[Foreign Language] This is Hideaki Tanaka of [Foreign language] Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley [Foreign language] Can you hear me? [Foreign language] Yes. Now, I'd like to ask about the plans for this fiscal year. First. [Foreign language] This top line growth of 9%. [Foreign language] If we look at just the fourth quarter. [Foreign language] We see the sales, revenue increased by 1%, and pre-GAAP it was about 2%. [Foreign language] It seems like you're slowing down in momentum. So when it comes to this 9% increase in revenues, how certain are you of this? [Foreign language] Also, well, for costs, you mentioned that you're going to be keeping down the costs to current levels, but there's [Foreign language] JPY 1 billion extra costs incurred. And aside from that. [Foreign language] There was the currency factor that increased the cost because of the depreciation of the yen. So, I didn't feel that you'll be able to achieve your plans that easily. But, what is your certainty of achieving this? If you could talk about that, that would be appreciated. [Foreign language] Yeah, perhaps Kevin is the one who's spending the money, so perhaps you can explain. Thank you, Mahendra. Yeah, so we feel very good about it, quite honestly. Like Eva was suggesting, you know, our business is one that Q4s are seasonally just very high for us. And what we certainly found is that sometimes it can be a little bit difficult for us to predict when we're gonna close all of those deals. And I highlighted in Q4, a couple of different areas where we slowed down. One was around Cloud Edge. That's the appliance in small enterprise in Japan. And it was really an unintended consequence from raising the prices. So what we found was our channel partners, we raised the prices early last year, and our channel partners took advantage and did large buys just before that price increase. So we ended up with some softness. But they're retooling up, and we see that resuming as we go into 2024. We'll see that start to come back. In the other area that I'd highlighted was around the Americas. We had identified this in our December 1st investor conference, that was an area that we were really focused in on. We wanted, we've done really well in the Americas and in the U.S. in particular at attaching Vision One. But where we need more work is how can we expand by doing more, as Eva said, platform selling. What we did was we have a region, the EMEA region, which is very good at doing platform selling. We've assigned a number of those people to take on the U.S.. We've made those changes already. We've put those changes in place. So we feel like we will be able to step up to more platform selling in the U.S. and start to get more of our fair share of the U.S. market. So we feel really good on the top line. On the bottom line, I actually feel even better. We said that we would, you know, through automation, through AI, through some reorganization and restructuring, that we would find ways to remove just over $50 million in operating expense. And we've done that. So, you know, I know going into it, our operating margins will be substantially higher as a result of that. May I add a bit? Well, we make forecasts in yen dollars, yen, yen-based, right? In 2023, despite whatever currency movement and despite we probably don't like the composition of the currency, but at the end, we met 100% of our forecast revenue growth in yen-based. Our cost has been impacted by the exchange rate a lot. As you can see, in our analysis, without the restructuring cost and without the actual tax payment we made, we actually still have ordinary income growth, and we met our operating profit targets. So we have very high confidence that in 2024, based on what our forecast is, I think, we can meet both of those forecasts in 2024. [Foreign language]。 Thank you very much. [Foreign language] Thank you very much. [Foreign language] I will unmute the next person. [Foreign language] When your microphone's unmuted, please state your name and affiliation and ask your question. [Foreign language] Hello? [Foreign language] This is Sato speaking. Can you hear me? Yes. I mean, I just have one question. Your guidance for this fiscal year, is that I guess if you divide the 19.5% OP margin, yet you said that you're gonna be forecasting 20%. Is this 50 basis points difference, should I care or should I not care? Or is there some message, you know, in between? Mahendra, did you? It should. Oh, unless, unless I divided the numbers wrong. No, no. I think you're doing it. It's just over 19.5%, and that. Is that gap just basically CFO saying, "I wanna be a little bit more conservative"? It's just simple rounding in. It's just simple rounding. Yeah. Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure because your message sounds so maybe there was a little bit of a message from a CFO. You know, my second question, actually, in addition to those, is, the Tanaka-san was saying, just looking at the fourth quarter results, especially the top line, I know that you said that Japan's looking at a single digit of 2%-3%, I guess. And the other one is US looking at upper end, and the rest is that we'll have. And Omikawa-san basically presented that Japan is finally moving forward with enterprise areas with all of your signature product for 2024. So, so hasn't Japan should be accelerating a little bit more this fiscal year because you also had, like, 2%-3% guidance last fiscal year. You know, Japan hasn't really been growing. So I'm a little bit worried about Japan, especially, like, you know, we're supposed to be getting the PC replacement cycle maybe toward the end of this year. So that should also help move some of your consumer figures, hopefully, with the PC replacement cycle. I don't know. Is there, are you looking at a conservative for Japan where the whole country is supposed to be shifting to DX? And U.S., I mean, I know you have a lot; you won lots of awards over there, but we just don't see the sales numbers. So can you talk about, you know, these two regions for 2024? I like to volunteer to take that. First, for Japan, yes, I share your optimism about Japan, and I feel we should do better. But frankly, the reason that we're being conservative is Japan's sales structure, sales through the channel, and also just the adoption of the new technology speed. Traditionally, in Japan, it's not that fast. So we didn't dare to make that very optimistic progress. But we believe it's the right direction. It's just the distribution channel and the speed of customer adoption. We cannot be that optimistic about Japan. So no problem about the Japan operation. It's just the speed of adoption that we were concerned. And for the U.S., as you can see, from our December 1st Investor Day, we did announce. Kevin introduced our new structure in the U.S.. A lot of this restructuring was happening in the U.S., the whole sales force and our tech support services, the refreshing of the U.S. operation. We believe after this new structure, the U.S. should go back to better growth strategy momentum. So those are the two things that I think I'm aligned with you. I do believe these are the two regions that we should be more optimistic and have more growth. That's what we lay our investment in. Actually, the final questions for me is restructuring, especially the people. I'm looking at page 36, and I know this is like a, you know, a combined number of hiring and letting go. But the number of people for research and development is actually less. And also, it looks like you cut numbers from Americas and also APAC-EMEA areas, but kept the rest of the areas as it is. So did you cut engineering resources more than sales or technical support? Where is the resource restructuring happening? Because I thought globally, you know, getting engineers, hiring engineers is quite difficult with the resource, especially in the security software space. Where was the actual people restructuring happened? [Foreign language] Well, this number, some of them basically left in January, and that's not reflected yet. So this is going to be clearer at the end of March. [Foreign language] And yes. [Foreign language] People leave and the people join, without us [Foreign language] restructuring sometimes. Oh, I see. [Foreign language] So people have been shuffled. [Foreign language] In a balanced way, across the board? Yes. [Foreign language] By March, we will know better. Okay? [Foreign language] Yes. Cost reduction is mostly in the first quarter. Impact of that, yes. [Foreign language] As Kevin has just explained. [Foreign language] Of course, there is some cost associated in terms of a retirement allowance. But most of the cost were accounted for in the fourth quarter. And then in the next quarter, we will see the impact. I see. [Foreign language] Thank you very much for the question. Now we will unmute the next person. Once you're unmuted, please identify yourself. [Foreign language] This is Kikuchi of SMBC. Thank you very much for the presentations. There are two questions. [Foreign language] In recent result. [Foreign language] And page 32 of Mr. Negi's presentation. [Foreign language] There is the active customer account. [Foreign language] And it mentions [Foreign language] The subscriptions were flat for this quarter. [Foreign language] If that's the case, then subscription revenues will not increase, is the feeling that I get. However, for subscriptions. [Foreign language] When it comes to the number of accounts, even if you don't see an increase, does that mean that subscription revenues can still increase? [Foreign language] And if that's the case. [Foreign language] Then I believe that you would be able to achieve your revenue plans. But could you tell us the structure there? I think the overall structure is that we focus on the existing customer and put more effort on the foreign expansion. Those expansions are subscription revenue. So yes, you're right. We are, if even if we don't add more subscription customer number, we were still able to expand our subscription revenue. [Foreign language] Was that understandable? What about perpetual then? For the fourth quarter, there was a major decrease in perpetual revenue. [Foreign language] And do you believe that this decrease will continue to accelerate and continue? Or is it just a one-time, temporary phenomenon? [Foreign language] Could you tell us about this? [Foreign language] The perpetual customers are definitely decreasing. [Foreign language] And there is about [Foreign language] 500,000. But when it comes to the value of customers, [Foreign language] it's about 38,000. And so even if we see a decrease in the smaller accounts, [Foreign language] if we can continue to increase, then we believe that we should be able to achieve the revenue goals in this area. I see. [Foreign language] Let me ask again about this aspect. For the fourth quarter, there had been a temporary decrease, but for this year, you're going to increase by 9% the sales. And do you think that they'll be equally distributed over all four quarters? Or will you see more increases in the second half? Do you have any targets in this area of how you intend to achieve your goals? Kevin, do you have any comments on that? Well, we don't give quarterly guidance, right? And we've already talked about how our business can, in fact, move up and down. But, you know, we do see already that Q1, you know, is looking quite healthy. So, you know, we do see the normal distribution that we would normally see across our business. And that's definitely the plan. [Foreign language] Can you add to that? [Foreign language] I mentioned this when I explained about the pre-GAAP results. [Foreign language] When it comes to the larger deals, there may be a concentration of that towards the end of the quarter [Foreign language] And so there are fluctuations by quarter. But we believe that the, well, the annual outlook holds. [Foreign language] Yes. And in regards to the revenues, I'd have a second question. [Foreign language] In the targets for 2027 in Kevin's material, when it comes to 2027, OP is going to be JPY 100 billion. So it'll double. [Foreign language] I think that you can control the fixed costs. But can you really increase the revenues? That's an important point. [Foreign language] And by region or by segment or between subscription and perpetual. [Foreign language] This 10% increase in the revenue, is there a breakdown? Or is there some explanation about how this will be realized if it's by region? [Foreign language] No. [Foreign language] In Japan and America, how can you achieve growth is something that I'd like to ask about. Thank you for it. It sounds like you liked our road to 2027 chart. So thank you for that. What we wanted to do is share with everyone, you know, that we do have a long-term plan. We have lots of details that are built underneath that plan. And we wanted to give this as our North Star. This is where we are moving towards. It does include revenue growth across our segments, across the regions. It does include, actually some incremental headcount along the way. So it's not. We are not telegraphing that we will be flat in terms of headcount out through till 2027. So it's not unrealistic. We will be hiring some along the way. So we built that model and that plan in order to give us that North Star. So that's what we are working towards. But we do feel like Eva said it really well when she started to talk about what Trend used to be like, very franchise-oriented. Now the entire company in the enterprise space is absolutely fixated on Vision One, on landing and expanding our Vision One platform. I've been here for 15 years. I've never experienced that before where we have the entire company leaning into one area. It's a hot market. We feel we've got the number one platform. We feel like we have a big installed base, and we're going to be going after it much more methodically. Yeah. So we think we're in a really good spot to be able to achieve the growth numbers that we're talking about. I do think that Trend Micro's globalization or our global distribution of the business provide the natural hedging and the natural complement to each other. So, maybe just for instance, you know, last year, we totally lost Russia, Ukraine, all those businesses. And also the second half, I mean, Israel and all the Gaza, all of those businesses, we lost. But we're still able to grow and achieve our annual growth. So first, I would say, focusing on the annual plan is much better than just, you know, quarterly fluctuation comparison. And also, I believe our global operation is much more resilient than if we're just focusing, focused on certain areas' growth. And that's why we don't provide specific region of growth. [Foreign language] Furthermore, to explain, as Eva has mentioned, we have a large customer base in Japan. Japan is a unique case. But there's some who have only a single solution. But before the global market, there is the know-how, which is AI-based, which we're starting to deploy in Japan. And we can offer accurate advice so that per customer, I refer to them as sensors, but— to explain, as Eva has mentioned, we have a large customer base in Japan. Japan is a unique case. But there's some who have only a single solution. But before the global market, there is the know-how, which is AI-based, which we're starting to deploy in Japan. And we can offer accurate advice so that per customer, I refer to them as sensors, but— to explain, as Eva has mentioned, we have a large customer base in Japan. Japan is a unique case. But there's some who have only a single solution. But before the global market, there is the know-how, which is AI-based, which we're starting to deploy in Japan. And we can offer accurate advice so that per customer, I refer to them as sensors, but— to explain, as Eva has mentioned, we have a large customer base in Japan. Japan is a unique case. But there's some who have only a single solution. But before the global market, there is the know-how, which is AI-based, which we're starting to deploy in Japan. And we can offer accurate advice so that per customer, I refer to them as sensors, but— to explain, as Eva has mentioned, we have a large customer base in Japan. Japan is a unique case. But there's some who have only a single solution. But before the global market, there is the know-how, which is AI-based, which we're starting to deploy in Japan. And we can offer accurate advice so that per customer, I refer to them as sensors, but— [Foreign language] we're seeing more and more necessity for this kind of approach. [Foreign language] And since we have this base, and furthermore— [Foreign language] y ou know, as a result of the focus on economic security, finally, Japan is starting to make efforts in this area. So the head office had been behind. [Foreign language] Now, yeah, we're seeing things ignited. Here in Japan, we have the formula in place. We can take advantage of all the activities on a global basis here in Japan. Thank you very much. That's all from my side for questions. Thank you. Now we are doubled. You know, we know how to hit higher hit rates in the enterprise business as well as running the runway business in Japan. So we can do both. [Foreign language] I will unmute the next person. So please, state your name and affiliation and ask your question. [Foreign language] Yes, I'm Saturu. [Foreign language] I have two questions. Page 19 Negi-san asked a question, and I just want to clarify. Operating income under JPY 40 billion for this fiscal year. [Foreign language] And, you are buying back shares worth JPY 40 billion [Foreign language] And 70% payout ratio. But, sometimes you may not achieve that. [Foreign language] And dividend [Foreign language] For this fiscal year, is going to be lower than 70% payout ratio? Or you don't know? [Foreign language] Thank you very much for your question. [Foreign language] This is a complicated explanation, but, when we repatriate profit from overseas. [Foreign language] We have to close the books in December, and the dividend may not make that deadline. So where is the profit coming from? What is the structure? How do we repatriate the profit? What has happened to profit, in Japan on a standalone basis? [Foreign language] So generally speaking, we can sustain 70% payout ratio. [Foreign language] But if there is a big profit for a specific subsidiary, but the dividend is not paid for the account closing timing, in that case, we cannot account for that profit. [Foreign language] So this is one factor [Foreign language] A problem that we have. So this is why we explain this on this slide. But it is an exceptional situation. So we believe that 70% can be maintained. I see. So for this fiscal year. [Foreign language] Excluding irregular situations, it's going to be more than 180%? [Foreign language] No, 180%. [Foreign language] Well, if you combine last year's dividend plus the share buyback, if you combine the two fiscal years, I see what you mean. [Foreign language] Well, the total payout ratio will change depending on how you combine [Foreign language] From which fiscal year. [Foreign language] For FY 2024, we have the net income. And then the dividend will be paid out based on that. [Foreign language] And also, as BOD resolved, we have the JPY 40 billion share buyback. So we are actually adding them up to calculate the total return payout ratio. [Foreign language] So depending on what kind of combination you make, from which fiscal year, maybe there may be some discrepancies. [Foreign language] I see. My second question about execution. [Foreign language] Headcount reduction is not rare in a global company, I understand. [Foreign language] But in Trend Micro's case, I think this has been very rare. [Foreign language] And you have a radial web organization. You use AI for your sales activities. [Foreign language] And what about the motivation problem for the employees or the transition of a sales force? Do you think that would endanger the profitability or the performance of the company? Kevin, do you want to address that? I mean, Eva can open. No. I think if we make the right decision, actually, the people who stay will have higher motivation. That is the case that we see.