Thank you, everybody, for attending this today. Now, I would like to begin fiscal year 2027 first quarter earnings briefing explanation now.

From my side, I would like to start with what we're working on as a company, the at the critical, important agenda. I would like to explain that, and then I would like to pass on to Mr.

Yagi to talk about the latest figures and also the outlook for the forecast. Thank you very much.

Now, this is probably what everybody has been keeping their eyes on. The food industry, their growth, year-on-year growth used to be negative, and it has been the concerning, the factor for creating the model.

There has been the comments that we received from our investors. Now, finally, we have been able to make it into the positive growth.

It's been negative growth since the the half fiscal year 2025 for two quarters. Now, this first quarter, now it's positive growth, and hopefully, we're expecting a very strong growth further on.

There are few factors why it has been, slow. It has been mainly coming from, the restricted, use of the Timee, driven by the management, in the headquarter of the clients.

That is due to, a lot of cost issues rising up in every factor, and the management, tried to reduce the the use because of that. Now, we have changed our approach to do the sales action to these clients, and we are not simply just a mere tool of, the to provide a solution to the labor the shortage, but we are actually a solution to grow the sales.

Store by store, the every monthly, the sales figure, and also the day-by-day sales figure, because we they the clients they lack the, the staff, you know. If they had, enough staff such as like five, the people, they could have achieved more sales, but because they ended up with three people, they couldn't achieve the expected, the sales.

Timee is actually a solution that they can leverage to grow the sales. That's the message we've been communicating.

When we provide when we get the actual sales data by each location of the clients, we have been able to showcase that we are actually the one, who can help them grow their business. That's part of their should be the HR strategy.

Also, the new verticals including the, the food sector, such as the contract service, the cafeteria, and also the institutional, the meal catering service, that's also growing. Including a lot of schools, it's been difficult for them to hire the cooking, the staff to prepare these meals due to the labor shortage.

Now they're trying to consolidate that, to the contract to the service providers, and that's why we are also supporting. It has been a little difficult for those business to use the Timee, but now we have created a good, solid scheme, to manage the hygiene and the regulation and operation, testing, the what's positive, negative needed for these hygiene and the safety the requirements.

We've been, the polishing, the our product, to support these business as well and having able to, support a good relationship, the scheme to support this business. Trying to also lower the hurdle of the growth.

That's why we achieved this year-on-year growth. The full the launch, starting now from August 1st, the full-scale launch of the long-term part-time support the hiring plan, and this is already probably the second biggest pillar of our business, the revenue.

Traditionally, the clients they need to post the job on the job boards. Now they and then they need to do the interview and select the candidates, and then they would join the company.

Now, after that, only after that they would have the mutual understanding. Then, it would not be as thoroughly, as they preferred, they would drop off, they would quit later on.

That would cause a lot of, the burden on the management side. Now we created a completely new, different, the scheme, infrastructure of the pre-part-time job, you know.

That changed the entire, the flow of the part-time job hunting. Only after they work once as a trial, they join the company.

That's completely new scheme. Especially the students or the younger members, they have, already made, given us the feedback, that they're looking for the part-time job where they can work earlier.

Then, I think we can accelerate the way, the change shift happening to find a way to work. The specific some specific items here, it monthly plan starts from ¥20,000, but on average, they will be spending maybe around ¥40,000.

It depends on, how much they use this service. This will be on top of the normal spot work take rate service fee, and this will be applied per location, kind of similar to the subscription model.

As an image, the for the clients who have been using, they would be using both spot work, and then because they still don't have enough people to work, they might be utilizing the job board to look for extra people. They used to think, the spot work, as more we use, more, the budget we need to spend, some sometimes they need to reduce, the Timee's, the usage.

Now we're trying to go after the budget that they're spending on the other, the job boards, these companies, and trying to ask them to reallocate, that budget to the Timee. The reason why we do this is now we can also support that demand by this long-term part-time support hiring plan and trying to go after the niche, going just beyond also beyond the part-time the work, just a little bit niche, but now going for more long-term part-time employment.

Some people, they used to, the, far away in terms of the location, the inconvenient location, they used to get only like three applicants and they had to choose just one, and then because the mutual understanding is not there, they might quit very early, you know. Even in inconvenient location, if you use Timee, we can supply, enough people, like the fill rate is around 90% for the Timee.

Further reinforcing this, the situation by the new algorithm to support also the long-term part-time the job hunting. The matching new algorithm is what we're providing, now they post a job, if you call for the 10 people, they can hire one, but now we have been polishing further on.

For the POC period, I think we have actually spent quite a lot of time for that, until, we before we fully launch, a fully swing, this part-time the long-term part-time support service, we have been, during that we have been, the comparing the cost that they needed to spend on the job board to hire the people, and then what if but what if they spend, they use the Timee to hire the same person? Then the result is very clear.

We have been able to prove that using the Timee was more affordable for the clients. We assumed that maybe within maybe the 5 years, this business could potentially reach something close to the ¥10 billion.

That's the potential we see. We are directly managing this directly under the team directly reporting to me, hopefully you can expect a lot from this business.

Now changing to the new topic. This is an initiative toward the physical AI era.

Now we are partnering, co-creation partnering with a company called Zeals. For Timee, we know which, the location are suffering from the labor shortage, which location conduct what kind of task or the operation.

We're the one in Japan that knows the most about this area. In this area, we know where the physical AI has a room to enter, we can identify, and then by partnering with this kind of company, we can further operate, the better efficiency of the operation and also utilizing the robotics in that, and also the R&D as well.

Our new business could be further developed by this, the new approach, new initiative. Not just, it's not really like we are manufacturing the robots, but we are the one who can support the implementation, operation, and how to use, the actual utilization of the robots.

Potentially, it could also be, be dedicated for the maintenance, as well supplementary, but trying to, gather further experience on this and the assets, we're trying to, lead the DX of the the labor-intensive industry market. This is also the release, we just made, we're trying to prepare to the shift change happening in our the prime the classification to the prime market.

We're the one who's creating the new working infrastructure, and we're very committed to this approach, so that's why we started preparing the application to move to prime market. I hope you, could, understand and hope for more expectation on us by this.

I've been giving you, the positive news, but, as you can see, this the theme of this year is defense to offense. Because of that, we are simultaneously running various initiatives in parallel, and some of them already started to sprout in form of what we mentioned earlier, something like the long-term part-time support job.

For the toward the mid, the target, also in the middle, we are setting the the specific, figures to go as a goal to further, proceed, and then hopefully you feel more comfortable to hold our shares. This is my part, and I move on to Mr.

Yagi.

Right now, from myself, Yagi, I would cover about the specific figures and the industry trends. This is the first quarter overview in this slide.

The other specific specific, the figures will be covered later on. The consolidated P&L, the net sales, as you can see, standing at the 10 .4 ¥10 billion and 44 million, achieving 24.8% growth, and the operating the profit standing at 1.9 ¥1.93 billion, over year on year over year, it's a 5.8 growing.

Consolidated, so that means that it's combining both spot work and non-spot work. As a trend, it's a little bit different on each.

As the start, initially, it started off, as we planned. Looking at the profit, the sec first half, we have our plan was to keep making the strategic investments solidly, and this in investments are going as been planned, and and then later on, that will contribute to the profit.

As a start, I think it's has been the very solidly good start as we planned. Let me cover the details later on.

The consolidated the profit the performance trend in terms of the sales and operating profit, both of them are achieving an increase from last year. Then this also includes the gross profit.

We have been able to achieve, the increased sales and the profit, and that's still the same story. Now, because it's a consolidation, we now also have the Timee Solutions as the consolidated subsidiary.

Because of the profit, if you look at the the year over year, it's a few points going down because of that. Then looking at to the other story of the profit, it has been increasing in the profits, but for the first quarter, as we mentioned, we're carrying out the strategic investment in the first quarter, so that's the plan.

It's been the growth rate has been a little bit slow in terms of the top line, but it's still, the as we how we planned originally. Looking at the cost, and we have been disclosing as usual, and the some, the variable factors are what we listed what we listed on the right hand.

HR marketing costs, that constitute a large portion of the cost. HR cost utilizing and also the AI adoption has led us to the improved the the sales efficiency, so that's why this, the the ratio has been going down, the ratio against the sales.

The worker marketing cost, for this part, we have been, while we're still working on, doing the strategic investment, we have been working on improving, the every economics, and then the making sure the disciplined control over while continuing the strategic support, so that's why the the range, the increase gap was is still within this very small range and prof now generating a solid profit. The cost of the sales, and as we mentioned, this is the impact of the consolidation of the Timee Solutions.

By the service, sales and the profit are shown as it is here. Talking about the con- consolidation, this is, yes, including the impact of the Timee Solutions, and also the other new the business in the non-spot work in the business, we're launching phase for that.

Because of that, we are, if you look at the profit, it's been in the deficit, but this is as we originally planned. If you just look at the spot work only, what we can say is that we keep the investing strategically, but trying to, the maintain the very solid, the level, something close to the the previous year, and it's been trending very solidly.

The first quarter, and this is basically the outlook for the full-year forecast as a consolidation. I would like to talk about the trend in the each industry.

In the consolidation, we're breaking down into spot work and non-spot work. For the spot work, we have had some macro, the impact, it's been a little bit weak, but besides that, the non-spot business, it's been exceeding our plan, and that's how it's trending.

For the spot work, yes, it's still the very large portion, and the logistics, retail, food, and social care industry, that's what we're showing here. As an overall summary, what I would like to say here is the some of the factors why it's being a little bit weak, and it's not really related to us or coming from us, it's more like a macro environment, and we have been able to identify why it's been weak.

We have already done the troubleshooting and applied the countermeasures, and so for the full year, I think we're should be landing in the plan the phase expected range, of the net sales, profit. For the logistics, the some of the impacts are coming from the cool weather and also the Middle East crisis, mostly the macro environment, and some of the major clients in their logistics has been a little bit the weak in terms of the volumes to handle.

We're still, the continuing the existing approach to go after deepening the relationship with the the major clients, and then, after identifying that and applying the countermeasures for the macro environment, that also includes a temporarily factors, we're trying to bring the growth back to the very high growth, hopefully. We keep continue working on the sales action for that.

Retail and the food, it's been we have been able to turn into the positive growth, and talking about the retail, this is a little bit overlapping with the logistics situation as well. We had the impact of the stockpile the rice, the demand that surged last year, and now we're showing the we're seeing the reactionally fall from it.

Some, the this industry's, performance is also impacting the Timee's usage, because they're trying to cut down on the outsourcing HR cost. For the social care, they are exceeding beyond our plan, very good.

This is the collabo-, the partnership we have, with the Benesse Careeria, and that initiative, has been very favorable in terms of the progress of our sales action with that, and the product development dedicated specifically for this social care has been able to release solidly, we've been able to grow our value provided. Regarding the progress rate towards consolidated full-year forecast in the first and to the fourth quarter, this is for your reference.

This is against last year. Last year as well as two years ago, we have this progress shown.

In this first quarter, what kind of progress we have is shown in this slide. The sales for the top- top-line sales is mostly the same.

Basically, it's line in line with the plan, and that's the progress we are seeing today. For the operating profit, compared to the previous year, 25%, and this time it's 21% or less, slightly behind, and it might appear so.

However, as mentioned earlier, we have made strategic investments, that's one reason. Also the blue bar, if you look at that, it is 22.6%.

For the last fiscal year, in the second quarter, we used many costs, and for this fiscal year, those costs did not appear, for the first quarter, it was slightly low progress against last year, but in the first half, we're able to have a good progress in the profit, and we're able to control it's within our control as a company, that's the recognition. In particular, for the spot work by industry, I like to give more color.

For the factors, we mentioned earlier, and by each industry, we can see the growth rate as shown in the slide. Then for the whole company's KPI, the major differences are not shown, major change are not shown.

On a YoY basis, it's AA growth which is driven driving the transaction volume to 18.8% positive, and that is a back up to the growth in transaction volume. Both KPIs, the number of AAs and also the average transaction, these are growing.

Then when it comes to the reason why there's a slight weakness, I'd like to give some color on the detailed reasons. On the left-hand side, you can see the YoY growth of transaction volume for the first quarter is a slight decline.

As you can see on the right-hand side, the logistics, retail, and especially for logistics, the macro environment, which is the cold summer temperature and also the Middle East impact, by these factors, we have a slight decline in the transaction volume, and also the customer impact or client-specific factor. With this, there is some decline in transaction volume, and that is the factor.

As mentioned earlier, for the logistics, we have this client-specific factor, but we have already taken measures against that situation. On a full-year basis, we hope that we can recover that situation.

For the KPI just for the logistics industry, as you can see on the slide, the transaction volume is a 22% growth on a YoY basis, active accounts, number of active accounts is also growing. Then transaction volume per AA has also turned positively finally in this previous quarter, and also in this quarter, we have a 1.4% increase YoY.

The increase in the average the rates are also increasing, and that's leading to the growth of the recruitment, and that is the reason. To give more color on what I just mentioned, there are some numbers here from the past.

The strategic investment, strategic strategies have been taken, and we have the field managers, which is above 100 people today. Then the field manager locations are where the Timee usage is increasing by two times.

The field managers are being increased, and also in the locations where we dispatch the field manager, the use of Timee is increased. Then the Smart Group function for the posting of jobs, these are also increasing usage.

As mentioned earlier, there's a macro environment impact that happened temporarily, but as Timee, we have not changed the strategic direction, and we are facing with the customer and taking these measures. The macro environment, once that impact is gone, we hope we can go back to the growth trajectory again, and we have confidence.

For the retail industry, as you can see on this slide, the active accounts number have also increased, but for this, the previous quarter, we have a positive AA growth, KPI, we have a good trend at this moment. For the social care industry, we also have a high growth rate which is continuing today.

In this quarter, for the first time, we're able to have a positive YoY growth in the transaction volume per AA. The logistics and retail, just like those two industries, we also have transaction volume per AA as well as the number of active accounts turning positive for the social care industry.

As mentioned at the beginning, for the social care, we have this product release in a serial manner. As you can see here, we have improved the fill rate.

In the social care, there used to be a low fill rate before, but now we have these measures and taking measures to increase this. We have the flexible timeslots as a function.

These so-called workers, let's say they have a certain hour they can work, and then for the social care, if they have a certain timeslot that they post, because of the time hour the the timeslots, they cannot really fill that worker, and that's the case in the past. With this, we have a flexible timeslots, having a range of this time, we can increase the fill rate further, and that is the product that we developed.

Then the second was the shift schedule, which is in tuned with the industry. The that's one, and then also the onboarding training can be done on apps.

These detailed change that we have done, or product development we have done for the industry, we're able to provide this value to the customer, including the sales activities. Lastly, the food industry, finally we are back to the positive recovery.

The KPI in detail, if you look at the number of active accounts, that's also positive, but also transaction volume per AA, these are also mostly even today. Compared to other industry, or with other industry, we're able to have the same growth of AA, as well as the transaction volume per AA, the positive trend, we hope to turn this more positive going forward.

Then regarding the fill rate, we are having a high fill rate continually. We're able to maintain that level.

Outside of the spot work, we have Timee Career Plus and Timee Solutions, both are doing well today. Against the plan, we are able to overshoot significantly for Timee Career Plus on a YoY basis, 2.6 times, and Timee Solutions, last year on a non-consolidation, it was not consolidated, it was difficult to have YoY comparison, but we're able to have a good growth in sales.

That's about for the presentation and the results. Thank you.

Hello, hopefully you can hear me. This is Arai speaking.

I have a few questions, but first question: the industry-specific situation, looking at the retail, seems like you had some the weather factors in the June, this temporarily, but I think for the logistics, might be affected by the Middle East crisis situation, and also the decreased volumes handle at the one of the major clients. Could you elaborate on why the volume of the logistics to handle decreased?

Do you also see any outlook for the improvement? Would you mind elaborating a little bit on this part for the logistics?

Thank you very much. Let me answer.

Probably the Mr. Yagi would like to answer.

Yes, let me cover that part. Logistics, the Middle East crisis situation, we don't know when it would end, it's hard to see in the future, but at the same time, that certain period of time has already passed.

Rather than expecting this would continue just one year, two years, three years ahead, so, but we still see it as a one of the macro factors. Some specific item here is that because of this Middle East the situation, the crude oil price has been going up, any other materials, including the oil-derived material including naphtha, handling of those goods has been reduced because of that.

That's why some of the volumes logistics is decreasing. Decreased volume handled at the major some of the major logistics, talking about that, we would like to refrain from pointing out exactly which company we're talking about, but as an overall, some major clients, the volume they handle has been decreasing the monthly because they have been able to manage themselves just with their in-house staff, so that's why they have been reducing the use of the Timee.

Rather than for our side just waiting for them to come back, we are also trying to look at the fact that even in the case with this the enterprise clients, our penetration is not necessarily 100%. We would like to further expand, try and expand to other areas that we have not covered yet even within the same client.

Then eventually, when the logistics volume handle that volume is coming back after being decreased, hopefully, we would like to support further. Trying to expand to the area within the same client that we haven't addressed yet, and then trying to look at the macro factors how it's affecting us, we're trying to address our situation with a certain countermeasures on those two aspects.

For the logistics, even in the same industry, not necessarily all the enterprise clients we have covered yet. Some of them, it's not just like one or two particular one that covering the entire industry, we have more even among the enterprise clients in this the logistics clients, we're trying to diversify our portfolio to trying to create a more balanced the revenue growth base.

Thank you very much. About the volumes decreased in the major client, should I understand that that decrease of the volume logistics, that's also affected by the Middle East crisis?

Yes, partly, but yes, there's few other factors, but that's the one of the factor, definitely.

Thank you very much. The second question from my side: and the long-term part-time hiring support plan, seems like you are pretty confident in your explanation.

The job employment advertisement or the job board medias, you're trying to go after taking over the share from them, and it seems like you don't sound like it's going to cannibalize with your existing spot work, I just wanted to confirm that. Thank you very much.

As you can see on the right hand, like the third line on the text, it says there are definitely several locations of the clients who have been only using the job boards, and that means that they have not used the spot work at all. We thought that there could be the risk that if this clients could cannibalize for our potential spot work demand, but actually, it turned out that these clients who have never used Timee before, with the current plan, they would like to use the Timee.

Some of the clients that we've been able to acquire completely new clients, or some of the dormant accounts now becoming active thanks to this, because they can utilize Timee for Saturday, Sunday, and using it more a little more dynamic way, so that we have been able to address a different market, and I think that's a big advantage. Additionally, the long-term part-time hiring support,

looking at the industry, what kind of clients are using this? Are many of them are mainly coming from the food or the retail or any specific aspect that they have in common?

What kind of clients are utilizing this plan? Do you see more bigger the needs coming from the food or retail?

Yes, definitely. The food and the retail are definitely the main target.

Maybe the logistics, they might have some business impact because of the cannibalization, because when we release this plan to the logistics, I think they might reduce the use of the Timee in general. I think that's the risk that we might have for the logistics, so that's why we're not opening it for the logistics.

For the case for the logistics, I think we might need to do a different approach, trying to change the pricing plan to meet their economics. We might need a bit more time to do that for the logistics plan.

Now we're trying to target the clients using the job boards to list up and approaching them.

Yes, thank you very much. UBS Noguchi speaking.

I have also two questions. Number one: the major logistics clients, there are various measures taken as a company, but for the new customer, there's still more room to win new customers, major clients, and what is the driver?

Then also for the existing customers, is there still some areas that you are able to not tap yet, and why is there still major customers being untapped? Then what is your analysis as of today?

Thank you very much.

For this, a long term dispatchment, there are customers using for long term, and then we have these transactions with these customers, switching to Timee is something that is perhaps the discussion, because the cost is going up and then the productivity is going down, it's hard to make that decision. The management of those companies are not be able to make those decisions.

Therefore, we try to make aggressive proposals, but still, we're not able to win those customers. That's one.

The other thing is regarding the spot work, it's still a new service in the industry, legal aspect and those tax and also the social benefits, there's no internal corporate support, and there's still customers who are concerned about that. We have to explain to customers in a more detailed way and to increase the use or the value of the usage of Timee, for example, how much cost benefit they can gain, and it's better to introduce Timee, we are trying to persuade the customers about these benefits.

As a follow-up, based on that situation, the logistics customer who are actually using your services, by explaining those examples, perhaps after spending time, you can solve that issue. Is that optimistic view or not?

It's not like they cannot introduce our service, and of course, when it comes to the locations who have been dependent on a long-term dispatch, using Timee, they don't have a decline in quality, and that is the current track record we have been able to achieve. It's gradually hitting those customers, and they are trying to use our service, and recently, they're also an expansion phase of these major clients, we think after time passes, we can introduce these customers more.

Thank you. My second question is a long-term part-time recruitment, as you mentioned earlier, the current monthly fee of ¥20,000 or so, you mentioned about that in the comment, but in fact, how much monthly fees are the amount paid or how much you're expecting today?

Regarding that ceiling, what is the ceiling of this monthly fees? When you start from ¥20,000, in fact, maybe it's up to ¥40,000 for some customer, can you please explain the background?

Thank you.

We have the approach light plan, connect, and basic plan. Today, the basic plan is mainly what we're selling to customers, and the basic plan is from ¥40,000, and 90% of the customers are subscribing this basic plan.

That is the current status. The basic and light plan, the difference of these two, for the light plan, we have light plan approach, and those workers who have interest in these long-term part-time hiring, but on the other hand, on top of that, whether the person has intention or not, the questionnaire or the answer of those questionnaires difficult for the light plan, but for the basic plan, those approaches, when we have these subscription through Timee, and not only matching these part-timers with the work, but if that person goes to a store and have the intention of doing so, we can confirm that intention of the workers, and also using AI message, we can also follow the workers whether they want to really work there or not, we have that kind of structure in place.

Basic is what we try to propose to customers. For those customer who use the light plan, maybe they have room as a store manager, and then they know about the benefits, they still want to go for the lighter plan, and that happens, basically, we'd like to sell these plans without much of a process.

Thank you very much.

Additionally, over the mid-to-long term, on top of that, maybe are you thinking of a premium plan, and by that, the monthly fee might have an upselling opportunity, if that's the case? Or going forward, for the clients, the locations will be expanded, and then by that expansion, there might be dilution, with that included, you're not trying to go for an upside in the monthly fee?

What is your view on that?

Yes. We think there is still room to grow.

For example, today we're talking about part-timers, but when it comes to new grads or the regular employees, people who have intention to become those positions, we have some algorithm that we can provide, and by that, today it's difficult to hire regular employees in this labor industry, still people want to spend ¥100,000 per month to have the regular employee, we think there's still more room to grow in this field. Thank you very much.