Becoming an essential,
one-of-a-kind presence.
Transforming into a Next-generation
Social Infrastructure company that
leverages AI for growth

In light of this strong business progress, we have revised upward the financial targets for FY2025, the final year of the current Mid-term Plan, to revenue of ¥6.7 trillion, operating income of ¥1.0 trillion, and net income attributable to owners of the Company of ¥540.0 billion. This ¥1.0 trillion operating income target includes an investment allowance of ¥100.0 billion for “Other/growth investment,” incorporated as expenses in the form of upfront investments for the next Mid-term Plan.
Some institutional investors and analysts have commented that “this profit target may be conservative.” Indeed, we could present a higher profit forecast if we did not use this investment allowance. However, rather than pursuing short-term profit, we have deliberately chosen to make “aggressive investments” that allocate funds to future growth. We intend to use these investments as a new springboard to take on growth areas with great potential, with the aim of generating tenfold returns in five to ten years.
These “aggressive investments” will be executed based on two disciplines. The first is “financial discipline,” to ensure the stability of our business foundation is not compromised. We will maintain interest-bearing debt and other metrics at appropriate levels while raising capital-like funds through instruments such as Bond-Type Class Shares. The second is “investment discipline,” aimed at creating corporate value. As our CFO will describe later, we will strictly assess whether a project will generate returns that clearly exceed the cost of capital (e.g., WACC). By thoroughly adhering to these two disciplines, we will achieve sustainable growth.

We are evolving beyond the framework of being a “telecommunications carrier” to become a company that will build and provide “Next-generation Social Infrastructure” essential for a society that coexists with AI. To accelerate the realization of this vision, we will also utilize the previously mentioned ¥100.0 billion “aggressive investment” allowance and focus on the following growth areas.

Until now, the use of AI has been limited to “partial optimization,” where each division individually introduces AI to optimize its respective operations. However, as AI evolves to a stage where it acts as an “agent,” thinking and acting on its own like a human, we are aiming for the next level. We are working with U.S.-based OpenAI to develop “Cristal intelligence”, which will link the “AI agents” used by each internal division and, like a “conductor of an orchestra,” optimize the entire range of corporate activities. This is a challenge to achieve “overall optimization” that cannot be reached by simply aggregating partial optimizations, and it will transform the very nature of management. Once development is complete, we will first thoroughly utilize it ourselves to demonstrate its effectiveness, refine its quality, and then offer it to client companies along with our expertise. We expect this to elevate our solutions for corporate management issues to an entirely new level and drive significant growth in our Enterprise segment.
Looking ahead to an era where “AI agents” collaborate, I am encouraging our employees to develop them. At an all-hands morning assembly in June 2025, I personally demonstrated how quickly an “AI agent” can be created and conveyed the message, “They are easy to create. We will provide all the necessary tools and environment, so do not be intimidated. I want each of you to create 100 AI agents and become familiar with the process.” To my great surprise, our employees created nearly one million “AI agents” in just over a month. I believe this may be the first time in the world that a single company has created “AI agents” on this scale. I am increasingly confident that our corporate culture of enjoying new challenges and proactively engaging with change and following curiosity will become a major competitive advantage in the age of “AI agents”.

“Sovereign cloud / sovereign AI” refers to a cloud environment in which Japan retains sovereignty over its data, technology, and operations and which is provided in accordance with its own laws and regulations, including the AI that operates within that environment. This initiative not only has great social significance but also represents a very promising business opportunity for us. There is a rapidly growing need among government agencies, universities, research institutions, and companies to store sensitive information in a secure, homegrown cloud environment and utilize it in combination with AI. To meet this need, we are building an AI platform, which includes constructing AI data centers in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, and Tomakomai City, Hokkaido Prefecture, developing a sovereign cloud, creating our own homegrown Japanese large language model (LLM) “Sarashina”, and developing software for “GPU as a Service,” which leases out GPUs on the cloud.
“Cloud services” and “generative AI” are already dominated by non-Japanese companies in global markets, including Japan, and I believe some investors may be concerned about whether we can truly compete with our global rivals. However, I am confident that we can become a provider of sovereign cloud / sovereign AI in Japan and gain a competitive advantage by leveraging our position as a Japan-based company, securing the necessary locations and electric power for our AI data centers, and capitalizing on our strengths in developing one of the largest homegrown Japanese LLMs. I am convinced that pioneering this new market and deploying high value-added services will be the next driver of our growth.

In addition to our medium- to long-term initiatives in growth areas, we are aiming for further growth in our existing businesses, using AI's evolution as a tailwind.

Supported by strong net additions and a stabilization in ARPU, we quickly overcame the industry-wide headwind of mobile service price reductions in the spring of 2021. In FY2024, both mobile service revenue and segment income increased for the second consecutive fiscal year. This success is due to a strategy that—in addition to the strength of our ecosystem, which includes some of Japan's leading BtoC platforms like “LINE”, “Yahoo! JAPAN”, “PayPay”, and “ZOZOTOWN”—expands our customer base with the price-competitive “Y!mobile” brand while enhancing the appeal of the “SoftBank” brand to encourage upgrades. While our competitors implemented price hikes in June 2025, we carefully assessed customer reactions and market trends and announced a new “Y!mobile” price plan in September. While aiming to improve profitability by revising the basic monthly fee, we will also strengthen customer acquisition by offering various discounts to customers who pay their communication fees with the “PayPay Card” credit card and use our fiber-optic Internet service. Furthermore, as a new measure to enhance the appeal of our services, starting from November 2025, we plan to introduce a campaign*2 that increases the following month's data capacity based on the number of “PayPay” payments made for everyday shopping. This is a unique value proposition that other companies cannot offer, and one that is only possible for us because our Group services including PayPay, which boasts an overwhelming share of Japan's QR code payments market. We believe this will become a differentiation strategy. This initiative will also contribute greatly to the further expansion of the “PayPay” ecosystem. As for the “SoftBank” brand, we will continue to carefully monitor market trends and implement appropriate measures at the optimal time.
The ability to flexibly choose the optimal move from a broader perspective after our competitors have made their own moves is the biggest change that would have been unthinkable for us a few years ago, and it is a testament to our current strength. In the past, our network quality was below that of our competitors, so we compensated for this gap with price. However, the situation has now completely changed, and our network quality is on par with theirs. The fact that we achieved this with less capital expenditures than our competitors is highly significant. The reason behind this is our “network design philosophy.” In our 5G rollout, we used non-standalone^*3 and prioritized “connecting to 5G” by first deploying the highly connectable 700 MHz and 1.7 GHz bands. On top of that, we adopted a strategy of deploying frequencies like 3.4 GHz and 3.9 GHz to secure capacity. This difference in philosophy enabled us to build an efficient, high-quality network. However, I have no intention of being satisfied with a level of competition where we talk about “winning or losing.” In meetings about the network, I continue to encourage our frontline network team, saying, “We must not remain on par with our competitors. Let's aim for an overwhelming victory.” Currently, we are proceeding with the deployment of standalone (SA)^*4 5G ahead of our competitors, and we will continue to use our ingenuity to aim for an “overwhelming No. 1” network from a user experience perspective.
The “overwhelming No.1” network we are aiming for is not a goal in itself; it is the “foundation” for providing the best experience to our customers in the coming AI agent era. As AI agents become integrated into all devices, we believe customers will not simply choose a carrier based on “which one has a more reliable network connection,” but rather on “which carrier allows us to use AI agents most comfortably and to their fullest potential.” With this future in mind, we are steadily making preparations to create the best AI experience.

Following a group reorganization in October 2023, LY, which operates the “LINE” and “Yahoo! JAPAN” BtoC platforms, is functioning extremely well under the strong leadership of CEO Idezawa. In addition to enhanced operational efficiencies, business performance has been stronger than expected, resulting in double-digit profit growth in FY2024, even excluding one-time gains. Regarding the recurrence-prevention measures for the information leakage incident due to unauthorized access announced by LY in November 2023, Idezawa is personally taking the lead and making steady progress. Our CISO is also participating in LY's “Group CISO Board” and cooperating to ensure effective security governance.
Now that a paradigm shift called AI is taking place, to maximize Group synergies, LY and our Company are holding close discussions as “best partners” and have established a clear division of roles. For example, the development of a Japanese LLM—an essential element of future social infrastructure—is led by us, as we aim to become a Next-generation Social Infrastructure provider. Meanwhile, LY, with its “LINE” service that has 99 million^*6 monthly active users in Japan, is focusing on providing the most familiar “AI agents” to customers without developing its own LLM. As an independently listed company, LY will always choose the optimal LLM for its services, but we will continue R&D so that our LLM will also be an option. In this way, by avoiding duplicative investment and maximizing our respective strengths, we hope to jointly create innovative services that will lead the AI era.

FY2024 was a memorable year for the Financial segment, with gross merchandise value expanding to ¥15.4 trillion (up 23% year on year)^*7 and PayPay's operating income^*8 achieving full-year profitability (over ¥30.0 billion) for the first time. To further accelerate PayPay's growth, we reorganized the Financial segment in April 2025. PayPay Securities Corporation, previously our subsidiary, and PayPay Bank Corporation, a subsidiary of LY, were consolidated under PayPay. I believe it is important to “give capable people the right tools,” and through this reorganization, we have created a structure that allows Nakayama, PayPay's CEO, a strong leader, to operate most effectively. I myself became a Board Director of PayPay in June 2025, and we will work even more closely together to expand synergies.
Taking this operating profitability and business reorganization as an opportunity, PayPay has begun preparations for a public listing. To be honest, I felt it might be a little early. However, after hearing the strong intention of the PayPay management team—“We want to proceed with listing preparations to acquire the excellent talent essential for future growth”—I ultimately decided to support their decision. Just as it was for us, a public listing is a prime opportunity for significant growth. A listing also helps to realize the company's corporate value. I hope that PayPay will seize this chance to make great strides.

When I took over the post of President & CEO from my predecessor, Miyauchi, he advised me that “ESG management is important, so you should look into it carefully.” As I studied it while considering future management and vision, I came to believe that the concept of ESG management—balancing “the realization of a sustainable society” and the “enhancement of corporate value”—is compelling, and that one cannot speak of enhancing corporate value without addressing it.
When SoftBank decides to do something, we do it all the way. As an objective indicator to demonstrate our commitment to ESG both internally and externally, we set a concrete milestone of winning the Grand Prize at the “Nikkei SDGs Management Awards,” one of the most prestigious awards in Japan, and then identified all challenges and addressed them one by one to achieve this goal.
As a result, we received the Grand Prize in 2023, but I was not satisfied with that. In my speech at the award ceremony, I declared, “We will definitely win the Grand Prize again next year.” To turn this commitment into reality, we further accelerated our efforts, and in 2024, we became the first company in history to win the Grand Prize for the second consecutive year, and were inducted into the Hall of Fame (selected as a Prime Seat Company). I believe that our “reverse planning management” culture was also leveraged in this ESG field.
These efforts are also recognized globally. We have been selected as a constituent of the “Dow Jones Best-in-Class World Index (formerly the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index)” for the third consecutive year, and we are the only telecommunications company in Japan to be selected for this index.
For us, ESG management is not a trend; it is the core of our management and our conviction—how we demonstrate our purpose in society and continue to increase our corporate value. While we may use prestigious external evaluations as milestones to measure our progress objectively, our conviction will not be swayed by changing voices.

We believe it is our corporate responsibility to help solve climate change issues for the realization of a sustainable society. In our Mid-term Plan, we have set a target for the ratio of renewable energy^*9 of electricity consumption by the Company^*10 to 50% by FY2025 and 100% by FY2030 (of which more than half will be procured from power generated from renewable energy sources^*11). In FY2024, this ratio had already reached 54%, putting us ahead of schedule. In light of this steady progress, we raised our FY2025 target to 60%.
In addition to ongoing efforts to switch the electricity used by our base stations to renewable energy, we will address the expected increase in power consumption from AI data centers. At the “Hokkaido Tomakomai AI Data Center,” which is aiming to commence operations with a capacity of 50 megawatts in FY2026, we plan to procure electricity derived from renewable energy from Hokkaido Electric Power Co., Inc. and SB Power Corp.^*12. We intend to make this data center a model case of “locally produced for locally consumed” of electricity.
In July 2025, we announced the ”forest conservation support project for prefectures nationwide.” Utilizing the “Corporate Hometown Tax Program,” we will donate a total of over ¥4.0 billion to 46 of Japan's Prefectures and Hachioji City in Tokyo to support forest conservation activities over the 15 years from 2025 to 2040. We also announced “NatureBank,” a consumer-participatory tree-planting contribution program in collaboration with Group companies. Covering 16 eco-actions—such as using services provided by our Company or Group companies—the program visualizes and promotes consumers' daily eco-friendly behavior. Based on the CO2 emissions reduced by these actions, we will plant trees corresponding to an equivalent amount of CO2 absorption. With over 300 million customer touchpoints in total, we believe our Group can play a meaningful role in encouraging behavioral change to encourage environmental protection.

“HAPS^*13 (flying base stations),” which provide telecommunications from the stratosphere at an altitude of about 20 km, is a project I have long believed in and pursue with passion. We are now on track for pre-commercial services starting in 2026, three years earlier than originally planned, by using an LTA (Lighter Than Air) method that utilizes helium gas. While the LTA platform itself will be provided from an investee, we plan to utilize our proprietary technologies—developed over many years—for core components such as the wireless communications payload, solar panels, batteries, and motors. Our steady efforts to date have set the stage for this early commercialization.
I conceived this idea when I was involved in turning around U.S.-based Sprint (which SoftBank Group Corp. acquired as a subsidiary in 2013). Struggling to build a network across the vast United States, I thought, “Radio waves from mobile phone base stations reach about 20 km. If we transmit radio waves from the stratosphere at an altitude of 20 km, shouldn't we be able to communicate? And if we can do that, we should be able to communicate with existing smartphones without needing a dedicated device like a satellite phone.” After returning to Japan, I proposed launching the HAPS business, and we have been developing it since 2017.
I am confident that HAPS will be useful for disaster preparedness and will also play a major role as the core infrastructure supporting the three-dimensional communications of the future, where drones and flying cars will be commonplace. Furthermore, it will have great social significance in eliminating the digital divide in mountainous areas and remote islands—both in Japan and overseas—where establishing telecommunications environments has been difficult, thereby providing equal access to information for all.

We are a parent company with listed subsidiaries such as LY, and at the same time, we are a listed subsidiary of our parent company, SoftBank Group Corp. I would like to clearly state my thoughts on this “parent–subsidiary listings” structure.
From the perspective of a parent company with listed subsidiaries, I believe that having subsidiaries listed is an effective way to accelerate the growth of the entire Group. Since our own listing, we have grown strongly by conducting agile and autonomous management based on feedback from the stock market. With each subsidiary being an independent listed company, swift decision-making is possible, and market feedback can be directly reflected in management. This maximizes the corporate value of each company, and the results of that growth ultimately lead to an increase in our own corporate value through Group synergies and the enhanced value of our shareholdings.
As a listed subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp., we address concerns about potential conflicts of interest between our parent company and our minority shareholders with utmost sincerity. First, we have established a system to prevent decisions that would disadvantage our minority shareholders by appointing a majority of independent external directors to the Board of Directors. Furthermore, for important transactions with SoftBank Group Corp. that exceed a certain threshold, an “Independent External Directors' Meeting,” composed solely of independent external directors, is held prior to the Board Meeting to conduct a preliminary review from the perspective of protecting minority shareholders' interests.
With systems in place to safeguard minority shareholders' interests, if we can achieve growth while generating synergies with our parent and subsidiaries, “parent-subsidiary listings” should not necessarily be rejected.

Last year, I decided on a stock split and introduced a new shareholder benefits program out of a desire to “increase the number of younger shareholders who will think about our Company's future with us 10 or 20 years from now.” This aim is steadily bearing fruit. After the stock split in October 2024, the number of individual shareholders increased significantly from 860 thousand^*14 to 1.36 million^*15. In particular, the number of shareholders aged 40 and under^*16 increased 2.4 times^*17, and their share expanded from 27%^*15 to 41%^*16. We are greatly encouraged by and welcome the younger generation—who will drive Japan's future economy—as our shareholders. We will continue to value dialogue with all shareholders and strive to enhance corporate value from a longterm perspective.

In an inflationary environment, I have repeatedly asked myself whether maintaining the dividend per share^*18 is effectively a dividend reduction. However, we are currently fortunate to face an excellent investment opportunity in AI that can significantly increase our future corporate value. We have concluded that prioritizing “aggressive investments” at this time will maximize our corporate value in the medium- to long-term, and therefore we forecast maintaining the dividend per share^*18 at ¥8.6 for FY2025. We will first execute these upfront investments, and if our performance exceeds expectations, we will consider additional shareholder returns such as a dividend increase or share repurchases.

FY2025 is the final year of our current Mid-term Plan, and it also marks the halfway point of the 10-year plan I set when I became President & CEO. I want the next five years to be a period when we bring the many seeds of growth sown over the past five years to fruition and further enhance our corporate value. We plan to announce our next Mid-term Plan in May 2026, and we are deepening our internal discussions toward that end. At that time, we will present our thoughts on our growth strategy and shareholder returns in a more concrete manner.
My goal in management is for our Company to become an “essential, one-of-a-kind presence” in a society that coexists with AI. My responsibility as President & CEO is to demonstrate a solid reason for being in society and continue contributing to its development, and to enhance corporate value through challenges and share the value created with our stakeholders.
The origin of my emphasis on a “company's purpose” lies in the 1,200-year-old Zen temple where I was raised. It has endured by staying close to the people of each era and continuing to demonstrate its reason for being in society. Similarly, a company can achieve sustainable growth only by continuing to demonstrate a solid reason for being in society. I continue to take on challenges with the sole intention of making SoftBank a company that provides “an essential, one-of-a-kind infrastructure in a society that coexists with AI.” To our shareholders and investors, we ask for your continued support and your expectations for our medium- to long-term growth.