SoftBank Corp.

I'm Miyakawa. Thank you so much for your attending.

Now I'd like to present our financial results for the first half of fiscal year 2025. Revenue reached a record high of [ JPY 3,400.8 billion ] representing an 8% year-on-year increase.

Thanks to this strong momentum, we are now in a position to aim for JPY 7 trillion in full year revenue. Here is the breakdown.

All segments reported revenue growth continuing the positive trend from Q1. Our distribution and financial businesses, in particular, performed strongly.

Operating income also reached a new high record of JPY 628.9 billion, up 7% from the previous year with a progress rate of 63%. We are steadily on track toward our full year goal of JPY 1 trillion.

By segment, all segments delivered profit growth. In the first quarter, the consumer business saw a 2% decline in profit.

But looking at both the first half and the second quarter on a stand-alone basis, profit increased. The financial business has more -- was more than doubled driven by PayPay's strong performance.

Net income also reached a record high of JPY 348.8 billion, up 8% year-on-year. The progress rate for net income 65%, which also indicates solid progress.

To summarize progress against our full year forecast. Revenue stands at 51%, operating income at 63%, and net income at 65%, indicating a strong first half.

As shown each segment, as you can see, exceeded the 50% progress mark with all segments contributing to our performance not just one of the -- one of them, but everyone contributed to our performance. So far, we focused on growing non-telecom areas such as DX, FinTech and AI.

As a result, the share of non-telecom revenue, as you can see, expanded from 47% to 63% ever since I took my presidency. As our business has diversified, the total revenue increased by about JPY 1 trillion in the first half alone.

From here onwards, let me explain performance by business segments. First, the consumer business.

Revenue was JPY 1,475.7 billion, a 3% increase. Mobile revenue also increased by JPY 9.6 billion, continuing the positive trend.

Operating income was JPY 330.9 billion, a 3% increase. And in second quarter alone, it rose 7%.

So we had a very robust second quarter. Smartphone subscribers expanded steadily and increased by 3%, with both SoftBank and Y!mobile brands growing steadily.

The increase in short-term cancellations was inefficient from an acquisition efficiency perspective, that's through bundled packages such as broadband, electricity and credit cards. We intend to focus on customers who use our services for longer periods and proceed with the second half of the year.

Now I would like to explain Enterprise business revenue rose to JPY 482 billion, an 8% increase. Solutions continued to perform well, contributing to 12% revenue growth.

Operating income was JPY 104.1 billion, up 10%, exceeding JPY 100 billion for the first time in the first half, a new record high. Now the Distribution business.

Revenue reached a record high of JPY 505.8 billion, up 17%. Operating income also hit a record JPY 22.0 billion, up 36%.

There are 2 factors behind: one is the growth in AI-related products, the market for AI servers and IoT products equipped with AI continues to expand. We expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future.

So further growth is anticipated. The other factor is the steady growth in recurring revenue which is one of SoftBank's legacy core business.

So the segment has transitioned from a onetime software wholesale model to a subscription-based business model. The Distribution business is now on track to surpass JPY 1 trillion in revenue this fiscal year.

Although we expected the Enterprise business to reach that milestone first, Distribution may actually overtake it. Both businesses are growing through mutual competition and learning, creating a very exciting climate.

In the Enterprise market segment due to their different profitability profiles, so we disclosed the results for 2 segments: Enterprise and Distribution. Together, these 2 businesses are on the verge of surpassing JPY 2 trillion in revenue this fiscal year.

So the Consumer business generates around JPY 3 trillion in revenue. So in our next midterm plan, we aim to grow the Enterprise segment to a similar scale.

Now for the Media and E-commerce business. Revenue was JPY 822.8 billion, a 4% increase driven by the commerce domain.

Operating income came in at JPY 167.5 billion, a record high. And net income increased by 13%.

Next, Finance business. Revenue rose to JPY 189.7 billion, a 24% increase.

Operating income was JPY 38.5 billion, showing a steady progress. Turning to PayPay.

GMV continues to grow strongly and reached JPY 9.2 trillion, up 25%. EBITDA was JPY 48.3 billion, more than doubling from the previous year.

Now let me explain our next-generation infrastructure initiatives. In our full year results announcement in May, this year, we explained the direction of our cloud business using this slide.

Today, I'd like to share updates on those 3 key areas. First, our cloud software.

Last month, we announced a new sovereign cloud service in collaboration with Oracle. The service will be offered sharing -- starting next April from our East and West Japan data centers connected via OnePort and SmartVPN.

Next, our homegrown LLM or Sarashina mini. Starting late November or 28th of November to be specific, we will begin offering APIs to corporate customers to accelerate Gen AI adoption within enterprise systems.

Third, our AI compute infrastructure. Until now, this was mainly used internally for training Sarashina models, but as of October, we began offering it externally.

In addition to support AI startups, we launched a GPU platform program free of charge. And the plan consists of 3 support tiers tailored to different phases of growth: First, start-ups building or testing prototype receive up to 60 days of free access; second, those entering the validation or proof-of-concept fees are offered discounted pricing and development collaboration; and third, companies moving toward commercialization, receive financial support as well as introductions to potential customers and sales channels.

Last but not the least, let me update you on Cristal Intelligence, which we made a press release earlier today about. SB OpenAI Japan is officially launched today, and it will offer exclusively Cristal Intelligence to corporate clients in Japan.

As explained before, SoftBank and SBG established C Holdings and together with OpenAI formed SB OAI Japan as a 50-50 joint venture. We are working toward a service launch next year and development is progressing smoothly.

This is one of the seeds of future growth that we are excited about in the next fiscal year and beyond. In closing, let me summarize today's presentation.

First, in the first half, we achieved record highs in revenue operating income and net income, with all segments seeing year-on-year growth. Second, we made excellent progress against our full year targets across all 3 indicators: Revenue; operating income; and net income.

Finance segment more than doubled, and we shared progress on strategic growth initiatives for our next midterm plan, including the Sovereign Cloud, Sarashina and Cristal Intelligence. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you very much for your attention.

My name is [ Mario from Diamond Company ]. I have 2 questions.

One, so the established today, the joint venture between SB and OpenAI, SB OAI Japan. I would like to hear the target and the goal of this joint venture.

And I understand that first, this service will be used internally of your company and then to the external sales. So I would like to hear what's your plan onwards.

And also the offering to other enterprises, you said in next year, exactly when next year? And how many companies you're targeting?

And what is the sales target? So related to this topic, but the AI agent services for enterprise.

So like NTT data like a vendor company like that, so the ChatGPT enterprise reseller agents or NEC or Hitachi, those IT vendors. So they are in -- establishing the environment for AI agents.

So how you're going to differentiate from them?

So our target onwards. So the joint venture was established today and the servicing will be next year.

So since we first announced in this spring, so Cristal Intelligence -- fees of Cristal Intelligence was created by openAI. So the alpha version we received and we just started internal verification.

So from our engineers the feedback from them, this is something in a totally different world comparing to ChatGPT or enterprise, it's unlikely new. So I only glanced and I haven't used yet.

However, what I was expecting to do has been in shape. Of course, we need to do the fine-tuning onwards.

But once this is ready and the way to work and also the speed of manufacturing products and everything will be completely different. So with high anticipation, we are now internally coming up with and working on the details.

So what we are doing is that we are putting together some systems and also -- we also feel the risk to directly connect to the company's system. So we are now internally working on establishing a certain environment be able to connect to the system.

So once we are ready for verification of the -- our test bed and then we would like to start promoting to other companies in Japan. So as you mentioned, differentiation from the others.

But this product itself is compete on a different concept. So once the similar ones come up, then I also believe that others might follow once our product comes in the market, but then the cost competition will be something that we need to look at.

So I hope I've answered to your first question.

So for Enterprise, what is your target?

well, we can't tell right now. But within our company, the number of resources who is working on the data.

So initially, certain efforts required at the beginning. So tens of hundreds of companies cannot be our target from the beginning.

So we would like to target one by one thoroughly. So that's how I imagine for now.

So my next question is about computing infrastructure. So recently, NVIDIA announced that they also participated in the APAC kind of a conference in South Korea and announced that they would be providing 260,000 units, and that will be the third largest units to provide.

So SoftBank is the most advanced utilizing GPU of 10,000 units GPU. So comparing the volume was 10,000 and 260,000 that NVIDIA has decided to offer.

It's a quite big gap. So considering your initiative, and I believe that Japan is way behind.

So which you also had a concern on. So some -- the government support for GPU implementation.

So I would like to hear your opinion on that. And also do you have any plans to implement more than 10,000 GPUs, for South Korea, 260,000 units?

So I heard that it will be distributed to some companies in South Korea. So rather than operating individually, but by clustering to be more efficient.

So 10,000 -- so the 4,000 clusters -- 4,000 GPUs is clusterized. So compared to the large data centers, of course, still in Japan, it's much weaker.

So less advantages. That's why we are also working on Sakai data center and Tomakomai data center.

We would like to start the operation of Sakai data center first. With that considering GPU volume for Blackwell of 150,000, and we would like to implement Rubin, the next version.

So there will be like -- 30,000 or 40,000 would be the maximum capacity for that scale of data center. So with Blackwell, 150,000.

And so I think the computing performance capacity will be the same. So now this scale is being combined and accumulated to make a bigger -- so what's coming next is that AI infrastructure scale and as we call it next-generation social infrastructure, which we started 5 years ago or so.

So the key is that computing power, computing power would be the power of each mission. So I also believe that the government has made a reasonable comment on that.

And now South Korea owns the 260,000 GPUs, which is quite aggressive one. So we think about so -- whether South Korea or Japan would be the center of this AI business.

So computing power is the key. So I would like to bring the schedule forward to try and so if I can contribute to our new Prime Minister, Takaichi, if I could provide some input, I'll be grateful.

So what about the government aid? Do you have any opinions on how government should be supporting?

I heard that South Korea is providing JPY 1 trillion or so of subsidies. So I would say that Japan should provide double of that.

However, we need to keep a balance and what the government has to do also what the private companies like these corporates have to do or can do and we need to keep balance and to establish a recent infrastructure.

Suzuki, freelance journalist. About PayPay's IPO and U.S.

government institutes are not working at the moment. So I wonder if you have any comment on that, the process of PayPay IPO?

Now that U.S. government institutions are not operating, and especially [indiscernible] reviewing process is being on hold.

We can't say anything unless or until the process restarts.

Hosoda from Nikkei. First question is about consumer mobile.

In the second quarter, I wonder how much confidence you have for the whole second quarter. [indiscernible] mentioned that competitive environment is very harsh and they are looking at reducing operating income or margin.

So how do you analyze the market.

In terms of number portability or MMP as far as SoftBank goes, we are performing good. However, we saw more short-term churn users than we thought.

So we need to come up with an idea to acquire customers more efficiently. That's the lesson learned.

But in general, we are in good progress.

Next question is about Enterprise business and Solution business. You mentioned before that those 2 business, you want them to exceed the Consumer in the next midterm plan.

I understand you don't disclose respectively, but what's your confidence level?

Well, Consumer, people often ask me whether SoftBank is ready for raising prices, unless ARPU goes up, we don't expect high liquidity of users. We are looking at a small net increase or net adds, but we don't expect 4 million, 5 million users switching from one operator to the other, like we saw before.

So 1 million net adds times ARPU would be a growth of Consumer business. We want to make sure that we keep a slight increase trend -- increasing trend.

And we want to utilize AI agent to make our business more efficient. And if consumer business grows gradually on the upward trend, Enterprise business and Solution businesses can follow the trend.

So I think at some point, Enterprise and Solution business will catch up with Consumer business in terms of volume and JPY 3 trillion will be the substantial size. And then they will get more momentum in the market.

So JPY 3 trillion for consumer, JPY 3 trillion for enterprise, that's something that we want to look at in the next midterm plan. And our employees are watching this earning results.

So I want to sort of woke our employees to stimulate them.

[ MJ ] from Bloomberg. I have 2 questions.

First is about Cristal Intelligence. So you just mentioned earlier that it's not comparable to ChatGPT in terms of speed?

And can you give us some examples of what is so different? As for the concept, it's closer to agentic AI?

Would you please give us some examples?

I would like to give you some examples, but I cannot answer. So the OpenAI told us not to disclose.

So I cannot give you details. However, just to give you an image or -- so you don't have to manually input.

You can just speak to it. As for -- because this is for Enterprise.

So when you do some tests, you need to establish workflow. The workflow can be generated automatically, that is the future, it has.

So the ChatGPT or Enterprise features are just like rather Q&A features so -- but exceeds that level of feature. So once the product is ready, then we will hold an orientation session.

And so I would like to refrain from answering by ourselves.

The second is about PayPay that you mentioned that right now, SEC's assessment is in suspension. So once it resumes, the valuation I've heard, it's the JPY 2 trillion, JPY 3 trillion.

What is your expected valuation of PayPay?

Well, I don't want to really mention the actual figure, but I would like to expect higher. Why?

Because looking at the speed of the business growth, I believe that it will remain and even I feel that it's too early to go to the public. So with the power of business growth of PayPay and the profitability, looking at those 2 factors together and also as for the potential, the bank main.

So I see some future. So in Japan, it's a lower country risk.

So we do have some unique features to look at. So I also expect that the higher valuation, it will be valued when it goes to the public or it might take a little more time, but in general, overall, I believe that PayPay is the company which has the highly valued.

So more and more means it's more than JPY 2 trillion, JPY 3 trillion. When I say more is -- a little more is not too big but I believe that this company is worth being assessed.

[ Uno ] from Yomiuri newspaper. I have a question about the Consumer business.

Maybe somebody asked before, so Mobile business was good in the first half? Or what do you think is the reason exactly Miyakawa-san?

And as of end of September, in Y!mobile increased price so what's the reaction in the market since then? And what kind of impact that could have on the first half result or bottom line?

Related to that, Rakuten Mobile said they would not increase price. What -- to your view on Rakuten Mobile from a market competition perspective?

For the first half, yes, we are good. But the question is to we are better than what?

All segments are growing steadily, and most of our businesses show 2-digit growth. And to be very honest with you, we -- I wanted them to go more.

But in the first half, we achieved net adds and increased revenue. So in terms of on track to the plan, yes, we were on track, and we achieved a good performance.

And whether or not increasing price contributed from mid- to long-term prospective, since in general, prices are going up. So at some point, we may need to consider our pricing.

I don't know whether it's tomorrow or 1 year ahead. But at some point, we would take an action.

We are still studying. I don't know how long we can say that we are only the one in the market that is progressing well.

About Y!mobile price increase, I was impressed. They did a great job.

Reaction from users is pretty good. And we don't see any huge difference in trend.

So Y!mobile companies continues performing well, it's difficult to answer to your last question, however, which is Rakuten Mobile. Rakuten Mobile said they would not increase price because their structure was different from companies like SoftBank.

What costs to carriers? Well, in urban areas, you can make money easily, to be honest, because of huge population and users are concentrated.

People are using mobiles a lot. And so as long as you offer services, making sure that connectivity is maintained then urban areas are very good markets in terms of making profits and making business.

But especially the last 5% geographical area of Japan, when I was CTO, we had a huge challenge because we need -- we may need to build a huge high power, which cost a lot and optical fiber cables length would be very long, which cost a lot. And the cell site that you build would be used only less than 1% of urban cell site in terms of usage.

So we need to continue fine-tuning even after we built our cell site. So it costs a lot to build a network in rural areas in Japan.

So if they would do the same and if they could say the same thing, I would say that's unfair. I think before spectrum was allocated across Japan, and that was the rule.

And we did go outside and build cell sites. So again, the last 5%, 10% of area coverage is very, very challenging.

And if Rakuten would do that, and they would stand on the same stage with us. And if they could say the same thing, I would say it's reasonable, but it's still unfair now because they were given the spectrum without competition.

So I don't want to say more because otherwise, I would start getting excited.

My name is [ Sam ] from Toyo Keizai. Two questions.

One about GPU, not only your internal use for Sarashina learning, but external cells to start. So the GPU resource, what is the demand do you have from other companies externally?

And what kind of resource you are expecting? And you also talked about South Korea and in GPU to be procured more.

And when you look at the current the resource and availability and also the demand by the other companies, if you could share, it would be great. And about -- the second one is about Sarashina mini, JPY 70 billion parameters and NEC and also other smaller parameters, this is -- Sarashina mini is closer to the others so?

But what is the differentiation from the others?

So to your first question about GPU supply and demand. There are large scale of business sentiments and was not suitable for what we could offer so far.

So the major -- from the major companies and a lot of big volume of allocation was demanded. But we do also have different purposes for use, and we cannot just provide it to one company.

Therefore, we prioritize the use internally. Now we are to start external sales.

Some Japanese companies create their own AI and also to create services on outside AI and also for their own systems, some companies want to implement AI. So we would like to also start recovering the cost that's spent.

So we are also thinking in a fair way that we are also reusing one for the next version of Sarashina. So we are going to start releasing more and more, and -- which we do not expect a big return, if we could cover the cost to be good enough.

So the current phase is seeding and we've just the field so far. And now we are ready to -- for seeding.

And moving forward, when you look at globally, the supplies in short, so GPU changes [ labor days ]. So it's not worth holding the older version and of course, modification is required, but we need to focus on newer version as well.

To your second question about Sarashina, our competitors is the differentiation with OpenAI model, we are looking at it every day. So it requires a lot of time and money, and we believe that technology is not inferior at all, but time and so the efforts are the key.

So a lot of engineers are needed for that. And there is an area which requires some academic level, then we would like to utilize OpenAI.

But the call center level, we do not require and -- that high level of engineers. So when we also look at the cost, and we can also create a decent cost structure.

So differentiation and -- is the key and we would like to also catch up at the end. So the data for learning may be in short in the future.

So then there will be an opportunity for any AI to catch up, but we need to keep moving and so that we do not have to give in or give up. So we need to stay on the race tracks so that we do not lose an opportunity.

Yamamoto from Nikkei. I have 2 questions.

First about Mobile business. You are getting customers, but ARPU looked on the declining trend since last year.

In the second half, you may want to focus on high-value customers. But in order for you to stay on the upward trend, what kind of initiatives you may have?

ARPU looks decreasing, which is true. While Consumer business positive, Enterprise negative and all in all, negative.

I'm not going to go into details in numbers, but consumers are looking at the steady growth of ARPU. So in general, I'm not too much worried about.

And Enterprise business, which a very competitive market, but our Solution business is growing. So you may get an idea, our strategy, if you look at our Solution business.

So we offer a bundled products, Solution and Mobiles. So strategy-wise, our is the right strategy.

But the second half, I think that you mentioned that you want to focus on high-value customers. What's the reason behind?

What's your intention behind? By that, what I meant was to address a worsening churns.

Customers would churn in a very, very short term, or those users are hopping around carriers and users contract, they realized later, the contract did not meet their expectations. So they may leave us very quickly, but we want to keep or retain users as long as possible.

That's why we want to offer different products like PayPay or electricity. And if our users can enjoy other products, not just on mobile, then they would stay with us.

So that's something that we discuss internally pretty recently.

Next question is about Cristal Intelligence. In the mid-term plan, consumer and enterprise business, you may want to have the same level.

So I wonder to what extent, AI agent contributes to such a growth strategy? And I have an impression that monetization may take time because it costs at the initial phase.

Yes, our joint venture, SB OAI Japan, I don't think it will expect losing money even in the first year because structurally the joint venture can offer consulting services while getting a return from customers. Resource-wise, we have about 100 employees now, but the mid -- by mid-next year, we want to increase headcount to 1,000, for example.

And the resource should meet demand. And if product doesn't sell, then those employees could come back to SoftBank.

About JPY 3 trillion, I mentioned before does not include potential AI agent services. even without AI agent, we want to hit JPY 3 trillion, and upside is AI agent or Cristal Intelligence.

That's something that we can expect as an upside on top of JPY 3 trillion that we want to achieve. So our upside is actually growing, what would be the profit structure of the Enterprise business.

Well, for example, Distribution business, even though they increased revenue by JPY 1 trillion, profitability-wise, it's small. And if Solution goes pretty well, it has a high margin business, not only revenue, but also profit should grow both.

We are calculating assuming that the profit margins stay the same, but if we restructure our businesses in a better way, maybe we could expect better performance than we planned in the midterm plan.

I'm Ishikawa, freelancer. About network, at this timing, the REDCap and Expedia started things, so what is your new network strategy?

And about the -- how do you receive the result of Opensignal?

Right now, our network is a step behind of KDDI. When you look at the result from different sources, but we do not think that we are in inferior to others, but the network design is superior to them, I believe.

But other than communications, we are expanding to noncommunications area and when the population is declining and when we concentrate on telecommunications business alone, then we have to consider getting more from the users, and we need to add more products or services on top. So new technology as the is for -- is the seed for a new product.

So at this timing, now AI emerged. That's why we are slowing down or we are shifting the priority from telecommunications to non-telecommunications area, but we are now going to slow down that.

And about the Opensignal that standard of the assessment does not make sense. That's the feedback we -- I hear from the people from -- on the field.

So having said that, there -- it is true that there is -- are some areas that we are still behind the others. So we don't want to make excuses.

Of course, it's not only debt but what's most important is that the customer satisfaction indication, it's called SBF, and we are also calculating that and we are still seeking for higher level to achieve and gain customer satisfaction. So we are not going to compromise and then I'm also discussing with the on the field.

So I would like to make this company so that everyone says that we are the #1.

So where do you think it's a bit different from what the actual...

so what I heard from the field is that some items that the staff of field, the higher score is different from what they believe. So which does not contribute to customer experience so it does not really refer to or reflect to the actual customer experience.

So I am not criticizing the result but to motivate, the ones on the field and to achieve the higher customer satisfaction. And so some areas should be fairly assessed.

I have 2 questions. First, about Cristal Intelligence.

I heard that OpenAI owns copyright. I wonder if it stays the same or IP?

So royalty is not that big. And SoftBank's gain is bigger.

So loyalty, OpenAI gets more or SoftBank gets more? And SBG pays $3 billion a year, and you are the biggest operator.

So I think -- most of that will be paid by SoftBank, I have that impression. But Miyakawa-san says that pay for use.

So you don't want to pay that much or you don't intend to pay that much. So the usage fee, how that would impact on your bottom line?

Thank you for your question. I said pay for use, that's our intention.

And in fact, we started paying just a little bit. We just started paying just a little bit.

But for the -- this fiscal year, we already take into account of the pay. We -- sorry, fee that we pay.

About IP, original one was created by OpenAI. So OpenAI definitely holds the IP.

But when it comes to joint venture, whatever created in the joint venture and what's generated in the process of consulting then the joint venture own that IP. We are expecting major Enterprise customers.

Whatever Enterprise customer would create with our capability, then the ownership would belong to that Enterprise customer. So it's case by case.

The payment we have made so far was pretty small. Again, that's pay-for-use.

Okay. That's the current status.

But would you expect or should we expect that would remain the same. For example, would that have any impact on next year's financial results?

I would say we could expect positive but negative. We outsource a small task and that's something that we could replace quickly with OpenAI or SB OAI's capability.

And if outsourced cost JPY 1 billion a year, then we don't have to spend that much if we replace such outsourced resources with AI or OAI's product. In other words, we don't start anything that could cost more than we pay for existing operations.

So again, we don't expect anything negative from that pay-for-use scheme.

And second question is about the Mobile business. Yesterday, some carriers made an earning results announcement and they -- you said that they criticize others or use excuses for their poor performance.

And Miyakawa, you don't want to spend money on short-term churners. So my question is going forward, quality matters than quantity.

So instead of spending a lot of money to acquire consumer customers, you may want to focus more on Enterprise or Solutions so the carriers don't have to compete each other saying that they are losing their customers to others or vice versa. Compared to last year or looking back 6 months ago, what's your position in terms of market competition?

Sorry, it's very a big question though.

Thank you. Our carriers, if they feel that they were attacked by others, I think they indicated SoftBank but my people said the other way around, but SoftBank is aggressive.

And I think SoftBank is actually aggressive and may be considered as an attacker. And if we put the brake, put a foot on the pedal, they might stop and then we would stop.

But again, if you stick too much on quantity, but you don't see any business growth. I would rather shift the focus to AI than just getting more numbers of users.

And our royalty users would pay more than others and that means we expect a higher ARPU and they are very important users. And we should spend money for those loyal customers and the customers who stay with us along.

And our people understand that direction, and we are on the same page. Internally, so even though we see a small decline in numbers, we don't want to be too concerned.

Regarding the next mid- to long-term business plan. I have 2 questions, how you can make profit?

And as far as Japan, so what is the demand of AI? So in January -- so the Japan entire GPU supply and demand balance has lost its balance due to this initiative by the company.

And when we look at this climate, when you look at the U.S., the super companies like in the U.S., making AI or data centers and in Japan, many companies are utilizing U.S. foreign AIs.

So when there is not enough demand and where is the demand for the data centers? What is your thought on the demand of the GPU demand in Japan?

So 6,000 GPUs are now operating Sarashina. That is possible, that is feasible.

But right now, JPY 460 billion parameter, that is the Sarashina's, which I would like to bring it up to 1 trillion parameter. But to do so, if we just utilize the current infrastructure, then it will take years and that is the disadvantage that we hold.

We want to do, but we cannot do so because of the -- due to the shortage of power and also the GPU supplies in short. And we, as a public company, and we need to also consider our earnings.

So compares to GAFA, we haven't been able to make enough investment in this particular field. So Japan as one of the economic powers, then -- to remain in this position, then we need to face this and tackle with this situation and what we are -- what we think now and a year later will be very different.

So we need to have more GPUs and considering that, and we have presented our earnings results today, and this is being monetized gradually and next fiscal year onwards. And we have no plan to present our result, that dragging the result due to the data centers and GPUs.

So only SoftBank is taking initiatives in this, but not other companies are taking the similar initiative, which I feel sad about or disappointing about. So SoftBank is taking initiatives in AI and also like coming up with the Intelligence and even just building a data center that the structure is not enough.

So as you mentioned, compared to 2 or 3 years, 3 years ago, GPUs not sufficient right now. So what do you think about the business model of data centers?

I also explained in the Board meeting and what I would like to do and internally so that the cloud business. So right now, the cloud in Japan, even they try to catch up with the overseas cloud, it's too late to catch up.

So when we look at the Sovereign, even though we call that Sovereign and this is only within the contract. And then that's how I explained to the Japanese government, and we would like to also hold the technology verification capacity.

But when we look at GPU-as-a-Service and the GPU cloud is going to be made completely differently. So when we start from scratch, we can accumulate knowledge.

And once it comes -- the time comes, and we would like to become a cloud company. So that's how our commitment is.

So we do not have any intention to just build a data center structure. So it's not the -- profitable.

Because of our business scale, what we can do is that we can this related business horizontally, comprehensively. And that's why we started from zero.

So it has taken a little time, but we have natured engineers, and we have nurtured some resources. So we would like to materialize this.

So it means that in Japan, domestically, your business model is this scale, you don't see any competitors right now. Of course, like how much GAFA can do in Japan market, but including Japanese companies, you do -- how do you see the competition?

It depends where you look at. Of course, there is a compete anywhere you go.

So AI on GPU. So I believe, therefore, the platform has to be a versatile platform, I mean, the companies will be creating its own platform.

And telecommunications company like us, will be the one to establish the environment for them to be able to easily use or make a platform. So we all have to compete and learn each other.

There will be a one like openAI GPT or like Gemeni. For us, we would like to make sure that we are the one to offer.

I have 2 questions. First, about the shareholder return, you want to return to shareholders, maybe more than before because of the inflationary environment.

And I think that's good from minor shareholders' perspective and your group perspective. So any update on your view about the shareholder return?

We shared with you the first half results. And usually, second half, we could achieve better.

And since first half was good, are we going to quickly increase return to shareholders? Well, while at the moment, may be easier decision to make is share buyback as opposed to more dividend.

But the midterm plan that will start next year will be even more important. And we want to grow further in the next phase.

So as long as we achieved the target that we have envisioned, I think we can definitely aggressive about shareholder return. So I think it just depends on how it goes in terms of our business performance against the target.

So we will make a decision accordingly. Current level of dividend plus something is, I think, something that we could afford.

So I would just say today that please expect more for next term.

Next question is about retention of customers, maybe stop excessive cash back to acquisition or maybe you may want to preferentially treat long time customers, you may want to combine a lot of initiative to keep customers. So are you looking at only acquisition plan or you may also consider price plan?

We look at both short-term plan and we may make an announcement of price -- new price plan or change price plan at some appropriate time.