Hello everyone. Today we are holding financial results briefing session for the first quarter of FY 2025. Thank you very much for joining this session. This session is broadcast simultaneously to audiences in the globe. In the entire world. I believe it's midnight in the U.S. It should be early in the morning in Europe. Thank you very much for joining this session despite the time difference and today, Including myself, we have the Vice President and the CFO of the holdings, Mr. Naraki. We also have the Senior Managing Director of the holdings and the President of Nihon M&A Center, Mr. Naoki Takeuchi. We have three members to explain our results. Could you introduce yourself? Sure. I am Takamaro Naraki. I am the Vice President and the. Director of the Holdings. Thank you. I am Takeuchi. I am the Senior Managing Director of the Holdings. Thank you for the introduction. We have three members today, so we hope to provide brief explanations. We would also like to communicate how the atmosphere is. We would also like to talk about our financial positions, and we hope to receive such questions. To start with, we would like to talk about the summary of how we have performed. For the first half of FY 2025, both sales and ordinary profit performed strongly. This is indeed thanks to the network people and the shareholders' support. We indeed thank all those support. As a result, on October 23, we announced an upward revision to the first half earnings forecast. Compared to last year, we have had a significant increase in both revenue and profit. We substantially exceeded the original earnings forecast: sales JPY 22.5 billion, which is 21.5% higher year on year. Compared to our original forecast, our achievement rate is 112.4%. Ordinary profit was JPY 8.5 billion, which is up by 43.1% year on year. The achievement rate in ordinary profit is 126%. Ordinary profit ratio, the margin was 37.9%, up by 5.7 points year on year. We think that these results are quite favorable. About sales, we attribute this to closing many transactions and the average sales per M&A. Both of these factors improved and that worked to improve sales. About ordinary profit, since we grew in sales that was positive to ordinary profit. At the same time we optimized. Cost, and we also optimized the ratio. Of client-facing employees. To talk about our performance in the first half, we think it's really important. To compare the first half to the whole year forecast, at the bottom of this graph in green, we indicate a full year forecast. Full year forecast for the sales is JPY 46.3 billion, and compared to that, we've achieved 48.8% in the first half. About ordinary profit, our whole year forecast is JPY 17 billion and we've achieved 50.4% of that. Therefore, in the second half we're going to manage our company even more strongly. To break down how we did in the first half, sales of JPY 22.5 billion was 21.5% higher year on year. One of the reasons for this is in the number of transactions closed, which was 488. This number was higher year on year by 7.5%. This was quite significant. Also, M&A sales per transaction improved and that was JPY 44.6 million. This figure was higher by 12.6% year on year. About the reason why we had a higher number of transactions closed in Nihon M&A Center, they employed quite successful tactics. Improving the successful closing rate was the focus. Focus and the reason why they held kickoff meetings at the beginning of negotiations. To talk about schedule, to make sure that all the stakeholders are on the. Same page, and also to identify potential. Issues in the process. Relatively inexperienced consultants can handle project well. Thanks to this kind of initiatives, and also sell side owners. Due to the issue of inappropriate buyers, they are more cautious than before. Therefore, we have to present solutions to many issues earlier than previously. Otherwise, there are cases where we cannot close deals, and we think that we've been taking the right actions. Regarding the improvement in M&A sales per transaction, we've established a specialized department receiving mid-cap mandates. This is a supporting department. This department gives suggestions to all departments, and thanks to their effort, we believe that we have received many mid-cap mandates quite successfully, and that contributed to the improvement in M&A sales per transactions. Regarding the small-scale deals, we've been introducing and referring them to Vatons, so there'll be online handling of such cases, and these factors got translated into favorable ordinary profit. Of course, we paid attention to. Optimizing cost starting from this year. Naraki is a Vice President and. Also CFO, and he's been paying attention from that, from those positions, to optimize cost. About our results in the first. Half, I would like to ask our CFO Mr. Naraki to explain. Sure. Sales, cost of sales, ordinary profit, and SG&A. I think that we have explained quite a lot. From the first quarter, as you see on the right-hand side. We. Have changed the classification of cost of sales and SG&A, and as a result, as you see on the right-hand side, about cost of sales -JPY 943 million and SG&A increased by JPY 943 million. In t he first half of the previous fiscal year. We used to include in cost the. Costs that are not about our sales representatives. However, we've reclassified our personnel, so those. People are now recorded as SG&A. On to the next page. Despite. That kind of reclassification. To show you our income statements for the first half. If you look at the cost of sales, the third row from the top, we have JPY 8.6 billion cost of sales this year. This is 38.1% in ratio. Last year was JPY 7.5 billion in the first half, and the cost of sales ratio in the first half last year was 40.4%. This is partially thanks to our favorable sales progress. We are having favorable sales progress, and we are also improving in the. Cost of sales ratio. Regarding the referral fees, this time the referral fee and outsourcing expenses ratio was 14.2%, slightly higher than last year. If you pay attention to the SG&A, this time it was 24.7% compared to 27.8% last year. The SG&A this time was JPY 5.5 billion compared to JPY 5.1 billion last year. We've been reducing the ratio of the SG&A compared to the same time last year. Next is the summary. This is for mid-cap. We have been able to achieve results for mid-cap companies and we have been able to achieve upside by far for eminent sales per transaction. Looking at fiscal 2023 March, 2025 March sales per transaction was JPY 47.6 million. Compared to last year it was JPY 40.4 million. This is an increase by 17.7% M&A sales per transaction. Out of this, large transactions closed was 32 and last year it was 19. This is an increase by 68.4% which is a significant increase. Thank you very much. Next, I would like to continue to talk about the leading indicators. First, looking at number of new sell-side mandates, it was 327. Year on year it was a decrease by around 16%. Looking at the mid-cap mandates, it also decreased and they had decreased. I don't perceive this as something that's so negative. I believe there are two topics. One, in the first half of this fiscal year we had to focus on performance. We had sufficient outstanding mandates, and therefore we wanted to achieve results first. This year should be a year to revive the performance. We focused 100% on achieving performance. Therefore, we were not paying as much attention as we should have for new mandates. For the second half and towards the next fiscal year, we would like to recover this. We are not so worried. The other topic is that we are relatively selective about the transactions, very. Small transactions or poor performance companies. For companies that are hard to. We are selective. Because both of the companies will become unhappy if a transaction is closed. Having such mandates means harboring wrong expectations. If the company is not sold, our actions will be delayed. Delayed, that will cause unfortunate results. M&A is difficult. We need to communicate that first. Also, for our side, when we receive. Mandates and accept mandates, we do matching appropriately, and we need to achieve results and close transactions. Otherwise, there will be so much burden. On our work, we will fall into loss-making business. For both companies, this is not. Favorable, and therefore we are very selective. We have negotiations and discussions and receive. Mandates and going forward this trend will increase. That's what I expect. We'll narrow down, narrowing down and focusing and be selective about mandates. For the companies that come to us to consult with us, we will. Not cause them trouble. We will be able to improve our productivity at the same time. This is what we would like to continue. This is just something that we have just started, and there is such an impact. This impact I expect to become bigger going forward. For mandates we are not worried. For buy side mandates, it's a slight decrease. It was 388 and it was a negative 4% year on year. As a result, the number of new transaction negotiations was 297, it was minus 5% year on year. I would like to use this diagram. This is a usual diagram, but it's simplified a bit to make it easier to see. Looking at a new sell side mandate, it has decreased by around 16%. In the matching phase, new buy side mandates was slight decrease. In the negotiation phase, new transaction negotiations were roughly negative 5% year on year. However, looking at the right bottom of the slide, there is a lead time. We are doing great here. For a preparatory period, it used to take more than 90 days. We have decided to reduce this to 60 days and we have been. Able to achieve that. Looking at the matching phase lead time, we would like to shorten this. We would like to start taking initiatives for this. This is something I always talk about. This is the number, so please refer to it by yourself. I would like to omit explaining this. From this point onward, I would like to hand over to Mr. Naoki. To talk about balance sheet. About balance sheet. Please pay attention to the top half. About the total of assets in the second half. At the end of the second half, JPY 60.5 billion we had in total as assets. At the end of the previous fiscal year, at the end of March 2025, this was JPY 61.7 billion. There was a decline by JPY 1.2 billion compared to the end of the previous. Year, there are more outstanding payments, including. Incentives and that's the reason why there's a decline in assets. We also would like you to pay attention to the latter half, the liabilities plus net assets. At the end of the second quarter, the total of net assets was JPY 48.3 billion. Compared to the end of the previous fiscal year, there was a positive JPY 752 million. There was a 3% improvement in net assets. To talk about the number of employees head count as we've written, the recruiting status of M&A consultant is quite favorable. However, there is an increase in turnover, especially among employees with turnover of no more than three years. This remains as our issue. On the right hand side we are presenting new classification of our personnel, especially for M&A consultants. At the end of the previous fiscal year, compared to the end of the previous fiscal year, there was a net increase of 10 M&A consultants. This time, 97 people joined our company. During this period, however, turnover or reshuffling of departments occurred and there was a decline of 87 from that and therefore net increase was 10. I also would like to talk. About the new classification. According to the new classification, M&A consultants, as you see in the notes. Are. The pure sales representatives at Nihon M&A Center and the overseas local entities. The next category, M&A support, there's the people who are recognized as our cost of sales and they are the people at our Value Promotion Department, the specialized CPA and so on. We also have Japan PMI Consulting, TPM Division, and also Corporate Value Laboratory and Special People Association sphere who do the evaluation work, who provide support. These people are recorded as our cost of sales and the remaining of the M&A support are recorded as SGA. Once again, we classified our personnel and that's been applied from the first quarter. On the next page, we are showing how we were according to the previous classification and we're making sure we show our personnel transition according to the former classification. You can compare this versus the new classification. Next, I'd like to talk about shareholder equity and shareholder breakdown. Looking at shareholder return contribution, we are providing dividends of JPY 29, including special dividend of JPY 6. We are going to continue this from last year and as a result, a payout ratio for fiscal year ending March 2026 is expected to be 83.6%. Continuing on from last fiscal year, we are maintaining high level as is described at the very bottom. During the midterm management plan period, we will continue with the dividend payout ratio of 60% or more. This is about ROE. As the chart shows, for fiscal year ending March 2026, we are expecting to land at 22.9% which is 20% level. In March 2024, we have done a buyback of JPY 1.4 billion, JPY 14.9 billion, and we are going to be maintaining 20% level. This is about share ownership. Individual shareholders ratio has declined and institutional investors ratio has increased. In the pie chart at the right top, we have individuals ratio, it stands at 30.7%. Compared to the last time, it decreased by 3.6%. Against that, looking at financial institutions, it stands at 32.2% which is an increase by 3.6%. For foreign institutions, 28.9% which is 0.9% increase compared to the last time. That is all from me. Thank you very much. Now we'd like to talk about the midterm management plan and others this fiscal year in terms of the forecast. Compared to last fiscal year's forecast, we have lowered our forecast this fiscal year. There are two objectives. One. We'd like to return to our customary cycle of attaining results targets. In the second quarter, we have been able to recover very much. Now we are going into the third quarter. We'd like to make collective efforts as a company to achieve results. It's not that we will be able to fully recover in one year, but as much as possible, we would like to return to our customary cycle of attaining results or get. We'd like to bring a peak in Q3 and take pressure off in Q4 to be able to prepare for next fiscal year. We'd like to return to such a business management. The second is regain stakeholder confidence, especially employees reaching targets and gaining confidence. I think this is something that's extremely important. In that sense, in Q2 we have been able to achieve good results. I do believe that many employees have regained confidence. Going into Q3, we'd like to accelerate this process and as a result, the midterm management plan which announced we are aiming to achieve upside, we'd like to continue to achieve more and more. First, sales I believe is the most important and therefore we'd like to generate sales and this time we have been able to make an upward revision with sales increase and I'm very happy about this. As a result, profit we will be achieving upside and we would like to build such a structure. Next. Since we are a holdings company. We have other related businesses besides Nihon M&A Center. Regarding the updates on related activities. We believe that these kind of relevant. Activities are starting to be more favorable. That is, non-M&A sales ratio has been growing little by little, and to look at each item one by one. Tokyo Pro Market is quite successful. There are many J Advisor companies, and of all the J Advisor companies we've been top in supporting largest number of TPM IPOs for two consecutive years. We would like to generate star companies nationwide to contribute to local and national regeneration. Therefore, local banks and accounting firms have been supporting and cooperating with us, and we believe that that's part of the reason why we've got this result. PMI consulting business is the most important for us in this category. This business is really growing. Well. If we can have more people. We believe that this business can grow faster. The SME Agency established the PMI guidelines for SME, and also the FSA wants SME M&A to be more active. They've also revised their guidelines, and we've been doing PMI consulting business from the early phase in the industry. Therefore, we've been improving our track record of providing PMI from 66 to 93, and this year's target is quite high at 93. Already in the first half, we've done 59. We hope to achieve this target this fiscal year, and new buy side we believe that the. We would like all the new buy. Side to receive PMI consulting service, and that way we believe that the transactions will be successful. About our overseas business, we feel that our overseas business is quite steady this year. Overseas business closed their fiscal year in December, so they finished the. Third quarter and in the fourth quarter. We are expecting good results to come out, and starting from this fiscal year, we believe that our overseas business gets back on the growth track. Singapore, our operation in Singapore is having the 10th anniversary. Therefore, I visited five countries and we. I would like to learn more in those on operations and fund business. Is also quite going well. The Japan Investment Fund Search Fund, we now have three search funds, and also we have two in negotiation by the end of this fiscal year We believe that we will be able. To have five or six to be established. About our A to G capital, the preparation for Exit is going on. As features DX Digital Transformation and AI, a transformation and full usage, adoption of AI this month, Salesforce Dreamforce, we had around four people participate from our company. In the past three years. We have been participating every year, and we are receiving great stimulation and direction as well. DX and AI, we'd like to continue to promote them. Seminars, we are making good progress as well. The number of participants compared to last year was totally different. There are so many participants, there are. Much more serious, and this is something that we observed. Next year we'd like to host much more enriched seminars to identify direct mandates and continue to hold seminars. For direct, it's a challenging situation right now. The response rate is very low for direct, and therefore we would like to. Do area marketing or industry marketing. This is what we're doing in area marketing, regional marketing. We are very successful, especially in Ibaraki. It's very, very interesting. We have a radio, we have our. Personality and I am the personality. I'm talking about Miyake Suguru's business management paradise. We invite famous business management and. Top management and we are building a network of business owners and managers, and we are starting to see success in some of the regions already. As for branding, we have been recognized by Guinness World Records for five consecutive years, and we'd like to continue with this. For the coming five years, ten years, and more. We'd like to continue to make efforts and integrated report. I think it's next week or the. Week after, they will be released both in Japanese and English at the same time. We are putting a lot of focus on this. I would like to ask the investors. You can choose Japanese or English. Please take a look at our integrated report. We have dedicated a lot of effort into this. Last of all, this is the industry trend. I have talked about this many times already. M&A intermediaries are increasing, and against such a backdrop, morale is declining, air quality is declining. In order to stop that, SME Agency. Agency will be revising the guideline for the second time. Not only for the companies, individual players. M&A players' skills, how should they be? Skill Map has been developed also by SME Agency. A major trend will be from this. Year to next year, based on The Skill map qualification system, may be launched. That's how I feel. This is something I perceive as positive. Regarding inappropriate buyers, it has been talked about over media. As an industry, we are taking quite strong actions. For example, creating the format of contract documents and creating a list of inappropriate buyers. These are the actions we're taking. As a leading company, we would like to do even more. We are doing even more than that. We should not be satisfied by being aware of these issues. We should fulfill on our accountability. However, just providing explanation is not good enough. We should also leave good results. We have to be responsible about delivering good results as well. About delivering good results, it could be about releasing the personal guarantee, but that's not the whole. We want to make sure that everybody becomes happy in M&A. The key word here is success. Success is the keyword for the responsibility we have. Therefore, we're going to of course take actions on inappropriate buyers. Besides that, PMI representation, warranty insurance, and on other fronts, we're going to take more comprehensive measures. Also on the industry, academia and government collaborations, we believe that we have to utilize such collaborations to take comprehensive measures. Chief Public Affairs Officer is Yokoi-san. We've established this position and he's being quite powerful, and we feel that we've been receiving much guidance from him and also from the SME Agency and on the academia front. In April, M&A research group was established and an academic society. By enhancing our collaboration of tri parties of industry, government and academia, we would. Like to develop this industry into a. More healthy one. Last but not the least, company. For the seller, it is the life of the seller itself. There are employees working for that company. These people. They spend their life at their company. Therefore, it's important that everybody becomes happy through M&A. We support, and we have to protect. As many companies as possible, in that sense, we would like to. Deliver the optimum and the best M&A. We would like to have the best transaction closure, and we would like to close as many as possible of such successful closures. We hold impressive and emotional closing ceremonies. We take a lead in PMI activities. We also support management, create their autobiography, and we want to make sure that the buyers can manage the company with confidence through the provision of representation and warranty insurance. We would like to support the second life of the former seller through the support through next navi. This is how we would like to achieve the M&A where our. Customers can be satisfied with. This is the end of our presentation. We are now going into the Q and A section. Thank you very much for the presentation. Now we are going into the Q and A. We accept questions through the chat function, and due to time constraints, we may not be able to respond to all the questions. Now we're going to start the Q and A part. We believe that you are still writing questions. Based on the questions we have received in the past interviews, we have prepared some questions. We would like to go through. The questions we have received in advance. The guideline was revised at the end of August last year. It's been a year since then. Are things settled down now, including the procedure of the internal procedures and the impact on productivity? Do you feel that the quality of the business has improved when you look at the entire industry? I would like to provide a brief answer to this. Takeuchi is going to provide on his own experience. I believe that the productivity issue is basically settled because it's the matter of how much time is spent and getting accustomed to it. About the business quality, I believe the business quality cannot improve suddenly. However, we feel that the employee morale has improved. However, there is still a long way to go. Therefore, as a Director and also as a leading company, we would like to. Continue to make efforts. However, at many boutique companies, they need to improve their quality of the business and their morale, their awareness. About this, we feel that the management of the boutique companies now have better awareness and better morale. We have to make the entire industry an even better one. That requires efforts on the side of each company. This is the sense of the awareness that the management of boutique companies now have. That's how I feel. However, that does not directly lead to an immediate improvement in the quality of the business and the morale. Therefore, we would like to continue to do what we've been doing, including education and so on. What do you think about the impact of the revision on the productivity? Okay, to talk about how things are at Nihon M&A Center, about important contractual terms and about risk items at Nihon M&A Center, we've been explaining these already from before the introduction of the revision. However, with the revision, these contents are now documented and now we have a format and we've been introducing those revisions. This is not a new thing to us, so we don't see any impact from the revision. Rather, we believe that we now have better visibility, which is better for the awareness of the entire employees. We believe that we have now become more lean compared to before. That's the atmosphere I feel in the company. Next question, it seems like M&A consultants' retention has some issues. What are the factors? What are the countermeasures you're thinking of? Also, are there any issues with the recruiting environment? Has there been any changes in the attributes of the applicants? This is a very important topic. First, I would like to answer. Looking at the hiring environment, it hasn't gotten worse. Rather, looking at new graduates as of now, for graduates that will be graduating in 2026, think tank research consulting segment, we are number four in terms of popularity: Daiba Research, Abim Consulting, Accenture, and then after that we follow, and then Nomura, and then Nomura Institute and Mitsubishi Research Institute. We are very popular, and looking at this year's internship applications, we have received more than 6,000 applicants. It was close to 7,000 applicants, that's what I'm hearing. Therefore, our company remains to be very popular and very high. Therefore, in terms of the environment, there are not much environment, but for mid-career reputation of the industry, there is an issue with that. 3 to 4 years ago, M&A industry had social missions and looks cool and good income, Blue Ocean, it used to be very, very popular segment, but there's a media report about inappropriate buyers and there are many companies that are trying to generate so much money. What is the, how is the morale? Such reputations started to emerge, and at around the same time, for example, consulting companies like Bay Current, Accenture, and others had hired people massively. Nihon M&A's advantages, we are different, we need to communicate that to the mid-careers market. We have come to an era where marketing is very important and against such. this backdrop, we are taking measures. For example, I myself or Takeuchi-san or Suzuki-san explain in the explanatory session ourselves, and agents' explanatory sessions, we host them ourselves. Sometimes we are taking measures as such, and also referrals, we are focusing on this as well. Therefore, we do not have such a big concern. The first part of the question about the retention, that is an issue indeed. Compared to last year, looking at the people who left, it has deteriorated slightly, and there are two reasons. I believe this is not always bad. What I mean is that the mode of the company is recovering to how it used to be, our company. We. Are very particular about numbers. We want to grow. We are a growth-oriented company, that's how we have been. This is because of 35 years of history, and this is exactly our DNA. In the past 35 years, however, in 2021, there was a scandal. In 2022-2024, during these periods, it was low growth, stagnation era for us. During this time, members who joined during this, people during. This time, with less than three years' tenure, they believe this is how the company is. They believe this is the DNA. This is the essence of our company. However, in 2025, we have moved on to a new chapter. We have a slogan to start growing again. We are accelerating, and we are recovering to how we used to be. They are surprised. In the past two to three. Years, these new joiners become surprised. They think, what happened to this company? The atmosphere is different compared to before, and then they leave. This is what is happening. People who have been with us for less than three years are the ones who are leaving the most. One point is that compared to our speed, we need to replace people who are slower compared to our pace. This is something we capture as something that's positive, but misunderstanding and people who are really high performance, when they leave, that's a problem. Therefore, from the second half, we'd like to follow up fully. For example, after six months after joining the company, Takeuchi-san, we call it Key Talk. Any questions will be given to Takeuchi-san. He will respond to all the questions. Even for the first year joiners, we hold such session. For the second year, third year joiners, I will be answering all the questions. They can ask any questions, we will follow up very much in detail. People who are passionate, who are high performance, we would like to make sure that we prevent them from leaving. Takeuchi-San, Would you like to add anything? Thank you. There might be some overlap. Simply said, for hiring, we have confidence. In mid-careers. In a year, 5,000 applications are sent to us. We'd like to be selective and concentrate on talented people. For the M&A industry. Overall, there might be some concerns, but we are the biggest company in the industry. This is a very big branding, and this is a very big advantage. In terms of recruitment, I have very strong confidence about this. On the other hand, looking at people who leave, this is a big challenge. We recognize this especially in the past two years. People who left, we are applauding them. Members who have joined us less than three years, they account for 2/3, 66% of the people who leave. Out of that, about half. Are. Changing jobs to another industry. Nihon M&A Center hire people. Who are not experienced, who are inexperienced. In M&A industry. We develop these talents to be able. To do work in M&A and they come from a different industry, and then within three years they leave. To go to work for another industry. Which means, in one word, they're not. Successful in hopping jobs. As Miyake mentioned earlier, after six months after joining, this is a very big break point. The top players are the people we hire from different industries. Within six months, if they are not able to achieve performance, they lose confidence. They start to feel that oh, maybe. I'm not good at this industry, so I should change. That's how I was myself after six months. Starting this month, every month, I. will be having meetings with all the members to generate confidence. Another point is one year later. After joining, one of the major reasons why they change jobs is because they. Like M&A. They like M&A Center very much. The department they're working at or mission, they don't really match or the sense of value does not match with the boss or the people they're working with. One year after joining, General Managers will be taking a lead to hold matching meetings. We will have such thorough discussions by introducing this from the second half of this year. The volume zone of the people who leave, these are the joiners. Within three years' time, we need to take such measures. How is the net increase expectation in the second half? This means we can just increase. The number of new hires, but this is a risk. Of course, we can continue to hire more and more, but if we do that, then of course we need to develop these talents. After hiring three persons per department, it'd be the right standard per department. I think as of now there's a challenge because many people are leaving, and if you try to increase the number. Of new hires, next year and the year after, there will be some impact on the development of such talents. Therefore, we would like to maintain the hiring to achieve the target plus 10% or so. We'd like to stop people from leaving the top management. We have to commit to that. I think this is something that we need to commit right away. Therefore, we'd like to take measures. Thank you very much. Next question. You have kept your full year forecast unchanged. Is there a lack of transparency or issue to the second half forecast about our full year forecast? That's not changed. That means things are going as planned, although slightly exceeding our initial plans. That's the reason why we've kept our full year forecast unchanged. If we are to accelerate our actual results, we're going to make timely disclosures, and if we sense deterioration, we're going to disclose potential downward revision. However, to talk about how things are at the moment, I can only communicate the facts and how things are. I am quite positive about the forecast for the second half because, first of all, the pipeline results or the pipeline numbers, the number of negotiations we have, and also available for matching or the unopened sell side mandates, these have been accumulated successfully. About December and March, we think that we have enough pipeline to generate good results, and this is a fact. Besides that, employees' motivation level, we feel that this has improved quite a lot. We believe that it's good enough to the level where I can report about this with strong confidence. We used to be at the bottom in 2022 or so, and we have improved step by step. Finally, we are united as a company, and that's the DNA we used to have as Nihon M&A Center that we are starting to see once again. In September, there was a strong momentum, and our employees are quite enthusiastic. We didn't have to create this kind of momentum. In December, we have incentive travel planned based on results for December. I believe that the employee momentum and enthusiasm are going to be strengthened further. I hope to have a peak in December. About the lack of transparency or issue, I do not see that based on what I see in the front lines. Next question. M&A sales per transaction is improving substantially. Do you believe you will be able to maintain this high level in Q3? Onwards going forward? What is the level you are aiming for? Thank you for the question. I myself as Holdings, it's not that. We are aiming for such higher M&A sales per transaction. Rather, we'd like to maintain the M&A sales per transaction. As we increase the number, the M&A. A sales per transaction decreases. In order to prevent that from happening, we'd like to make the pyramid overall larger, not just the bottom. Because if the large, the bottom part increases, only the M&A sales per transaction will decrease. This time the M&A. Sales per transaction is very good. JPY 45 million, JPY 50 million. It's not that we are aiming for such numbers. We are aiming for JPY 40 million plus minus alpha is good enough. That's my idea. In terms of the number. Multiplied by transaction sales per transaction, it'd be the performance. We'd like to maintain this level of M&A sales transaction. Takeuchi-san, how do you feel as the President of Nihon M&A Center Inc.? As for mid-cap, looking at the mandates from last year, this is increasing overall mandates. We are selective, we are concentrating on loss-making companies. We are not going to accept mandates, and in terms of sales we are putting a ceiling. High transaction price mandates are pulling up the overall and the small amount. Of M&A sales per transaction. are not dragging our feet. We'd like to increase the number of transactions. Rather than increasing the M&A sales per transaction, we'd like to maintain it. We'd like to maintain it at around JPY 40 million level. I think this is one of the key points. Thank you. Next question. Please share with us the number of negotiation open project at the end of September. Thank you for the question. We're checking this number. First of all, about the. The number. Of mandates, 2,360 active contract we had. In September. In September 2024 compared to September back then it was 1,960. The number increased by 110 or 20%. The number of mandates that are available for matching grew by 120%. We believe that there are ample chances for negotiations. About the mandates that have come into pipeline compared to the same time last year is 102% at 420. N ext question. Looking at new south side mandates, it's continuing to decline year on year. Both are decreasing. Direct network, are they seeing big decreases? Thank you for the question. There are two factors as I mentioned earlier. Takeuchi-san, can you comment? Thank you for the question. It is continuing to see a decrease year on year. Both direct and network, they are decreasing at around the same rate. However. I am not that worried about these mandates. We are very selective about this, and that in the end will lead to productivity improvement for everything. For example, loss or excess debt or getting mandates for small companies, then Nihon M&A Center will do value promotion headquarter, and so every member, all the many members, will be involved in this transaction, and that will decrease the productivity overall. There is inappropriate buyer. For the M&A industry at Nihon M&A Center, we are looking at each of the transactions very much in detail. If we receive mandates for companies which we cannot sell, that will hinder the productivity and worsen our productivity. This is a different note compared to the question. What are we focusing on very much, I'd like to talk about this. For the sell side mandate, close to 50% will be closed, and other than remaining 50%, 25% will be remaining, and the remaining 25%. We close the contract. This is a waste. M&A industry inactive mandates are around 25%. We'd like to put more efforts into inactive transactions. This is where we are allocating the most resources. We'd like to improve the closing rate, and that will lead to increase in sales, not just the new mandates. After that, KPIs. After that, we should be taking measures for this part. I think this is an inflection point. This is a paradigm shift. Things are changing very much right now, and we need to control to be able to achieve the midterm plan while taking measures here. This is what is required the most for us right now. When we achieve numbers, we'd like to report to you in the future. Thank you. Direct and Network. Looking at the ratio between the two, last year first half direct was 34%, referral was 66%, and now it's 38:62. So 35 to 65 is the rough ratio. 35 to 65 plus minus 2 to 3%. Direct is increasing just slightly. That is the current situation. Thank you. Next question. Average M&A sales per deal increased. How many large transactions did you close about large deals? The number that we've closed in the second quarter this year was 46. 46 pairs. Q2 last year was 27. The number increased by 19 in pairs. Next question. I'm hearing that the M&A loan screening is becoming stricter at financial institutions. Are there an impact on the lead time? Are you taking any countermeasures? Yes, we are taking measures against this. Interest rate does exist nowadays, and financial institutions, before, there were no interest rates, hardly. Therefore, loans for M&As could get some interest, and it was very positive and quick. Screening was done before. However. The CapEx loans financial institutions are able to charge interest. Therefore, for M&A loans the screening has become stricter, and it is taking a bit longer, and it does impact our lead time. With our internal efforts, I do believe it's possible for us to shorten the lead time with a number of financial institutions. We had discussions, and also from financial institutions, we have experienced members that we have invited from financial institutions, and with them. Having them as contact person, we are discussing how to shorten the lead time. There are two processes in the screening. One is collection of documents. The other is screening itself and collection of documents. It does require some time, like registration or financial results have to be collected. Due diligence results are needed. These. The documents that we have internally, therefore it's a loan package. We compile them as a loan package. Financial institutions no longer need to collect documents because we already can submit the documents. Once the interview is done, they can start screening right away. If we are well prepared, then financial institutions will be able to do the screening quickly. Screening can be accelerated, and as such we are making efforts to shorten the lead time. This is something we are already taking action on. We need to apologize that due to time constraints, the next question is going to be the final one that we're taking up today about leading indicators. On your presentation material, it basically only talks about volume and all of such volume figures are negative year on year. You say that that's the result of your selective screening, so you do not have a concern there. I would like to ask how things are in leading indicators based on values, not in volume. According to Changxing, the intermediary fee is JPY 2.4 billion in the first half. Q2 alone was JPY 1.3 billion, which is up by 19% year on year. I believe that this figure is more meaningful as a leading indicator. Is my understanding correct? Thank you very much for pointing out a very important theme for us. As we've said, our leading indicators are going down. However, we've said that there are two themes behind this. One is that we were fully focused on generating results in the first half. In the second half, we're going to put a bigger focus on acquiring more mandates. That's why we don't have much concern about these leading indicators. We have very strong capability in acquiring mandates. Therefore, as long as we put enough focus on trying to acquire mandates, we are confident that we can acquire many. This is based on our track record of 35 years experience. Another theme is that we've been selective in acquiring mandates. About being selective, we're going to be even more selective going forward. Therefore, there is going to be a potential decline in a mandate's volume. However, we can at the same time expect an improvement in quality and that will eliminate unnecessary process in our company, which improves our productivity and eventually our overall performance. When it comes to leading indicators, we may need investors to review our leading indicators from a different perspective than before. We would like to consider what better KPIs we should be presenting. We are considering exactly that. About value base, we don't. We're not tracking value based figures, or rather we're not. We don't have the values that we can readily present to you immediately. However, I basically assume that the values change in line with the volume and therefore at the moment I believe it's safe to assume that in terms of value as well, we have negative leading indicators, but we're going to recover this. About interim fees, thank you for pointing this out. This is a positive topic that we've been unsuccessfully closing LOI. As a leading indicator, this is an intermediary fee. It can be considered to be the topic that can lead to, that will be converted into closure. However, the success rate after closing LOI, I mean, since we've received intermediary fees and retainer fee from the sellers, we have enough information that we've dripped and therefore we believe that successful closure rate is quite high. However, we cannot close all of the mandates we've received through this process. The 19% increase in intermediary fee is very positive news and we will do our best in schedule management to convert this into actual closure. We're going to perform some checks in line with the OR based on the schedule. Thank you very much for being with us through the end of this session despite your busy schedule. We've talked about the first half results for the current fiscal year. Before we wrap from Mr. Naraki and Mr. Takeuchi, we're going to give a bit of comment to share with you the ambience in the front lines. To talk about the topic that has not been covered today, there is usually a question about the time lag and about time lag. In the second quarter, we had very limited time lag, one of the smallest in the recent years. We now have a more complex deal process compared to before. Our employees are taking the right actions and making the right communications and I believe that this can be considered as positive materials leading into positive results in the future. What about Mr. Takeuchi? Thank you always for your time as usual. It's the first time in three years. That we have been able to make an upward revision. This time, I am very happy about it. This, and I feel a bit secured as well. Our employees are very happy about this. They are very excited and very much encouraged, based on this happiness. In the third quarter, we'd like to continue to do our best. Q3 and Q4, we'd like to accelerate and promote our performance, and I ask for your continuous support. Thank you very much. In the first half, we have been. Able to come up with an upward revision towards December and for the full year. We'd like to leave this good momentum. To be able to live up to your expectation. We will continue to do our best, and I ask for your continued support. Thank you very much for your time today.