yen rather, of operating assets, it was only ¥8.1 trillion when they joined the group, now it is ¥18 trillion. SBI Shinsei Bank and SBI Money Plaza, they're the joint branch which is called SBI Shinsei Wealth Management.

The product balance on April 23rd exceeded finally ¥1 trillion mark. The asset balance is increasing very steadily.

SBI Savings Bank in Korea, the performance was up 37.8% with ¥25 billion. It is going very steadily.

As to capital adequacy ratio, 19.75%, this is record-high number. The delinquency rate is 4.5%.

When we purchased this bank, it was 51% was the bad loans. They have transformed itself to a high-quality bank and they did it very soon, very quickly.

Still, I have decided to sell part of the stake in this bank to Kyobo Life, and that resulted in 41.34% of the ownership of our group. Still, the economic interest is retained at 70, 70% and as a result of the negotiation.

Nishikawa-san, legal people and CFO Nishikawa-san did a very good job. I told him not to make too much stretch, but I'm very thankful.

We still have 70% economic interest, but basically we are going to sell it completely. Why is that?

Their performance is good, good recovery, why are we going to sell the stake? Looking at the Korea's banking industry, savings bank are at the bottom, and on top of that regional banks, and on top of that the city banks.

The business area allowed is strictly defined. That is kind of a limit.

I would rather get some stake in life company using the proceeds. We are going to have 20% stake in Kyobo Life and now Kyobo Life is the equity method company.

The numbers have been kind of small in the insurance sector, but with this 20% stake, now they look better. Looking at our business portfolio and if there is any limit to be seen, then we make a switch to something new, more stable, more profitable business, we make a shift that way.

Now securities business, we have operations all over the world, we have various entities, and securities business is growing on all line items, the record highs. As you can see, the increase is two-digit percent.

The unauthorized access-related compensation, ¥9 billion. We pay to those customers whose accounts were used.

Also the provision reserve for financial instruments transaction liabilities, ¥10.5 billion, and still we hit the record highs. After Zero Revolution, our revenues are growing very steadily.

People said with such zero commission SBI might not survive, even in the company some people thought that way, but Takamura-san and others did a lot of efforts, but we continued to grow. After the revolution, quarterly profit, 28.1% year-on-year growth, and the SBI Securities financial revenues are contributing greatly.

Of course, we need to think about the Iran-related situation. The open interest credit balance declined a little bit, but at ¥2.53 trillion, very high level.

The margin trading, a increase of 41.1% year-on-year basis, very high level. SBI Securities, the investment trust fees, the balance increased, record high as you can see here, investment trust fees 42% increase year-on-year.

The quarterly investment trust balance at SBI Securities also 50.3% increase year-on-year. Finally, we are in a world with interest rates.

The BOJ was continuing to not change rates, and then the yen exceeded ¥160 against the dollar. Then suddenly the government intervened with the market.

We're not sure if they really did it or if it was just a threat, but that was the case. I think at one time it was at ¥155 against the dollar.

I think this is going to be very short-term and it would go back to 160 because the problem at the root needs to be resolved to fix the weak yen issue. The issue is because interest rates are staying the same.

They're saying that around 1% is appropriate, and we're not there yet. The government, the world, wars, many things are happening, but what needs to happen needs to happen, or else the weak yen situation will continue.

This is so easy to understand and I wonder why they don't understand it. It's because the academia don't have practical experience, they don't get it.

They're not living in the world of the market. I spent 50 years in it.

We can see what's going to happen under these circumstances, it's all about experience. Fujimaki-san is different from that point of view.

Every time he sends me a book, I read it. Those people who have actual experience, the way they look at the financial world and market, their way of thinking is extremely established.

I think that person is a very rare politician, and I think he stepped down, but he's a very rare person. In the case of the US, the situation is completely different.

Trump was a person who was living in the actual world, and Bessent is coming. He was working for a hedge fund, and after Golden Week he is going to come and visit around the 12th apparently.

This person too, he was working together with Soros and so forth, who profited a lot in the past. The sense that these people have and the sense that Ueda-san, our BOJ Governor, has is completely different.

The Governor of the BOJ or the head of the central bank, they shouldn't really read between the lines of the government because the governor in the US is working so hard even if Trump is applying a lot of pressure on the person. That's the kind of mentality that a governor or the head of the central bank needs to have.

Also for JGBs, institutional investors are not holding that much anymore, then it would need to be sold to individual investors. They have about ¥2,300 trillion worth of assets that are at the bank, and from the individual's point of view, which is better: rates at banks or JGBs?

They feel that it's better to invest into JGBs because they were just holding it at their homes for 30 years long. The issuance of individual JGBs are increasing and our business is expanding as well.

From July through December in the JGB sales ranking, we have been number two. For January through March, and I think April, SBI was actually leading.

The reason why this trend is happening is because in individual market, whether it be equities or bonds, SBI Group has significantly increased its share of individual stock trading value. We have reached a dominant market position.

We are at 63.4% for margin trading. We are a dominant player now.

With respect to the individual's business, we have dominance. When it comes to institutional, our penetration is still low, maybe Nomura is doing better.

It's just a matter of time. From my experience, when it comes to a broker or securities company, you need to have both retail and wholesale, especially in the case of Japan.

If it's like US where the bond market is extremely advanced and sophisticated, it's different. It's very rational and streamlined.

The individual can delegate their management to an entity to have them manage their funds. However, in the case of Japan, people think by themselves and hold on to their assets, it's slightly different in nature.

SBI Securities implemented order routing to Japannext PTS for new orders in general margin trading. Then at once you could see here that there has been price improvement.

For who? For the customer.

They don't have to pay commission now. You can go directly here to do trading.

This is something that's obvious for the US, but because of FSA in Japan, because they're supporting the TSE even now, our country is ludicrous. NYSE, the NASDAQ, and the PTSs have been establishing in a series in the US and things changed dramatically.

However, in Japan, it's about clearing, [unclear]. Everything is a monopoly still here in Japan.

Maybe Jasdaq may have reduced their commissions twice, but we're doing zero commission, for example. We need to be supportive of investors and be customer-centric.

That's the way of management we have. However, they are only thinking about protecting themselves by using an old system.

When you say something about it, they try to make business go down for PTSs by blocking us. I am at 75 and I don't think management should be assertive.

I am not afraid of anything. Even Katayama-san or Ito, the commissioner, they're juniors to me.

JNX PTS share relative to TSE exceeds 10%. It's 11.18% as of March.

As a rule, if you exceed 10%, you need to become a financial instruments exchange. There is that kind of rule that exists.

Is this going to turn into an exchange? That needs to be a decision made.

This 10% level, why was this 10%? There is no theory that supports this.

They just randomly decided 10%. The TSE, the FSA, or the former name, the Ministry of Finance, decided this rule, so that can change to 20% instead.

They should just change the rules. Of course, if this can turn into an exchange, that's great.

The state-of-the-art exchange can be established and it can be everything on-chain, that is a possibility. The number of security accounts at the SBI Group surpasses 16 million for the first time in the industry.

As of May the 1st, we have exceeded 16 million. Nomura is at 6.095 million or 6.09 million.

CAGR-wise, you start from here, which is March 2009, and the CAGR was only 1.8% that leads up to March '26, the compound annual growth rate. Our CAGR was 13.4%.

We can grow even more. AUM has now reached ¥66.1 trillion as of the fourth quarter.

The Zero Revolution started here, we continue to see growth. We were projecting out before the start of the Zero Revolution and things have turned out to be exactly as we have anticipated.

Rakuten Securities is at 50.3, there is a big difference. Thoroughly promote the deepening of open alliances and expansion of overseas businesses to grow the business foundation of the securities business.

We are promoting an alliance with SMBC Group and we will make this even deeper and add new schemes to grow it even more. We will also continue to grow the business foundation in the overseas business as well.

For SMBC, we are centered on the promotion of the alliance with fusion of digital and face-to-face services. We do believe it was a really good alliance, even from our side and their side.

The Olive project, thanks to this, from March '22 to March '26, for the number of financial intermediary accounts it grew by 110.7%. We are currently at 1.85 million accounts.

Sumitomo Mitsui Card accumulation investment, the monthly accumulation is now exceeding ¥100 billion. When you look at the age of users, the younger generation, which is from their teens to the 30s, account for half of the users.

Maybe if the taxes can become lower or if this can be tax-free because this is asset formation. If the government can extend more support, that would be great.

Or we could give back to the younger generation. It's really important to give back to a certain party because there's a lot of taxation and we are the worst country with respect to the way the taxes are being used because it's very vague in how it's being used.

There is a random way of using the taxes just because they want votes. When it comes to religious entities, they are not taxed, and they also have Cabinet Secretariat secret funds.

I'm not sure what the Komei party is doing, but nowadays I do believe there has been some heaven's judgement in place. Full utilization of NISA Tsumitate quota of ¥100,000 is common, they should raise this amount.

There's a lot of individual financial assets and they want to transfer it from deposits to here. I think there's many people that are thinking about it.

Olive consulting, SMBC will start this service. This is an in-person consulting service which is going to start from May.

I do believe this is going to generate huge results as well. SMBC, NTT, they are our major shareholders that hold the same amount, which is at 8.2%.

With NTT and our relationship, I do believe it has turned out to be a great relationship. It's a matter of their technological capabilities and how they can be leveraged for our business.

We are looking into it, and from various points of view, we are trying to see how things can develop. Finance really needs technology and that is why the word fintech was established.

Web3 and IOWN technology, this also in many ways can be utilized. For example, transaction speed can become expedited as much as possible, or power usage at exchanges can be conserved substantially.

Regional finance and financial digital transformation, we would like to leverage NTT Group's financial digital transformation packages as much as possible. If I announce anything, I will shock people, I'm not going to say anything, but we have been working on creating various businesses for the future.

SBI Securities proactively developing its global institutional investor business to expand its sources of revenue worldwide. We didn't have presence in London, Netherlands either.

However, in main cities around the world, now we have presence and we are striving to globalize our finance business. If there are any big finance deals, we'd like to ensure that we target these markets.

For that institutional investor business, when you look at the trend in institutional investor trading value comparing against fiscal '21, in five years we were able to grow by three times. For business revenue for institutional investors comparing against fiscal '21, we have been able to double the business in five years.

We have been able to steadily grow the business. Next is insurance business.

All were record highs and also for dividends. It's about the double of last fiscal year over this short period of time, we have been able to steadily grow the business.

To the people from the government, I often say this, but for those people who have stepped down and became a corporate advisor of some company or became a professor at a given university, I wouldn't say it's a waste of time, but we are short of competent people. Therefore, I always call upon them to come to us, especially young people who are working at the government.

They know a lot of people, I have been recommending this. For a person who has experience at the Ministry of Finance, they work really hard, seriously.

They have been engaged with the budgeting processes, it's quite challenging, and during the Diet sessions, all the politicians, they make all their jobs be done by the governmental offices. The young people are no longer interested in becoming a public official nowadays because of these reasons.

They often go to consulting firms in the past or a foreign capital broker. Nowadays gradually, for example, you never know when a consulting firm is going to be gone due to the evolution of AI.

That's where we are nowadays. For AI agents and the evolution of AI, it's going to change the nature of a job dramatically, definitely.

Salesforce, things like that, we're not going to need it anymore. I've been saying at the previous results meeting that we're not going to hire new people unless they're competent, but there are people who do continue to join our company.

They may have been at Salesforce before or at a consulting firm, but they are being fired although they were competent. We can hire them as an analyst to work for the securities company.

We believe we can offer opportunities for them to grow even more and that will be a win-win situation. However, jobs like analysts, because of AI, if you have three different types of AI lined up together and ask the same question, you can refer to the answers and pick the answer you prefer, or compare and verify what's missing from the responses.

I think recently, when it comes to new employees and their reports, the quality of their reports are becoming better that they write once every two weeks. That's why I've been doing the same thing by using AI, and I'm now able to identify who's using AI.

I actually cross-check it. You really need to think with your own brains.

AI is just help, but you need to deepen your thought process by leveraging the power of AI, or else your brain will always be inferior to that of AI. The total number of in-force contracts of SBI Insurance Group, end of March 2016 to the end of March 2026, CAGR has been 12.3%.

During the same period of time, when you look at Dai-ichi Life, it was 7.1%, and Nippon Life, what was that? It was only 7.1% and 2.8% respectively, which means for large insurance companies, their business opportunity in the Japanese market is already at saturation.

For us, we believe we can still grow. The reason is because our insurance premiums are far lower if you do it online.

That is why our growth rates are far higher. For the major players, if they want to grow their business, all they can do is resort to overseas markets.

However, when the yen is so weak, going abroad may lead to the next loss. Even for life insurance companies, there has been various issues that have occurred.

They are carrying too many JGBs, they need to take care of them. When you have evaluation losses, evaluation losses are quite substantial.

Globally, when you look at this, under the International Accounting Standards or any type of global accounting standard, the image of their business will change. Same thing applies for banking as well.

This goes back to my earlier point about the holdings of Kyobo Life. We now have 20.4%.

With the acquisition, what we were targeting was, of course, when you compare the insurance business, the numbers, I compared the numbers first and I also was looking at total assets at ¥16 trillion, it's one of the three major insurance companies in South Korea. Their profit base is ¥82.7 billion.

Warren Buffett, when he started the asset management business, he started off in acquiring life insurance companies. Long-term assets of life insurers are attractive.

In our case, at Asakura-san, we are currently at 13, but our target is ¥20 trillion, the next target is ¥50 trillion, I want to bring it up to ¥100 trillion eventually. Of course, with respect to the methodology, the two of us have discussions to come up with ways to grow the asset base.

If we want to grow by a certain extent, it will be acquisitions. ORIX, I think, acquired Robeco at a very good timing, and what I was very impressed about was in two years what ORIX did was they sold it by ¥370 billion to Daiwa.

There were some offers to us as well, but I was questioning that deal. However, I guess, Daiwa is confident about turning the business around.

If it's a company that no one was interested in buying, there must be an issue with it. The seller, there's a reason why they want to sell it.

When I want to buy something, I will do a survey as to why they want to sell the business and I also think about how much synergies can be generated as well. You need to do a thorough research of that or else you won't be able to generate good results.

For example, 25% acquisition of Aozora Bank, what kind of results can be generated? I'm not badmouthing Daiwa, but I try to apply an analyst-like approach.

I've never seen a press coverage that Aozora was doing well and office demand in the US was going down and people were thinking that there will be more evaluation losses, I was wondering what's likely to happen. The synergies, in what way is it going to be exerted?

For example, for Daiwa Next Securities and the synergies with the bank, they haven't been able to generate that much. Daiwa Next Securities and SBI Shinsei Bank, how much is that generating profits?

When you compare the two, it's quite different. The asset management business, I talked about this earlier, we have been able to build up assets and global assets are at record highs.

For 14 consecutive fiscal years of revenue growth and 17 consecutive fiscal years of ordinary profit growth, being able to consecutively grow your earnings base by more than 10 times is quite impressive. For asset management, AUM exceeded ¥12 trillion.

By the end of 2030 March, we would like to bring it up to ¥50 trillion. It's a commitment by Asakura-san and I would like to help him as much as possible through acquisitions and so forth, and in various ways through the securities business by selling funds.

I hope this could help this business, I would like to support him in growing the business. However, in the investment trust industry, now we are at number nine.

Nomura will be celebrating its 100th anniversary soon. We are only at 26 or the 27th year, but we are at this level.

For this page, everybody is surprised when they see this page. When I show this in English to English speakers, PIMCO, AllianceBernstein, State Street, they are the traditional joint ventures, active and index and alternative.

The Man Group, it's a London company; KKR, everybody knows them; Franklin Templeton, they have strong strength in digital ETFs. We have a close relationship with these people.

These people, Takamura-san's team is able to engage in their business because of these alliances. We have exceeded ¥2 trillion of assets.

It's already been exceeding ¥2.5 trillion. The PIMCO people were really happy.

Doug Hodge was the CEO back then, but then there was a change to a new CEO. I'm always here, but every time the CEO visits, PIMCO used to have zero joint ventures, but we were able to persuade Doug Hodge in establishing a JV, which led to a great success.

Everybody's connected here in this world. The Franklin's CEO, Jenny and Robin of Man, they're both ladies, but they get along, they know each other.

When we go to Saudi Arabia, we have been talking the other day that we should have dinner together, the three of us. This is the joint venture with State Street.

They were established in 1792 and their AUM is $5.6 trillion, that's ¥890 trillion, and the world's fourth largest. This is utilizing AI agent in all business segments.

We need to hurry up and manage this on the asset management side as well. They're actually doing this independently as well, even at wealth advisors they're using AI agents for asset management and they're showing a very nice performance.

Then PE investment, just with PE investment we have an outstanding balance of ¥1 trillion, we are number one private equity company in Japan. It's not about JAFCO and all of that, it's totally out of the question, and all the foreign investors know that.

This is IPOs and M&As of the SBI Group's investee companies. You can see our prospects for 2026, and I think '27 we will exceed that.

Private equity, we have exceeded ¥1 trillion, actually it's ¥1.1 trillion in AUM. This is part of our PE investment, Ripple.

It's 9% or so, and they will burn it. When they continue to burn it, our ratio will automatically go above 10%.

Now what's been circulating in the market today, as you can see, and of course it changes day to day, but it's approximately 14.2 trillion yen. In terms of actual, the actual is held by Ripple and they have holdings under escrow, what's in circulation, excuse me, what's not in circulation is equivalent to ¥8.8 trillion.

If this becomes is listed or becomes circulated, then this is the amount that we will get, and no one will complain about that. The price is already determined.

This is not all about the value either. Ripple, they copied us because I said they should build an ecosystem within this current cryptocurrency, I said that crypto assets, I said that to Chris, who is the founder.

I don't know if this is the end result of that, but there's no doubt that I recommended it and I remember that they agreed to that. They started with Metaco, and there's some that are public, not public, but basically then continue to pursue acquisitions from prime brokers to market makers.

In, they have a sizable amount in the ecosystem of this cryptocurrency. It's quite remarkable.

Then they have this is XRP treasury business. They have asked to invest, and so we paid out ¥32 billion.

I think Chris-san may pay out some cash a little bit, but and Ripple with coin. This is will be listed on SPAC, and Form S-4 has been filed to SEC on March 18th and we will resubmit with amended Form S-4 in April 7th, we're making a steady progress towards listing.

Once it's listed, and let's say we and there'll be clarity in probably May, and we are seeing a good prospect. All the reasons they would oppose to it has been discussed through.

The Trump family owns a lot of cryptocurrency, and this is against ethics. The fact that the president is promoting this and they own the family owns a large amount is strange, there's argument about that.

Maybe he could they could just donate half of that. That's all they need to do, really.

Mr. Trump, he doesn't get paid as a president right now.

Here's the crypto asset business. Again, pretax profit is record high.

Of course, there's an impact from the valuation gains recognized in third quarter, but even amidst the market downturn, turns remains at a high level. This is number accounts held by SBI VC Trade, it's 1.92 million accounts.

People talk about bitFlyer, Coincheck, but Mercari are gathering all these smaller accounts, and maybe they are Mercoin is maybe at the top perhaps. We put aside all these little ones, and we acquired DMM Bitcoin here, and now it's over here.

On top of that, we will combine with Bitbank. I think it's announced today.

This is a company that belongs to Mr. Hirosue.

They have 960,000 accounts, they're above bitFlyer. If they behind the market, it will only be Mercari, but what's important is AUM here.

Our assets under custody, which is ¥570 billion, and my basic policy is to become number one in all aspects. We will continue to build up on number one in every category, and as a whole, we will become number one.

Of course, here's the shareholder benefit programs. During the Morningstar days they started this business and we followed right away, and we wanted to do this at the holdings level.

Now we're beginning to see number of customers who want to use this as a shareholder's benefit programs. Many companies are now utilizing crypto assets, and in our case, it's four times as much.

Morningstar, we started XRP, it's about 67 times now. Also crypto asset treasury companies, you can see a number of companies who are already doing this treasury crypto asset treasury business.

If they do this, then, they will trade, they will become a large volume clients. They are key customers, prospect customers from our point of view.

Next-gen business, Web 3.0 or Web3, excuse me, related business. MyNavi is very successful.

We have only 20% as a equity method affiliate, but it's already generating ¥5.2 billion as equity in earnings of affiliates, very grateful. We have validator rewards, we have some super validators and we are able to also gain rewards from that, so that's the key to becoming profitable.

Now, the key topic here is three key strategies, objectives for the sustainable growth of corporate value and performance. As a subtitle, I've written strategy is everything.

Since I have been involved in management, if people ask me what is my reason for success, for winning, it's strategy. Strategy is everything.

What is strategy? Many scholars say many different things.

They say it's about building a position that achieves sustainable competitive advantage to be to succeed in competition, theory and organization activity within the market, a long-term fundamental blueprint for an organization activities within the market. Some people say very academic things, but it's basically a mechanism to win, it's a concept to win.

When we in the past when we talked about strategy, it's really about winning a war, right? This is, for example, Sun Tzu.

When we say corporate value, I think it's about strategic value. Now corporate value in an ordinary sense is shareholder value here.

This is the the total amount of cash flows generated over the long term to the shareholders, and also the cash flow amount that it be offered to the creditors, and you deduct that by present value or discount that by present value. This is the corporate value in an ordinary sense.

What is my corporate value? I think it's made out of customer value, shareholder value, human capital value.

When you have the people, human capital, you will be able to exercise creativity. I think it's the source of creativity or it is the greatest factor for bringing about differentiation.

That's human capital. What is customer value?

Customer purchases or perform something. It is the consideration against the the goods and services that's offered to the customers.

This is SBI corporate value, my value. On top of that, SBI, now often people criticize us as a conglomerate discount.

They don't really study very much about our company, but conglomerate discount is about in 1980s where company was buying one companies are unrelated to the business one after another in order to just simply increase EPS, and they continued to increase suddenly into 1980s, and then and then in the '90s they began to fail, we have to think about conglomerate discount. That's wrong because many scholars have actually studied this, but if you have companies that have strong correlations, then you will be able to exercise synergies, and if you build an entity that's based on that, you will be able to increase value.

Even it's in the book of Roberto, he's a scholar from Harvard Business School, and there's a very typical classical paper on this, literature on this. This is an idea that I was quite convinced by, but it's not just that.

It's also based on management, philosophy, and strategy grounded in long-term perspective. This is a strategic value.

What I have been generating over the years is strategic value. It's based on grounded in long-term perspective.

10 years ago acquiring Ripple, who would have done that? Even after the acquisition, they had some losses, I never sold any of the shares, we continued to hold on to it.

It's about what will the world be in 10 years later, 20 years later? It's the ability to foresee that, it's about visionary, it's being able to have an insight and discerning power.

It is company's management philosophy and long-term strategy that determines its future value. Management philosophy has always been customer-centric.

Since the foundation, I have been very thorough about promoting technology. Or I have always said public interest will is first and foremost before private interest.

Corporate is an existence of the society and the business has to be good for the society and for the people. I have always called out that philosophy and tried to implement that, and that's the reason why we're still here today, I truly believe so.

I've been reading a lot of books, but the one of the books that I have really thought was true was a book written by Duggan, and when I was trying to take business class management classes at Columbia, I came to read this book, and he talked about strategic intuition, and he says that strategic intuition refers to the ability to synthesize accumulated knowledge from the past with the wealth of experiences and to instantly recombine them in mind to discover solutions to new problems. I have this enormous amount of reading that I do and also this my enormous amount of knowledge and experiences.

With that, I am able to make instant decisions and judgments. Based on this intuition, as a founder, I will implement proper strategy at a appropriate timing.

Then I will hand it over to those who will take over. The strategy that I will mention after this, all three of them can only be implemented by a founding founder.

I don't think a salaried CEO will not be able to do this because I am the founder and I am the top management, and that is why I am able to make that decision. I think that decision is to be made now, so that is why I am making this into a strategy.

The structure follows strategy, is this the words of Chandler, a very old word, you will follow the intuition. Meanwhile, you create an organization.

What is my three key strategic objectives? One is to become completely AI-driven transformation.

The other is organization transformation toward on-chain finance, providing next-generation financial services ahead of the rest of the world. Number three is integrate the neo media ecosystem into the existing financial ecosystem and digital space ecosystem, which is already emerging.

Through that, we will be able to dramatically expand our customer base in and out of Japan. Only I can do within this group.

Someone how can someone suddenly one day build a neo media and do something like this? Who could say this, and who could actually make the investment for that and run an organization and build an organization?

Who could who will be able to do that? I was speaking to Mr.

Yasuda from PPIH Donki. I think this dialogue became an interview book.

There were some commonalities as founders, we shared views, same views. First strategic objective one on decisively implementing a complete AI-driven transformation.

In JPMorgan Chase in September 2025 announced AI blueprint, they said they will transform into a world's fully AI-powered megabank. They said that in September 2025, world first.

No one's been able to do that before, and maybe I'm slightly behind them, but we think the same. Of course, I have some influences of Mr.

Son as I came to think this way. It's not just about implementing AI tool, but the bank business process itself will be redesigned with AI at the center.

This is what JPMorgan Chase is trying to do. This is personalized AI assistant, AI-driven process, AI concierge, we will attach all of these to make all the operation efficiencies higher.

This is the three pillars of implementing AI, and expected effect is to become a checker from becoming a maker. It will be made by AI, but humans will become a checker.

Checker actually can be generated by AI agent. What do we do?

We will basically consolidate everything, orchestrate everything, and set out to a certain direction. Maybe an AI can orchestrate, some people will say that.

Winner organization run with AI. This is something that humans would have to do.

Here's potential workforce reductions, you can see that from the banks in America. This is Commerzbank in Germany, they have implemented this after pilot operation in 2024.

They also built AI avatar, and they have drastically improved customer service efficiency. They have approximately 75% completely autonomous function without human intervention.

It says high self-resolution rate, and 24/7 operations, this goes without saying. You do not need people.

If you had people, if you hired people, you won't be able to do it. It can execute complex tasks.

The test result of the University of Tokyo, AI was able to do perfectly, perfect score. The world is changing.

In the past, people used to say that in 2045 technological singularity will come. That's what they used to say.

Not even 45, it will be in 2030, maybe it's already here now. In other words, the capabilities of AI has drastically exceeded the humankind.

What should human beings do? What should we do?

The AI, it should not take the leadership position. AI would be able to do that, but the final decision should be made by AI.

In a limited area and also the workflow that will be consigned totally to AI, we are going to do that as well. Claude 3.5 has a strong impact in the financial world, it's matter of course.

The vulnerability was becoming a problem, and very early that we started to work on that, how to discover the vulnerability. We have not used the Mutus of Anthropic yet, but in order to avoid it, we need to use it first, and we do check it and we implement the systems.

That will be the wisest way. Are we going to be allowed to do that?

Not quite. There are some limitations.

The Mutus is now being used only by the defense purpose and so on. What should we do then?

Fortunately, that we could find a very good company, one of the investee companies, and it's a Korean company strong in the valuation of the vulnerability, Everspin. We are going to implement it group-wide.

To have legacy system, you have lots of unknown vulnerability, legacy system has now already come to its limits. Financial crimes and fraud, the accounts misused or unused without authority, how can it be avoided?

For example, implementation of new systems is one, and also autonomous AI used to deal with increasing cyber attacks and so on. Under such circumstances, we had to decide on a strategic guideline, and in doing that, our own staff alone is not good enough.

From my investee companies, the very best in this area, and the top person of that company has been invited, Rachai was established on July 29th, 2016, it's about Mr. Takashi Yanagihara, the excellent person who will join us.

In the past, all we had to do is to procure technology from someplace else, the process was to invest and then implement and then expand, that was good enough. Not anymore.

What should we do? We have been thinking about it, and then Takamura-san came up with this.

Yanagihara-san and his company. We have been investing already into their company, it's a public company in the past.

I liked him right away. As outside director, we invite him, and in deciding our strategic guideline, we'd like to leverage his expertise.

Here is what I have announced: develop AI agents capable of autonomously providing optimal financial experiences for everyone. To realize this guideline is, of course, develop global financial AI concierge.

Going forward, everything should be global. Now, whether it is the Bitcoin or the XRP or stablecoin, they're all global.

Stablecoin is becoming global. In this new era, we need to think about globally.

AI times Web3 build an autonomous economic ecosystem. Autonomous is a very important concept.

We are strong both in AI and Web3, and that helps us. Deliver seamless services from recognition to trust and rapidly advancing the transition to an AI-native autonomous organization.

Develop global financial AI concierge, how are we going to do it? In short, AI concierge is to remove any concerns of the decision-making, the difficulties from customers.

Based on information, AI concierge will come up with optimal portfolio for you. For optimal asset formation, it proposes, executes optimal portfolios of financial assets and AI agents that consider and propose financial actions aligned with each customer's interests and financial literacy level.

Agent understand customers and make proposals, that's important. Global financial infrastructure that transcends barriers of language, laws, and regulations.

Financial regulations are all defined country by country. If there's anything to change it, it will be in the cryptocurrency world.

Everywhere it's Bitcoin, everywhere globally XRP can be used. As Mr.

Trump categorically denies, central bank digital currency is difficult. It's the same thing.

Inside it might facilitate a few things, but the inside-outside relationship would not change that way. We are going to provide the best user experience.

Now building autonomous economic ecosystem through AI and Web3, combining Web3 and crypto assets with AI to create new value. The AI-optimized transaction systems, co-creation of AI and smart contracts, AI monitoring and accountability, please pay attention to those expressions in red color.

Deliver seamless services from recognition to trust, know, decide, and trust everything, that's important. This is not something that the SBI Group alone can achieve.

We need to achieve in collaboration with X and Web3 top players, that's why we are making so much investment in overseas. Lots of investment at this timing when yen is so weak.

Overseas investment involves dollar-based investment. Yesterday, at around 1:00 in the morning, I thought, 'Oh, that's a shame.'

If I did not do what I would have done at SoftBank, cuz when the yen appreciates, should buy dollar. The ¥6 billion was the profit that I earned that way.

Asakura-san, with the data on hand doing trading day and night, and remittances made, and that period is very important, and I thought that I could have done better. The need is the mother of the invention, but now I'm 75 years old and there's so many things to do.

Using AI, we need to do both offensive and defensive. For that, for the whole group, we should be AI-driven.

That means that I delegate my authorities to strategy headquarters and reporting directly to me, and also the group's vast financial data and computing resources are to be centrally managed. We will make full conversion of operations into AI agents and transform the value chain into an AI-native one, and we will achieve major transformation of the cost structure and create new revenue sources.

As to security measures, SBI Everspin, black box test, white hacker verification, and the continuous monitoring and analysis by SOC, we will combine the governance and unified controls against AI attacks. We are going to do all that on a group level, and we are writing some contracts for that.

Eversafe, on a group-wide basis we are adapting Eversafe, the vulnerability assessment, the password changes automatically in dynamic way, and by using AI, we are going to be strong structurally speaking against cyber attacks. Calling on the top management of the three largest banks and Ms.

Katayama did a talk to them, and that kind of thing would not achieve anything. I'm wondering what they are thinking.

We need to face our business very, very seriously to have a good results. You bet your life.

Yasuda-san, PPI, is the same. He's in the stage 4 of the lung cancer.

I'm trying to help him on the medical aspect as well. He's still doing business, writing books, and acquiring companies.

His book, Un, or Fate, is a really good book. Here it says deploy code-level AI autoviews to development process and sequential implementation and so on.

Yanagihara-san, we are going to set the AI security standards formulation as the core of the AI strategy led by Yanagihara-san at the strategic headquarters. I am saying clearly that you need to move fast.

This is the very last decision that I can make as the top person. You should do it, you should execute those strategies.

If you are not going to do it, you have to leave. You are expected to support such evolution of the company.

Decisively implement organization transformation toward on-chain finance providing next-generation financial services ahead of the rest of the world. Token economy, every asset will be tokenized, on-chain transaction is completed on-chain.

The application is on the www site, that is already gone. For 10 years or so, I have been talking about the importance of blockchain.

To change a society, I thought that the blockchain will play bigger role than the AI. More and more people in agreement with me, blockchain or DLT, the decentralized network is now expanding.

The Web3, on-chain, should be achieved. If it remains off-chain, the volume of transaction increases and the gas charge increases, and that will constrain transaction, so that should be changed.

That is to have layer 2 on the top of layer 1, by using smart contracts adequately on the blockchain, the transactions are processed automatically. I've been thinking about it, Ethereum with smart contract is really a great and others are doing the same now.

The tokens utilized for both transactions and settlements, such token economy era is starting. One of my books, Tokenized Economy, that's the English version title, Tokenized Economy, my book is now welcomed very warmly.

Now TradFi, traditional finance, and DeFi, decentralized finance, specific examples of the convergence of TradFi and DeFi in the West. Traditional finance and the new finance world in the picture of the finance, we need to integrate or converge these two, that's the basic idea.

New York Stock Exchange has already started the work toward the launch of tokenized stock services. They have already announced the platform development for trading tokenized securities, and announced March investment in OKX.

Nasdaq has also made similar announcement. New platform is about US-listed stocks, ETFs, 24/7 trading, and immediate settlement, and fractional share trading, less than one share trading is also possible.

It's a stablecoin compatible and it is integrated with existing infrastructure and it is supporting payment and custody functions. Those new things are happening.

TSE is kind of sleeping. The PTS, they are changing the small changes for the scale, that is putting lots of securities firms into trouble.

We do not care about the changing in scales. Robinhood, the newly established securities firm, they are already developing the new platform development and they're advocating transition from traditional securities up to blockchain-based global next-gen financial platform.

Tokenization enables 24/5 trading and in the future it will be transitioned to 24/7 like crypto assets and a small-scale investment, fractional share trading from €1 is possible. The number of handled stocks expanded 10-fold from about 200 to 2,000.

Initially they issued on Arbitrum and Ethereum layer 2 chain, but in the future there's a talk about joint venture with Robinhood. I give a lot of thought to it before all kinds of these announcements.

Using our capability and making profit without expanding their own customer base, that is impression that I got back then, I decided not to go for joint venture with them. Now accelerate structural transformation toward financial infrastructure integrating AI agents into on-chain finance.

This integration is extremely important. When it comes to institutional investors, they can make direct access to the on-chain, but individuals or the SMEs, they need to have the intermediary companies involved.

Of course, now using AI agents, individuals can make access to the market directly. AI agent and on-chain are very closely connected.

You need to do both and that's the key. Very early we started to think about it.

In the digital space ecosystem we put both of them. AI agents transact with each other.

In such a world, transaction will increase dramatically. Then without on-chain you cannot do anything in that kind of world.

On-chain is a must for high-speed, high-volume transaction world. The AI agent reward payments will be very, very small, it will be micropayments.

That means that will increase transactions as well, you need to do both. When it comes to individuals, they cannot follow the development of such world.

It should be institutional, big institutions, or the experts. The SMEs who have good technology, those mega technology companies used to be small companies, and before you know it, now they have become big companies.

Transition from finance where customers struggle to make choices to the provision of finance entrusted to reliable AI agents. Now AI make choices for you instead of you making choices.

We are going to provide safe and reliable AI agents to our customers. If you become our customers, you will benefit from the special segment to give very detailed explanation to you.

Now progress in developing frameworks for the expansion of on-chain finance both in Japan and overseas. Now one more step to go for the enactment of CLARITY Act.

Once it is enacted, digitalization will be accelerated and tokenization will be accelerated. As to stablecoin, now GENIUS Act has already been enacted, so that's a green light for stablecoin and the CLARITY Act should also be enacted.

In Japan, in the amended Payment Services Act now stablecoins are defined as electronic payment instruments, and issuers are limited to banks, fund transfer service providers, and trust companies. There are some constraints on a tax side.

To me, it's a very stupid taxation. 55% as the miscellaneous tax, that's impossible.

Of course, the separate taxation should be applied. Now it is in the picture.

ETF has not been changed yet. Crypto asset ETF should be allowed to do.

I made a very strong message to Katayama-san and also I'm going to ask Mr. Bessent to make a strong message about it to the Japanese authorities.

For SBI Group's initiatives toward on-chain finance, I talked about this earlier. For the ecosystem for digital space and financial ecosystem, many things will be traded under TRAT by as well.

Also for the trust bank, it will become increasingly important. Therefore, Shinsei Trust and Banking changed its name to SBI Shinsei Trust and Banking.

SBI Holdings' holding ratio is now 49%. With respect to the rules about exceeding a million and so forth, we won't be subject to it.

We will be able to do fund transfer now, which is type 3, and VC Trade as well. It continues to expand and growth in on both ends and their evolution can be connected together through VC Trade.

For Startale, we have decided to work together with them. The founder of Startale, Sota Watanabe, has also become one of our independent directors.

From June at the AGM, if he's appointed, that is, but I'm sure he will be approved. The shift to on-chain, we will do this thoroughly by leveraging his expertise and we will have two JVs that are going to be established.

One will be led by him, which is a development company, and the other will be led by ourselves, which is a marketing company. Even more, we will invest approximately $50 million into Startale and making it into an equity method associate with 20% ownership.

For yen-denominated stablecoins and layer 1 blockchain, we will be doing joint developments, we have agreed upon that. Developments are steadily underway, and as of June, the stablecoins will be ready for approval application.

It will be the first trust type and it will not be subject to the fund transfer rules of 1 million of a limit in remittances and holdings, and we would like to target a launch as early as the first quarter of this fiscal year. Yen-denominated stablecoins, there are some that have come out, but volume has been small, it's not impactful.

Of course, attempting to do so, I think, is something that I admire, but sometimes I feel that I should buy them out because they're so small, they gave me a high price, I decided not to. Asakura-san met this entity, right?

In any case, on-chain training of all financial assets for all types of tokenized securities, real world assets, we would like to make everything be enabled to be traded online, on-chain, and try to make it flexible as possible so that we can provide liquidity. Between AI agents, there will be a time when they start trading between each other, we need to be able to respond to those times.

We will pursue a vertical integration strategy in digital finance. What do we mean by that?

We need to integrate all of these items that will enable us to leverage competitive advantage, and I think this is the only way to do so. We have everything, by the way.

Last year in August, with SMBC, we jointly developed a stablecoin and this alliance has been released, but by the FSA, we were asked to join another group, but we opposed. For SMBC, we made it already.

We asked them, 'Maybe you can join them.' I said that to Nakashima-san.

For the multi-chain strategy, for example Rakuten, what they're doing, it has to be Rakuten Points. For us, we don't have any specific choice.

We're open, whether it be gas fees, there's all different types here, but we would like to promote a multi-chain strategy so that we could be compliant to everything. What I think is promising right now is Solana.

We own 90% of B2C2 and they announced a partnership with Solana Foundation with respect to one of settlement networks for stablecoin transactions. R3 is an American company we have invested into, they are now going to be acquired by Solana.

In that respect, we now have various connections with Solana. We would like to put importance on this important relationship as well.

Also, Canton Network, as we are a super validator and we have a voice, by using the Canton Network, Mizuho, Nomura, and Japan Securities Clearing Corporation was doing something, but from long ago we have been working together with this entity to support our relationship so that it can expand both domestically and internationally. My way of thinking is big, it's global.

Therefore, I have been working on Singapore as well. We're going HUB as well, which is the biggest exchange in the country.

In Singapore, our affiliate already have a total of five licenses that are key. Because of the circumstances and the Middle East right now, companies that used to be in Dubai are coming back to Singapore and there are some companies that are coming back from Abu Dhabi as well.

For Dubai, there was a building, a skyscraper that was attacked and was burning. There was some imagery of that that was on air.

You never know what's going to happen during a war. To that end, it's quite scary.

We did open an office in Dubai, but for the time being, we decided not to operate there, it's more going to be about focusing on Singapore. For Abu Dhabi, whether it be Abu Dhabi or Venezuela, those countries or regions will start to drop out from the OPEC.

Within the Arabian countries, how are they going to decide oil prices going forward? For the future of Arabian countries, how are they going to change the economic circumstances?

That will be an area we'll be looking at. Singapore is a small country, but because of that nature, they've been working to service a hub to become a financial center by relaxing various types of regulations.

That's the place they are, we would like to take advantage of the circumstances. For the on-chain asset management platform, I talked about asset management earlier, but actually for DigiFT, it's a Singaporean company, it's the world's first ETF on-chain company.

They now have a JV in Japan, upon developing products in Japan, Sota Watanabe, his company can work together with this entity, that's what we are thinking about. Key player in the group's digital strategy, SBI VC Trade strives to expand its functions.

Expanding its functions, first step of that is launching the USDC lending service. It's with the joint venture with Circle by using their USDC lending service was launched.

Annual rate will start initially from 10%. People will obviously come to us if it's at 10% annually.

I want to make it and fund moving, meaning I want to move the funds of individuals. Also, three-month term time deposits of US dollar foreign currencies, when you look at this, we will be taking away business from Kawashima-san's team.

Of course, they need to evolve as well, we'll have to deal with that. However, this cannibalization, it's about coordinating between our companies and businesses, that's my job.

Whether it be a new bank or new product development, we'll need to work on that. Although they may be both within our group, they need to both continue to evolve, or else.

For banking or securities companies, it's just a matter of how we allocate our portfolio, how much is it going to go into equities, how much is going to go into bank deposits. It's about building your portfolio.

For SBI VC Trade, it strives to obtain a money lending business license. If we get the license, we would like to provide Japanese yen loans to customers using crypto assets as collateral, that will be possible.

SBI Shinsei Bank, SBI Securities, and SBI VC Trade, we're thinking about a triangle scheme. If the trust bank can be profitable, 51% is owned by the bank, the revenue allocation can be done automatically.

I need to think about that from my point of view and design the entire group. Plus, we will have a pilot program in May for in-store payments using USDC.

At stores, foreigners will be able to use or spend USDCS to buy something. That's the world that is likely to spread.

Promoting various initiatives toward the implementation of stablecoin payments, US dollar settlements in Japan, cross-border EC is about ¥400 billion from Japan to the US. Consumption by US visitors to Japan in 2025 was about ¥1.1 trillion.

Corporate digital-related service payments to North America in '24, this was big at around ¥8 trillion. Through delivery versus payment, which is instant payment upon delivery, and reduction of intermediary margins such as FX spreads, and also eliminating the need for prefunding, 24/7 realization of T+0 settlement are the things we would like to achieve through stablecoins.

We made this announcement today with Visa, we concluded an MOU for strategic collaboration in the digital finance space. We're considering utilizing USDC and Japanese yen stablecoins for credit card settlements and payments.

For the card business, issuing SBI Visa crypto cards that allows for accumulating crypto assets, just by using your credit card, you will be able to save crypto assets. I would like to start to accelerate my presentation because of time.

Seeking to enhance core payments through the utilization of stablecoins, the issuer, the acquirer, whether it be US dollars or Japanese yen, at merchants, it will change into the currency of choice. On the back of that, automatically, autonomously, FX exchange can be enabled through the system we are striving to build, a global stablecoin settlement scheme.

Yen-denominated stablecoins and USD-denominated stablecoins, we would like to create this kind of system. DigiFT, through the JV, we strive to issue RW tokens.

I talked about this earlier, but 60/40, SBI On-Chain was a company that has been established. The second SBI Group initiative is this slide.

For the overseas heads from 20-something countries from around the world, heads get together and we are going to have a conference in August this year. Long ago, CITIC, when we were trying to go into China, we borrowed their venue from CITIC and we had our executive meeting there.

Starting off from there, we started to do many initiatives in China. Strategic objective number three: integrate the neo media ecosystem into the existing financial ecosystem and digital space ecosystem and expand the group customer base both domestically and internationally dramatically.

Mr. Hirata, formerly Executive Vice President of Nikkei, we will be appointing him as an independent outside director.

For the neo media ecosystem, we did an interim update of this the other time, there's nothing much to add. The boxing thing, there was a lot of reaction on that.

Page views shot up to several hundreds of thousands. Naoya Inoue, who's the star of boxing, I was amazed to see his influence in the political world of the US.

The reason why people from Hollywood they're trying to draw close to Hollywood is because stars have influence on voting outcome. With Naoya Inoue and what we did with them, our confidence became stronger.

From Saudi Arabia, the fighting money was ¥3.5 billion, and I think they're going to do it again in Saudi Arabia to expand. That was great to expand the customer base, so that was proven.

I'm going to skip this page. You can see this from 1 through 9 in different sectors and different fields, and then from 10 to 18.

Now on May 19th, we are scheduled to have SBI Neo Media Summit. There I will speak.

By then we expect to have three or four more neo media companies. Then tokenization IP utilizing Startale's expertise, mentioned earlier.

This is using stablecoin, tokenization, and utilization AI in content creation, ample use of AI, and then utilization IP and talent will be very aggressive with this, and utilization in the SBI media portal. As a business ecosystem, we have 18 companies, and they're all investing.

Most of these are non-listed companies, if they went public, then they will be happy, we will be happy, the founders will be happy. This is a great synergy effect of all 18 companies in the neo media ecosystem.

Of course, we have to work from inside as well. We're paying ¥25 billion approximately in annual advertising and marketing, call center.

I have instructed that we consolidate this. There's a lot of relationships and negotiations necessary for this and there's quite a bit of resistance, but I will not accept any exception, I will not allow this because this is something that I have decided and I am determined to carry this out.

Because unless you do something like this, an organization will not move. We blow a whistle, but no one dances, that would not work.

You can have a meeting, but no resolution or no actions. There's different ways to describe this.

We give a deadline and we carry that out, we perform that. This is the way I manage a company, it's very concrete and very certain.

Of course, I will input ideas and wisdom as much as I can. Right now we have ¥25 billion in advertising and marketing, call center, and there's really no scale merits that's being utilized, there's barriers, insufficient challenges, there's no knowledge is being accumulated inside.

We have not been able to utilize that marketing data. We have discovered so many different facts.

We will consolidate everything into SBI Neo Media Holdings and we will enjoy the scale merits through bulk ordering. I have drawn a diagram to the left, this is the image of SBI Group as a house.

This is to support the growth of each group company, but also to enhance the brand value of the group as a whole. Because I think there's some under-recognition of SBI as a company, we want this to be recognized throughout.

We will establish ¥100 billion SBI Neo Content Fund. Cool Japan Fund will invest as well, first close in June end.

We have about 600 to 700 million already, if we say we are gathering funds, then if we can gather that much within first close, and I think all we need to do is to gather maybe additional 5, 10 billion. We have already been doing ¥100 billion scale before, this should be easy.

In the neo media ecosystem, they will create new business areas by actively adopting evolution of AI and on-chain technology. We will examine the nature of journalism in the AI era.

There's concealing, manipulating images, we want to eliminate all of these challenges by fully utilizing AI. There'll be all different types of analysis, and media will shift from a place for information dissemination to infrastructure that transforms specific customer behavior.

If there's a good news, then the person that's watching the news will be able to take an action right away. For example, X is the platform.

This is what I really want to aim for is fair profit distribution utilizing blockchain, because the mechanism is such where platforms are generating profits, not the creators. We need to really fix this, rectify this.

If we can change this, then we can generate better contents. This is construction, utilization of a state-of-the-art neo media distribution base.

We have AI casters who does commentary, fact checking, personalization of AI editor-in-chief, global news analysis, this will be with a new source of earnings. SBI Core, this is like a super app, but we will also have a media function in here, not just finance function.

We're working on this right now. This is my new concept today: contributing to regional revitalization through cities as media.

Mr. Okada, who is the head of the neo media, at the same timing as mine, we were actually looking at the same thing.

I went to Saudi and I went through Dubai, and 40-some years ago I visited Dubai, and now it has transformed to like this. They have built this huge, enormous airport where people all around the world are gathered there.

Then this idea of cities as media came up. When you consider that, for example, city is redistributed nationwide through flow of people, content, and capital.

National strategy has to be designed and built under one strategy. Tokyo really has everything that it needs: good access, good transportation.

Then we also need to build something that is symbolic, a good example is Disney. You built a Disney resort, and just look at how big of a city it is now.

Urayasu used to be a small, tiny, remote city, and they bought this land, and if people were wondering what would happen if there's an earthquake, they would have a liquidation issue and they will be in trouble, but if you look at them, it's completely different: Tokyo Disneyland, DisneySea, and they have Ikspiari. Ikspiari is a retail facility.

If you go in to the resort right at the entrance, there is this enormous retail facility. It's conveniently accessible by train, 50 minutes from Haneda, 80 minutes from Narita.

No wonder people are attracted here. They're able to attract all these different people, and this is very different, especially after COVID.

You can see the percentage of international guests expanding rapidly. It used to be this small, but now it's increased like this.

Now one of the reasons why we invested in Tokyu is because of this. This is us investing ¥5 billion, Theos invested ¥5 billion into this SBI Group's content fund.

We acquired 5 million common shares of Tokyu. Why?

We get along great, but we want to build an entertainment city project for greater Shibuya, we want to promote that. You see on the internet people, the homeless people or people who are just gathering there, hanging out there, punching each other.

We want to make it a very healthy environment and make it into an entertainment city so that we can attract more people into Shibuya. I think it is the cities and media.

Now I visited the head of the Bank of Shimizu, and I was quite impressed. Shizuoka, Shimizu Port has a great access to Mt.

Fuji and there's cruise ships, and I saw this photo and suddenly it hit me: they should be able to best utilize this beautiful Mt. Fuji and attract people through cruise ships like this.

Shimizu Port recorded 405 cruise ship calls in 2025, that's 10th in Japan, and 10th for fourth consecutive years with 170,000 annual passengers. They have built Shimizu Minato Machizukuri Grand Design in 2019, and the total project cost is ¥100 billion, we will participate in this and we will bring the entertainment element here, then that region will change.

There are various elements in here. Izumo, there's a Gakko Hotel there, I think it's a three-star hotel.

We built this three-star restaurant and hotel there. This is also part of a new community development.

Mr. Sato was doing this at Awaji Island as well.

This is the idea and we want to do this at a nationwide, national level. I think that city building, community development should be done at the national level.

This isn't just about regional financial institutions, but this is a more impactful regional revitalization strategy that affects all participants, stakeholders. How the neo media business can power SBI Group's regional revitalization strategy: so we will do fireworks, and we have music circus that we're promoting.

Or last week, there's SBI My Fireworks, used to be Yume Hanabi before, but see it here, May 30th SBI My Fireworks in Chiba Inage Seaside Park, please go and visit. It's all about music and fireworks.

Our competitors are more securities broker kind of idea, but I think this is a completely new idea and I thought this was great. That is all from me.