Thank you for your kind introduction, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Wakatsuki, Co-President of Nippon Paint Holdings. Thank you for joining us today. I would like to explain the outline of financial results for Q2, FY 2021. I would like to ask for your kind understanding once again that this call is being live cast on our website with simultaneous interpretation into English. I would like to explain following the material. First, Q2 summary. We achieved a record high revenue and operating profit on a Tanshin basis in Q2 against the backdrop of raw material cost increase and continued impacts of COVID-19. The differences between Tanshin and non-GAAP are mainly attributable to newly consolidated businesses and the FX impact. Asia and JV-related expenses include one-off expenses of PPA as part of the impact of newly consolidated businesses. The non-GAAP revenue significantly increased. Q2 and Q3 face difficulties in terms of profitability as raw material cost increases while low price inventory decreases and the impact of a price hike is not fully contributing yet. We nevertheless achieved increased profit. China seems to have continuously expanded market share for both DIY and Project and did extremely well. Because of the huge impact of soaring raw material cost, profit decreased year-on-year. Competition is becoming more fierce in Project, I should not be optimistic. On the other hand, DIY is making stronger growth and increasing its market share just like Project. Turning to Asia, excluding China, although Malaysia and Singapore saw a resurgence of COVID-19 in June, revenue in these countries grew significantly as the same period last year was the toughest. The same applies to Japan, though the impact of COVID continues. Japan recorded increased revenue and increased profit compared with the same period last year. Newly consolidated Indonesia continues to have excellent performance despite the impact of COVID-19 and based on reference numbers, has achieved increased revenue and profit and continues to achieve extremely high profit margin. Having said that, however, we need to keep paying close attention to COVID-19. The impact of material cost increase is strong across the board, and as I said in Q1, low cost material inventory procured in last year are running low, and price hikes and cost reduction efforts take time to have effect. Therefore, Q2 and Q3 are tough in terms of profitability. On the other hand, we will be able to implement a price increase in regions where we enjoy a big market share. In second half, with an assumption that material costs will not increase that much anymore, declining in margin will be limited. Increase in revenue will start contributing in full. Page four, please. As I said, in Q1, I would revise the guidance if necessary, taking into account the raw material cost situation and revenue trend. There are still many uncertainties, such as the pandemic and material cost. Based on a set of assumptions, we revised up both revenue and operating profit guidance. We are expecting to exceed JPY 1 trillion revenue and JPY 100 billion operating profit, renewing the record. Factors for revision are as shown here, and we believe we will be able to steadily expand market share, though the impacts of material cost increase will remain. We are renewing our confidence about our capability to grow. We are also drastically reviewing head office expenses, as stated in our medium-term plan, to become fully prepared to achieve the targets set out in our medium-term plan. That is what we promised when myself and Co-president Wee took the office. We are making efforts in order to be fully prepared to achieve that goal. Page five, please. This explains about the raw material cost situation. No surprise that China was the first to be affected and its Q2 margin was very impacted. Overall, gross profit declined vis-a-vis last year and Q1, and such countermeasures as price increase and SG&A cost reduction have been implemented. Full year gross profit shall not decline this much. We cannot be complacent in Q3 either. There is a possibility that material prices will peak out, and our price increase will start to work in favor in full, so things will be manageable and our full year forecast is based upon that assumption. As for the topics, launch of film business, as announced in July, has many positive reactions, and this will provide new functions and additional value based on technology. It will contribute to solving such social issues as CO2 reduction. We are determined to continue to work hard for such products and areas. Regarding primer market, it is as announced previously. Page seven shows that we proved that our PROTECTON products are effective in suppressing the novel coronavirus through a joint research with The University of Tokyo. We will continue with the joint researches like this targeting practical application. Page eight. We have resolved and announced the dissolution and liquidation of our former European headquarters, Nippon Paint Europe. This is a part of a business restructuring we had announced on April 1st and has nothing to do with the transfer of the European business, which will be explained on the next page. NPAE, Nippon Paint Automotive Europe, Bollig & Kemper's former German entity on the diagram is already operating as a de facto European headquarters, and the purpose of the liquidation is to reduce the number of layers, and we decided to liquidate NPE. With the liquidation, we will recognize deferred tax assets after application of deferred tax accounting, which result in a decrease of income taxes of JPY 3.6 billion. NPTR, Nippon Paint Turkey, Boya, is not under NPAE or NPE, and through this restructuring, they'll go directly under NPAE and will be operating directly under NPHD. Such structure will continue, and therefore is outside the scope of NPAE transfer to Wuthelam. Now page nine and page 10. This again was resolved and announced today. Let me explain in details. NPAE and BNPA in India, Berger Nippon Paint Automotive Coatings and NPE, which operate automotive coating business and recorded impairment losses in the fiscal year that ended in December 2019. This is the Berger Nippon Paint Automotive Coatings is a joint venture with Berger. In addition to these two automotive coating businesses, we have NPI, Nippon Paint India, that runs construction paint business or decorative paint business. These three companies will be transferred to Wuthelam. These three companies is suffering from impacts of the pandemic, increasing raw material costs, and there's been changes in the market and the competitive landscape. Some of these issues are specific to each company and others are common. To realize sustainable growth and profitability, since they are not issues related to just this fiscal year's performance, we believe that there is a need for fundamental business restructuring and investment. For us, or for Nippon Paint Holdings to make significant investment will place short-term financial burden while future uncertainties would remain. We have considered if the restructuring is to be done within our group, which is a listed company. In the process of consideration, we had discussions with Wuthelam Group, who is a major shareholder of the company, and the idea of transferring the three companies to the group came up. We thought about four points, which are, first point is additional investments and expenses incurred will be borne by Wuthelam Group. Secondly, once there is visibility in the rebuilding of the businesses, we will have an option to buy back these companies. However, we will not be obligated to do so. Thirdly, Wuthelam Group will not transfer the businesses to third parties. Fourthly, a transfer will be in fair value. Once these four conditions were met, Nippon Paint Group will be able to maintain its presence in the global automotive market as well as presence in the Indian automotive market while keeping strategic options for our future. At the same time, since these three companies are expected to make losses, therefore, with the transfer, we will be able to make contributions to the increase in net income as well as EPS. We decided that the transfer is reasonable from the perspective of the protection of minority shareholders and maximization of shareholder value, which is our mission. There will be a change to the capital relationship. However, importance of European and Indian region for our group will remain unchanged, and we will hold the call option right to buy back the three companies in the future. In addition, the management and business operations of the three companies will be entrusted by the Wuthelam Group to us, and we will continue to manage and operate the three companies, and the companies' names will also remain unchanged. Therefore, we can minimize the impact to our customers. In terms of buying back, we have decided that will be done in fair value. In the discussions that we had with Wuthelam Group, through this deal, they are not expecting to make any profit. Even if we were to exercise our option, they are not expecting to make any profit through the transfer, which has already been confirmed. The impact on the consolidated earnings is a rough estimate based on the estimated values of the three companies. These numbers may change, such as Forex assumptions. Consolidated forecast of the revenue of JPY 1,010 billion is after deduction of the revenue of over JPY 10 billion in revenue as shown here on the slide. The transaction will be with a major shareholder of the company. We have formulated a special committee that consists of three independent directors and had deliberations and resolved without Chairman Goh. It's been confirmed that this transaction is reasonable and sufficiently protects the benefits of the minority shareholders. The confirmation was made by the special committee and was approved. For this page and the pages that follow, I will leave them to QA. Let me just give you a supplementary explanation on page 16. On non-GAAP basis in Q2, as I said earlier, operating profit increased by JPY 1 billion, a bit over JPY 1 billion, which was a big adjustment on Tanshin number. The main reasons for the difference are explained in details in the appendix. Let me briefly explain. First of all, there was the newly consolidation of our Indonesian business, positive impact of JPY 3 billion. For one-time impact, PPA expenses in Indonesia, -JPY 1.5 billion. FX, JPY 1.8 billion is expected. Chinese subsidy, about JPY 400 million. For business restructuring in Japan, a little over JPY 1 billion having negative impact. As a result, we have made the adjustment to the Tanshin result. As a result, one-time expense of JPY 5 billion that I explained in the beginning of the fiscal year was recorded in the first half together with the expense, and mainly M&A related expenses of JPY 2.6 billion, which was recorded in Q1. All of these one-time expenses have already been recorded. We are talking about JPY 102 billion and, as you can see, the total amount of one-time expense is shown on the slide. This concludes my presentation, and I would now like to entertain your questions. Thank you very much for your kind attention.
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