Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming to our third quarter results briefings for the fiscal year ending March 2026.

Today, we also have a simultaneous translation, we are communicating all around the world. For those in Europe, must be in early morning.

For those from the US, I bet you are in at very late at night. Thank you very much for joining this call for those hours.

I am the president of the company, and also we also have Naraki-san and Takeuchi-san with me.

Hi, I am the vice president for the company. My name is Naraki.

I am a senior managing director. I am Takeuchi.

Let's get started.

In 2026, we are having a 35th anniversary of the company, we made this the anniversary logo, which we put on the front page. The bird in the middle is our mascot character, she called Mappy, M and A and happy, and those two words were combined together to be named as Mappy.

Let me first start with the summary. In this Q3, showing the 9-month total and Q3 alone, basically, we've recorded the highest sales and recurring profit ever.

We were able to surpass 40% for our recurring profit margin. For 9-month total, we accomplished ¥37.7 billion, which is increasing by 26.5% year on year.

The recurring profit went up by 46.8% to be ¥15.7 billion. The OP margin was 41.7%, which is up by 5.8 percentage points.

The number of transactions closed increased by 9.8% to be 810 deals, and also M&A sales per transaction increased by 15.3% to accomplish ¥45 million. On Q3 alone results was ¥15.1 billion revenue, and that was a record high number, up by 34.6% year on year.

Ordinary profit was ¥7.1 billion, which increased by 51.5%, and OP margin was 47.2%. Number of transactions closed was 322 deals, which are progressing pretty good, and M&A sales per transaction was ¥45 million, maintained at a very high level.

Where are we at for the overall against the guidance numbers? I think that is important to note it.

For the sales, our target was ¥46.3 billion. We are at ¥37.7 billion, which is 81.5% progress.

In ordinary profit, against the forecast of ¥17 billion, we are at 15.7% with 92.5% progress. Even more, we are quite pleased to see a steady progress in returning back to our growth cycle.

M&A jobs, we do see many different conditions and situations, and we do see a lot of extension of the deals. In Q4, March, if we were to trying to target at Q3 to accomplish the target, then we tend to see some delays into the next year.

We need to accomplish the certain business performance while satisfying customers. We would need to bring up the high performance as much as possible in Q3, we can work on more preparation work in Q4 so we can have a rocket start for the next fiscal year.

Matching and also receiving a lot of commission work, and so that way we can accomplish the stable growth. Finally, I believe we were able to come back to such a business cycle, and that is the most pleasing information that I have for this time briefing results.

Let me go one by one a little bit more in detail for the sales of 37.7% sorry, ¥37.7 billion. Of course, we saw increases both in the number of transactions closed and also unit sales, and that helped to see a substantial increase in the sales.

The best part was the number of consultants who accomplished budget. We saw a substantial increase in such members.

Also department who accomplished the budget increased drastically at the same time. Takeuchi-san, who is the president of M&A Center, always talks about each individual will need to accomplish the target to be happy, and also each department to accomplish the target to be happy, and as a result, the company to accomplish the budget to be happy.

He is always pursuing to accomplish both individual and the whole group. Such a policy and thinking is now being understood and spreading among the employees, and that was accomplished this time.

I think now we were able to build a very solid foundation to accomplish that. The number of transactions closed, I think we were quite successful in implementing a very scientific approaches.

It wasn't the result of a coincidence to increase the number of success rate, and also in on-time closure of deals. We implemented two measures to accomplish them.

One, when we start the deal negotiation, we are now having kick-off meetings, both sellers and from buyers, the person in charge and their managers, and accountants, lawyers, and tax accountants, and all these professional. They all get together to confirm the schedule.

We also confirm the stakeholders, and we also confirm the challenges, which is more important. We identify those challenges ahead of the project kickoff, and that is very important.

We are making a smooth flow in the deal procedure. We conducted M&A audit, and if we were to find the challenges at the time, then that could actually cause a situation that people might wonder, maybe they were hiding this information, or they were deceiving us, and such a concern will be rising.

At the beginning of the whole deal, we need to assume what the challenges are so that way both sellers and buyers can prepare themselves to be able to take action towards them. That will actually increase the trust in us and also trust in between sellers and buyers, and that helps to have a smooth process going forward.

The other thing is, and since this scandal we had, we actually increased the number of managers drastically. Of course, a lot of managers are still not fully experienced, but we created a rule for the deal management in place.

Every Monday, we instructed them to give instructions of the deals to their subordinates. Those are the two actions we implemented which supported us to have a successful result, and which were led by the President Takeuchi, and as well as the sales general manager, and their leadership actually worked quite well to permeate this type of thinking among all the staff members to increase the number of transactions closed as well.

We are also able to maintain a very high M&A sales per transaction, and as I've been talking in the past, we're not trying to grow this sales per transaction, that's not our main purpose. Our target is to maintain around ¥40 million per deal.

As we grow the number of deals, the unit sales goes down. To stop that, we basically try to capture the mid-cap business deals as much as possible, and that was quite successful, and that's also sustaining good unit prices.

The number of large deal was 85 cases. We did see a huge increase, increased by 66%.

Our volume zone, the mid-sized deals, are properly secured. Also for small deals, actually, we pass those deals over to our affiliate companies, the companies by the equity method, the BATONs.

We have BATONs to handle those smaller deals, and I think that was also effective at the same time. Because of that, the percentage of smaller deals are now declining with us, and that is actually helping to see a stronger performance.

That's how we understand right now. Talking about the cost and the expenses, I pass the floor over to Naraki-san.

Hi. On this page, we are showing the cost of sales and SG&A expenses.

Those costs and SG&As for this year starting from March 2026, we have changed the classification of human resources that actually changed some of the number changes, and so we are talking about comparison after reclassification change. Then cost of sales was increased by 19.1% to be ¥13.7 billion.

SG&A expenses was ¥8.37 billion, increased by 7.7%. Referral fees ratio was 13.1%, increased by 0.9 percentage point.

For the SG&A expenses, the IT cost was ¥848 million, and it increased by 46.7%. Let me also touch on the overview of the expenses and numbers.

This is the total income statement. First, to talk on the cost level, in total, as line three, ¥13.725 billion, and it was 36.4% of the sales.

Last year, it was 38.6%. This ratio went down year on year.

Two lines down from here, the SG&A and the operational cost, it was 22.5% with ¥8.49 billion. It was 25.6% last year, percentage reduced this year because of the sales increase.

As I mentioned, ordinary profit came out to be 41.7%, now it's back in the 40s. Thank you very much.

Next is talking about the commission status. It's very important to understand how many that we are receiving as mandates.

Total, we received 328 mandates, which is down by 3% year on year. Of that, mid-cap mandates were 58 deals, which is down by 10.8%.

For the buy-side mandate was 383 mandates, which is down by 6.6%. Number of new transaction negotiations was 295 deals, which is down by 13.2% compared to last year.

I will have more details to come later on. This is nothing really negative.

Actually, in the first half last year, we did have a huge amount of mandates that we received, and based on that, we decided to focus on the business performance. We wanted to revive our business performance, that was the main purpose of this fiscal year.

The number of transactions closed, we tried to focus also on the track record of the closed contracts, we did not focus too much on receiving mandates the first half. Second half, we will focus more on the quality of the mandates, and that was the policy we had in the second half.

For those with no possibility of getting concluded, we tried not to pursue to conclude them and close them, and so that is why the number is declining. This is not because of a negative situation.

I hope you can understand this is still a result of positive effort. This is the overall flow.

Mandates in the central area are in green, and these are the mandates in the city areas. We've been acquiring city area mandates quite well, and local area mandates are about 45% of the total.

Revitalizing the local economy and also contributing to the central area, I believe that we have a really good balance of achieving mission and achieving good results at the same time. About the fourth quarter, when it comes to receiving mandates or matching, we will put in bigger efforts.

I believe that we'll be able to have overall good performance in the whole year. The summary of the status of acquiring mandates is this.

These are detailed figures, please take a look at this later. About the number of new mandates we have acquired, we believe that we're not experiencing a deterioration.

We think that we are in a transitional period. About last year, we, as a company, were finally trying to be revitalized, our focus back then was on acquiring more mandates.

We were going after volume. However, since the start of this fiscal year, our focus is more on closing mandates and eliminating troubles.

Therefore, when it comes to acquiring mandates, we've been refraining from the mandates with limited possibility of closing them later on. Also, there can be inappropriate buyers.

Really delicate project that are close to renewal type of mandates, we've been cautious in receiving those mandates to improve customer satisfaction rate and also to improve our productivity. We've been raising our productivity, and we've also been trying to improve customer satisfaction.

Also, we plan to further improve the quality of the mandates we receive, and at the same time, we plan to improve the quality of our business and our service and the customer satisfaction level. This is going to be our direction.

I would like to hand over to Naraki-san for our summary. About our balance sheet.

Assets: ¥60 billion 11 million. Below that, total net assets: ¥48 billion 257 million.

Ratio of this was 80.4%, and we have the same for the previous fiscal year on the right-hand side, ¥47.5 billion in net assets. The ratio of net asset was 77%.

There is an increase by 3% — 3.4%. About headcount, as I said, we had a reclassification of employees.

At the top of this table, we have the row for M&A consultants. These are the sales representatives belonging to the sales headquarters of Nihon M&A Center and sales staff at foreign local entities.

As I said, we've been doing effective hiring in M&A consultants. However, we have the increase in turnover of our employees with tenure of less than 3 years.

We've been implementing measures to improve retention of our employees, and we plan to provide more information about that later. Next page, page 14.

This one is about our current fiscal year. This fiscal year, we've been showing numbers both as reported and also on a reclassified basis as well.

Thank you. About our headcount: We've been doing a lot of things.

Headcount is the area, the only area where we feel there's an issue, especially turnover ratio of the employees with tenure of no more than 3 years is declining, or rather it's worsening this fiscal year, we have already started taking measures to address this. However, we have a lead time, about a half year's lead time until we start to benefit from these initiatives.

Until then, we are going to continue root cause analysis, and we've been taking measures. We have multiple issues, but the issue of the increase in the turnover of the people with tenure of less than 3 years, this is the largest issue we think we have in our company, we want to address this immediately.

We want to reduce turnover. We want to have a net increase in sales representatives.

Just having a net increase itself is not good because when there are a lot of turnover, that means that we have more beginners in the company, that leads to lower productivity. We have to reduce turnover while securing enough personnel, and we've been taking measures so we think that we'll be able to have major improvement next fiscal year.

Next, let me touch on the shareholder returns. For this fiscal year, we try to face a change in external environment and and trying to go back to the the accomplishing cycle that we used to do in the past.

We intend to continue sustaining the dividend ¥29 same year. We had ¥29 for March 2025.

Therefore, for March '26, we intend to go with ¥29 as with no change from the beginning. In during the mid-term plan period, our dividend payout ratio is to be 60% or higher, and so we maintain this basic policy as well.

Next, ROE trend: In 2024 March, we conducted share buybacks, and we and with that, we were able to get back on 20%. In also March 2026, we expect to be at 22.9%.

Next, shareholder situation and also the market cap trend: Shareholder mix is shown here. Individuals are decreasing, and now we see increases from institutional investors in this pie chart.

Individuals show 30.7%, and last year a year ago, it was 33%, but it came down to 30.7%, down by 3.2 percentage points. For financial institutions says 30.2%.

Last year, it was 25.1%, it increased by 5.1 percentage points. The foreign investors, foreign institutional investors was 28.9%.

The last year, it was 30.4%, it went down by 1.5%. Thank you.

Next, talking about the forecast number, there is no change to our forecast numbers. We maintain the same number, we can move forward according to the guidance numbers.

In our mid-term target, there is no change in our mid-term target. Of course, we will make sure to have not side to the mid-term target to be accomplished, we ensure to accomplish them, and we will try to have as much upside as possible, and so we can lead to the next phase from then on.

Related activities: Currently, the other sales is about ¥1.2 billion. This is only about 3.3% within total sales.

That's coming from fund business and PMI business. This is still small business, and our intention is to grow this other business.

Also Tokyo PRO Market, we are making good progress. In this year, the number of IPOs were not that many.

The listing to the market, it takes about 2 to 3 years for preparation. Those deals that came 2, 3 years ago and 4 years ago are going to be IPO this year.

With the scandal, right after the scandal, such a J-Adviser commissioned project decreased. Therefore, we see less IPOs this year, but we intend to accelerate the number of IPOs, and we do have enough backlogs of the potential IPOs to come in the coming years.

The most important thing is the PMI.

Both FSA and SME agencies, they say not just closing M&As, what they need is having a successful PMI activities as well. That's their direction, and we think that we are the only company in Japan who is doing M&A consulting, but is also doing PMI support activities.

The plan for this fiscal year is to receive 120 mandates, and we have already acquired 95 mandates. 120, we think that we're going to will exceed 120 this fiscal year.

We think that this is going to be a major differentiating factor going forward for our company. We're going to do more aggressive sales activities, and at the same time, we would like to enrich our activities or enrich our supports to customers, but we cannot do this on our own.

Therefore, we would like to do more collaborations of private, public, and academia collaboration. We have ASEAN-based local entities, and they have been working really well.

They closed their financial years in Decembers, and this fiscal year, they achieved their budget sufficiently. From the next fiscal year, they are going to enter into the next stage of growth.

I have been really counting on this overseas business, and I am excited to see the development of this business going forward. About our fund business, its contribution in terms of profit may be limited.

However, A2G Capital, J-Search, and Japan Investment Fund, they are all going quite successfully respectively. About J-Search, they have already established companies in four locations, and they've been working together with local banks.

Japan Investment Fund, they have launched their second fund that's been working effectively. Roll-up activities are done, which are the add-ons of of generating synergies with companies with good affinity after acquiring a company.

We have done two of such roll-ups this fiscal year at the Japan Investment Fund. Topics: DX and AI usage: Especially AI-based activities have expanded quite quite significantly.

Takeuchi-san has been talking about data-driven management. BringOut is a name of an analysis software of conversations and discussions.

With this AI-based software, we've been collecting a huge volume of various information that's used for our sales approach improvement, and we've been also accumulating customers' qualitative information. When it comes to quantitative information, we can accumulate the data by receiving financial documents, but when it comes to qualitative information, we have to do interviews to customers.

Just like in human's marriage, qualitative information can be more important than quantitative information. This is the same in M&A.

When we get more qualitative information, eventually we believe that we will be able to have more accurate AI-based auto-matching. Activities that we've been doing based on DX and AI are have huge potentials, and we've been doing all of what we can do.

About seminars, we've been holding physical marketing, and we've been getting a lot of applications. We had 80% more applications compared to the same time last year for these kind of events.

Two major reasons: One is that our planning has been quite getting better, and the second is that customers' interest in M&A are growing. In the next fiscal year, we would like to do such real marketing more actively.

We've been having successful area marketing activities as well. For example, signage advertising that you often see at stations, railway stations like you can find in the photo on this page.

We've been doing advertising there, for example, in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Hakata, Osaka, Okinawa as well. It seems that we have one at Haneda Airport.

I saw the video of our ad there. Also we've been doing things that are based on the local communities.

For example, local representative office with discussion desk, we now have one in Yamaguchi. Niigata, Miyagi, Ibaraki, Shizuoka, and Yamaguchi finally.

This is the fifth one that we have established. Thanks to customers' support and thanks to our efforts, we have we are recognized by Guinness World Records for 5 consecutive years.

The number of closures last year was 1,088. This was the highest in the world.

We would like to use such track records and awards for our brand branding activities. The next one is about integrated report that I hope everybody will read.

We publish them we have published them at the same time in Japanese version and English version, and we plan to do the same in the same manner this year as well. This is not just about senior management thinking.

We have been including the dialogues and stories and thinking of the various people, including external directors, executives officers, etc. I hope that you will feel our culture and momentum.

About our industry trends, we are experiencing an increase in the number of intermediary agencies, and SME Agency had the second revision of their guidelines, and also introduction of qualification systems. In such initiatives, they announced their skill map, and qualification system committee was established.

Inappropriate buyers, we've been enhancing our activities to avoid getting involved by them at the M&A association. Also, we would like to be an exemplified or we would like to be a model in this industry.

Our three-party collaboration, tripartite collaboration, we've been doing that quite widely with University of Kobe, Kyoto, Waseda, Hitotsubashi, etc. We've been doing joint research with them, and also with Kwansei Gakuin University, we're going to do the same going forward.

We've been inviting many universities to do this. The company is not an object.

It is a place where we create and look at the lives of many different people. It's not just completing or the contract to be closed, but we hope to be able to be successful in accomplishing the best M&A to make everyone involved to be happy.

In order to accomplish such a success and the best closure, we intend to implement various measures as I mentioned. This is all for the results briefing, and now we want to move on to Q&A session.

Thank you for the question. This is the only challenge I am feeling the most, and also the largest challenge that we're facing.

We're making a very detailed analysis and taking various actions. We want to have Takeuchi-san to explain more details on this.

Thank you very much.

Regarding the hiring environment, the last time results briefing, we are getting a good response in terms of receiving applications, but of course, we need to look at the conditions in market. We have a close watch on the market situation.

Currently, we're receiving good application, and we are selecting the right candidate. When it comes to hiring policy, the turnover rate is on the rise.

What we did to address that for the past 6 months or 3 months, we tried to understand the reason why they left the company and where they went, and what was the reason they decided to leave the company. I myself went to more details to understand one by one.

The major reason for leaving the company was that they had the expectation for M&A Center before joining the company, but after joining the company, they saw a huge gap against the ideal they had. That's what we found, let's say.

They thought, okay, they could do more, they could work a lot and hard, but due to the compliance and the governance, it wasn't really giving enough flexibility to do a lot of work. Some people thought this was a large company, but why do we have to be bound by certain behavioral rules?

Those gaps, we thought they were in the different directions. Basically, the major challenge was that in a final interview with those candidates, we needed to communicate our company core value to the full extent to them.

Therefore, since February, every Friday, and I spent half day every week, I decided to be part of the final interview with the potential candidate at every interview. We also had the channel general manager as well.

In the final interview session, first I am trying to eliminate those gaps that they may have in the future. That's why I'm now involved in a hiring process.

That way we are able to improve the hiring situation. That is where we focus the most.

May I add one more? Yes, there is one more thing.

This is the biggest challenge I'm facing right now. The other thing is once they join the company, once they start working, and then those who decide to leave the company, of course, if they're not able to perform fully during the first year, they tend to leave.

What is the definition to be successful? I think the important thing is to have closing the deal within a year.

Last year, also the year before, even this year, for those who joined the company for the past year, only 60% of those members have accomplished closing deals. We first want to raise this percentage to 80%.

For those members who accomplish the first closure, those 60 member are not leaving, but the remaining 40 are the one who are leaving. That's why we're focused on increasing the number of success rate up to 80% during the first year.

As you can read on the slide, of course, I look at all the members, I see all the members through the hiring process in an interview, and then I myself will have an interactive communication with all the people so I can give them more confident. A year later, even with the channel general manager, if they're having a hard time getting closure, then we think about reassigning them to a different channel.

We want to show the value to those employees for the first year as a part of the flow. We need to pay extra attention and proper care of those who just recently joined the company, and so we can develop their capability, and this will be led in a top-down manner.

Next question: M&A sales per deal has been trending at high level. Is this a one-time trend?

How reproducible are mid-cap mandates related initiatives? How do you see your current M&A sales per deal and the level you'd like to be in the future?

Thank you. I have always been talking about ¥40 million as our target M&A sales per deal.

Our social mission is to grow in volume so we can save as many companies as possible. When we have more volume, it's natural that that sacrifices our M&A sales per deal.

That means lower productivity. We want to acquire mid-cap mandates, close them so we can maintain M&A sales per deal.

This is what we've been trying to do as mid-cap measure. This measure has actually been more successful than we had anticipated.

Fortunately or unfortunately, it's not really coming from the mid-cap mandates per se. It's rather coming from the fact that we have established the team of mid-cap dedicated consultants.

Targeting all sales representatives, we have established a system where they can educate and instruct about acquiring mid-cap mandates. Actually, companies have only two ways of closing their business or getting acquired.

These are the two only scenarios they have. However, with us, they have new options, for example, fund option and others, or maybe handing over the business to their owner's sons and so on, IPO possibly.

In order to convince customers, we need to create proposal documents, and however, beginners are shy about those options. We have established a consultant team that can make such proposal documents when they receive referrals about those mid-cap potential mandates.

This has been working effectively and leading to the improvement of our closure rate. Things have been more smooth than we had anticipated.

Of course, increasing M&A sales per deal is something that we welcome, but we want to maintain this. The level that we would like to be is ¥40 million in my opinion.

Basically ¥40 million. Maybe ¥42 million, ¥43 million should be enough as our M&A sales per deal.

When it comes to ¥45 [million?] or ¥46 million, I think that's too good for us.

Next question: Could you tell us the number of the deals under negotiation which are left open at the end of December? Thank you for the question.

The number of remained deals under negotiation, currently there are about 944 — no, right now, 449 deals. 449 deals are under negotiation, and 295 are newly opened deals.

I believe this is a pretty good condition. We are coming to the end of the fiscal year in March.

We are able to have enough negotiation. We have secured enough pipelines, which are those deals under negotiation.

For the next year to have a rocket start in Q1, we want to actually increase more of such a pipeline. In Q4, in February and March, we will be working more on matching activities.

That is going to be quite important.

Next question: Leading indicators that determine your business results from the next fiscal year, the number of new negotiation starts and the number of consultants, these indicators are deteriorating for two consecutive quarters. Is there going to be any negative impact from this on the likelihood of exceeding your budget in the mid-term plan?

I don't have a concern about this because our productivity is increasing, and our closure rate has been growing solidly, meaning that we are more capable of doing effective management than before. Also, the quality of our pipeline mandates or pipeline projects are improving as well.

I do not have a concern or anxiety about not being able to exceed our budget under the mid-term plan. About the number of new negotiation starts, I think there is limited possibility of not being able to achieve this indicator target.

Even so, the potential shortfall can be covered enough by a good closure rate. Also, the number of consultants, I have a major concern about that.

We're going to reduce turnover rate enough, and we will establish a system where new people can grow sufficiently. At the same time, we want to do more recruitment so we can have net increase.

This cycle is something that we have been establishing in the recent 3 months, and we think that the level of success in this measure will impact the level of how much we can achieve our mid-term plan targets. We will do more about this.

Next question: Regarding the decrease in number of sell-side mandates, do you think SME Agency policy is affecting because they encourage the regional banks to be an intermediary for M&As? Can you tell us the current status of the direct network ratio in the sell-side mandates and what do you think is the forecast?

Regarding the first part, that has nothing to do with the situation. Actually, their policy is working on a positive way.

The SME Agency and FSA and they are talking regional banks to work on revitalizing regional economy and trying to accelerate M&As, and also asking them to develop the businesses which is making more than ¥10 billion. Regional banks are actually collaborating and working in tandem with us.

That's why the region regional bank team within our company are going quite well so far. They're receiving a lot of mandates, and they having a lot of closures as well.

The decrease in number of sell-side mandate is because in the first half, as I mentioned earlier, this year we had this year would be almost a conclusion year coming out of the scandal, it's going to be the year for recover from fully from the scandal 4 years ago. First, we wanted to focus on the number of closures and also the amount, the yen amount as well.

That's where we focused in first half, and that was affecting the result in the first half. Second half now we are focusing on improving quality of the mandates, and that's what's also putting some pressure on the number of mandates, and so that's also causing a slight decline.

There's no major impact by them, and rather we see a much positive impact on our business with those policies by the governments. The ratio between direct and network, the network is increasing for the mandates.

Right now in Q3 of fiscal '25, regarding sell-side mandates, in ratio-wise, 37 versus — no, correction: 74 versus 26. Network 74% and 26% for direct.

Ratio for network is increasing, and the network is increasing more. Of course, we need to increase the ratio direct ratio, but recently, pretty recently, direct market is exposed to very fierce competition.

Many, too many boutiques out there in the market, and it's very difficult to obtain mandates. That's why for network channels, we pretty much have exclusive relationship, and we receive the also the retainer fee as well from them.

We are receiving good revenue through the network, so that's where we can leverage on our strength.

Next question: About dividend, do you have a plan to change your dividend of paying ¥29, including special dividend of ¥6? Thank you for that question.

Of course, we have to make a decision to announce, we cannot say anything definite on this occasion, but to share with you my thinking, we're not planning to cut dividends. At least when we are steadily growing and when our share price and our market cap are growing steadily, we would like to make sure that shareholders can enjoy capital gains.

Until we go into that phase, we're not going to cut our dividends at least. I would like our shareholders to be relieved about the possibility of dividend cut.

Next question: Regarding returning to your normal performance achievement cycle, how do you think its repeatability or continuity for next year onward? Takeuchi-san, can you answer this question?

Next year beyond, repeatability and continuity of such a cycle. This year, we're looking at this progress.

I know the answer could be a little abstract, but I think the people in the field did quite a great work. I hope you don't misunderstand my comment, but I think it was actually too good to be true, but still we are making such a great progress so far.

We have taken every strategy measures that we are able to take in details. The important thing is not to rush too much.

If you rush too much, if you just try to accelerate the performance, that can actually cause too much pressure or the burden on the field members. We need to avoid that.

We need to focus on completing good-quality M&A. The whole industry is focused more on safety and security and the accountability for the result.

We need to be seriously addressing that trend what's being required by the society, and that will lead us over to a strong performance. Repeatability and continuity will be accomplished by pursuing this policy.

Thank you. Next question: Your interim fee grew by 28% year on year.

When does that lead to you receiving contingency fee or success fee? If you go along with the flow that you were in in the recent few years, I can assume that this increase in interim fee will lead to an increase in success fee in the next quarter.

However, since your company seems to be able to get back to the customary cycle of achieving results earlier than planned, do you plan to carry this over to Q1 next fiscal year? This is not something that we're going to make a decision about because for M&A, we need a buyer and a seller.

These are our customers. They have their schedule, they have their conveniences, and they have emotions as well.

Timing is not something we adjust, they determine the timing of M&A closure. In accordance with the normal cycle, we tend to close deals in the following quarter.

However, unlike major M&A like an M&A between listed companies, they actually make decisions at respective board meetings, there's no change basically. When it comes to M&A among SMEs, there can be prenuptial doubts, there can be a half month or 1 month deferral of closure, and also buyer can be involved in a sudden major trouble, and president of the buyer may have to go on a business trip to foreign country.

There are many cases where there is about a 1-month lag in closing deals. This can happen to us as well.

There can be deals that can be closed smoothly by end of this fiscal year. Takeuchi-san, what do you think?

I completely agree with what he has said. It's our customers who form and decide on market results.

Of course, we pay attention to the expected results on a quarterly basis, but we pay attention to our customers. Our senior management will at the same time closely monitor our results.

I completely agree with what Miyake-san has said. Thank you.

Today, thank you very much for staying with us for a long time. We have explained our results for the third quarter, and we had a Q&A session as well.

Thank you for staying with us till the end. Finally, from the inappropriate incident, we experienced many things.

In FY22, we had a shift to a compliance-based management, and we implemented many prevention measures. In FY23, we tried to be a more united company and a more cheerful company.

In FY24, we received a huge volume of mandates. This fiscal year, '25, is about recovering in our financial results and getting back to the primary customary cycle of achieving results.

This has been the direction of our company's management. Thanks to these efforts, we had a rocket start, really good start, in Q1 this fiscal year.

We had an upward revision in the second quarter. In the third quarter, I think that we had a good enough results that matches with what we have been doing.

We are now almost back to the customary cycle. The level of enthusiasm among our employees is quite high.

It's been rising. Of course, we have some issues, including an issue of higher turnover rate.

There can be some potential issues. However, we are trying to be transparent to shareholders and investors, and we've been discussing with them about our issues.

We will continue to do the same as our manager company going forward. Our Q4, the next briefing session will be the the full-year briefing session, full-year results briefing session.

Our company will be united and make efforts. Also, acquiring mandates so we will be able to have a rocket start next fiscal year.

We will not ease up on our efforts for that. Please continue to support us.

Thank you.