The English edition of SoftBank Corp.’s (TOKYO: 9434) Integrated Report for 2024, published on October 31, 2024, is a comprehensive report that not only covers SoftBank’s financial information for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024 (FY2023), but also outlines SoftBank's medium- to long-term growth strategies, ESG strategy, and more. In addition to providing a snapshot of the company’s current status, the report communicates SoftBank’s future goals and aspirations. A message from Junichi Miyakawa, SoftBank’s President & CEO, is featured in the report. Below is an excerpt.
CEO Message: Review of the first year (FY2023) of the Medium-term Management Plan
Consolidated results for FY2023 exceeded our upwardly revised forecast (announced in February 2024) for both revenue and profits, making for a very strong start as the first year of our Medium-term Management Plan. Excluding the impact of the one-time gain from making PayPay a subsidiary in FY2022, operating income increased 14% and net income attributable to owners of the Company increased 45% year on year, both representing a significant increase of more than ¥100 billion.
A particularly significant event was the turnaround in mobile service revenue in the Consumer segment, which was first impacted by mobile service price reductions in the spring of 2021. We were able to achieve revenue growth one year ahead of schedule, thereby increasing profits across the business as a whole. We also achieved double-digit increases in profits in the Enterprise segment and the Media & EC segment, and were able to significantly reduce losses in the Financial segment.
In retrospect, at our monthly all-hands morning assemblies, I expressed in my own words a sense of crisis about the mobile service price reductions and rallied the employees to take action. At management meetings as well, I raised issues such as whether the current profit margins for each product were truly appropriate, and whether the sales structures were really the right ones, and urged those in our Company to take drastic measures to reduce costs. I believe that this year’s results reflect how our employees fully embraced these initiatives and worked together as a team.
Over the space of eight pages, Miyakawa discusses the performance and direction of each business segment in detail, his thoughts on the targets set in the Medium-term Management Plan, the necessity of building AI data centers, his views on ESG, as well as stock splits, the establishment of a shareholder benefits program, and shareholder returns.
His entire message can be found here, starting on page 18.
SoftBank Integrated Report 2024
Every year, SoftBank publishes an Integrated Report, a comprehensive document that includes information on its vision, medium- to long-term growth strategies, value creation processes, materiality, and financial and non-financial information.
(Posted on November 1, 2024, Original Article Published on October 1, 2024)
by SoftBank News Editors
