Welcome to Rakuten Group's 2021 third quarter financial results. We just had another solid quarter of double-digit top-line growth, as well as strong sustained bottom-line growth in our internet businesses. This despite the high hurdle created by last year's accelerated growth amidst the pandemic. Overall, as we continue to invest in our mobile business, we recorded a consolidated loss similar to previous quarters. Our mobile business is now entering its next phase of growth as it starts to reduce reliance on our partner network's roaming service. The engine behind third quarter growth was our internet businesses, which focused on driving cross-service use of our multiple online services. Fintech profit growth remains at the same level as a year ago when excluding upfront investment for future growth and a one-off gain last year in the credit card business. Rakuten Card has announced a midterm plan aimed at not just boosting its own bottom line, but also lifting the fintech business as a whole. Indeed, our fintech business continues to acquire loyal customers at a rapid pace. In terms of account number, Rakuten Bank has grown to be Japan's number one online bank and is disrupting traditional banking through a digital strategy empowered by Rakuten's strong ecosystem. As previously mentioned, we are in the early stages of exploring capital options. Our CFO will have the details on our overall financial strategy that aims to ensure capital flexibility, but also enable more autonomous growth of individual businesses within our ecosystem. All of this is part of a group strategy that aims to spur the next phase of disruption and growth in the post-pandemic world. For more, here's Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani. Welcome to Rakuten Group's fiscal year 2021 third quarter consolidated financial results video streaming session. Today, I would like to cover several topics. One is how unique our ecosystem is. Rakuten's unique and resilient ecosystem has been performing very well. We have more than 70 innovative businesses in Japan and outside of Japan as well. Global membership has reached 1.5 billion membership, and global transaction value for this quarter has reached JPY 6.6 trillion, which is almost 20% growth year-on-year. The uniqueness of Rakuten ecosystem is we utilize one brand, one ID, and also we utilize the data we accumulate across our different services. Especially for the fintech, which is demonstrating really amazing growth, we cross-use our members, and there are also very strong financial synergies among financial services, including Rakuten Bank, which already have 11 million accounts, Rakuten Card, which has 24 million cards issued, and Rakuten Securities, which has 6 million accounts. All of them are either distinct number one service or close to the number two service in Japan. On top of these three pillars, we also have Rakuten Pay, general insurance, and life insurance service. This is the highlight of some key verticals which we do. As you can see on this chart, despite the fact that the general economy has been impacted tremendously during this COVID-19, Rakuten has demonstrated its resilience against any kind of environment. For example, Rakuten domestic e-commerce GMS has grown 60% over two years basis, while the other players are struggling. Rakuten Travel GTV didn't show growth. It was -14% on two-year basis, but other industry has gone down significantly, almost over 50% negative growth. Ad businesses is also growing nicely, so is card shopping. Other credit card companies struggled tremendously during this COVID-19 because offline transaction has slowed down for the last two years because of COVID-19, but Rakuten Card shopping GTV has shown 25% CAGR. One of the outstanding performance is Rakuten Bank. Rakuten Bank deposit is getting very, very big. When we started Rakuten Bank, deposit balance was about a few billion dollars, but it is now getting close to $70 billion with +38% two-year CAGR. The... Talking about general market, obviously, for the last 2 years, the world economy has struggled because of the COVID-19, but the global economy in advanced countries, U.S., Japan, Europe, and China, are showing very significant comeback. Japanese economy in last year was negative almost 5%, but this year we're gonna show 12.8%. I think conservatively, we are estimating 3.0% GDP growth, but I think this can be a little bit higher. Now, we are moving to the post-COVID-19 era, especially in Japan. I think this is going to be a tremendous growth opportunity for Rakuten Group. Just talking about the pure performance for this quarter, our operating income has demonstrated extremely good growth, excluding our mobile business, which is big investment for us. The OI of other businesses together has reached JPY 47 billion, which is 45% YOY growth. E-commerce, logistics, overseas businesses, all the financial businesses are performing extremely well. One of the area we have been working on is how we can improve our overseas businesses and sports business. As you can see on this chart, our loss has dramatically shrunk, no overstatement to say, probably we will be able to demonstrate positive income in the near future for overseas and sports businesses. Fintech is growing extremely well, and we recently announced very ambitious project for Rakuten Card called Triple Three, which means now we are aiming to get to 30 million number of cards issued, JPY 30 trillion of short-term GTV, and the GTV market share among the credit card payment to reach 30%. This is an unbelievable target, but I think we will be able to execute. In terms of the mobile, we are building a radio station network at massive speed for 4G and 5G, and by the end of March of next year, we will reach 96% population coverage all over Japan. The mobile subscribers are growing consistent growth, and with more radios we build, I'm very confident we will be able to further accelerate new subscribers. Let's talk about ecosystem expansion through the partnerships. As you know, logistics is becoming one of the most important factor for e-commerce. Rakuten has agreed and established joint venture with Japan Post, which has nationwide universal logistics service. Rakuten has been building its own delivery network across Japan, but one of the biggest challenge for us is how we can penetrate to rural areas and super rural areas, whereby Japan Post already has its delivery network. This is going to be very positive for us to basically decrease our investment into logistics network, as well as making it profitable in the very near future. The fintech, we are now trying to bring Rakuten Bank to public for several reasons. One, definitely bank needs good amount of equity to further accelerate the growth as well as increase our revenue. As we grow equity through this public offering, we will be able to scale Rakuten Bank businesses more and underwrite more assets, which will be generated by Rakuten Card. Talking about Rakuten Mobile, we have basically three objectives. One is make sure that our standalone Rakuten Mobile business is going to be tremendously profitable. At the same time, we want to make sure that there is a tremendous contribution to Rakuten ecosystem. Third is we would like to start really creating a very scalable business model for selling our software, as well as selling our platform. We already started this project. We have 6 existing clients in Americas, 4 existing clients in Europe, and 4 in Asia. One of the most important project we have is this project with 1&1 Drillisch in Germany, which are going to basically adopt a full implementation of Rakuten communication platform. We believe the addressable market size of O-RAN or virtualized the mobile network business is going to reach $150 billion in 2025, and we want to be the front runner for this business. On top of that, definitely how to contribute to society is becoming a very important issue for us. We are trying to be as green as possible, and we also want to be as diversified as possible, and we would like to make sure that we have a very strong corporate governance structure to support social contribution as well. This is the highlights for this quarter. The global GTV has reached JPY 6.6 trillion, which is almost 20% YoY growth. The consolidated revenue has reached JPY 400 billion. Core business operating income has reached JPY 48 billion. Domestic e-commerce two-year CAGR is +17.7% growth. Rakuten Card shopping GDV has reached JPY 3.6 trillion, which is 23.3% YoY growth. Rakuten Card holders has already reached 23.9 million cards. Rakuten Securities accounts has reached 6.6 million accounts, and Rakuten Bank accounts has reached 11.38 million accounts. All these key performance indicators are showing very healthy and strong growth. We are very happy to see this solid but very strong growth of our core businesses, as well as we are making some of the key businesses outside of Japan, very profitable as well. That is it, from myself, and I hope you will enjoy the rest of presentation. Thank you very much. [Non-English content] In the third quarter, shopping e-commerce GMS centered on Rakuten Ichiba steadily increased. This is despite the strong demand which arose from stay-at-home trends in the third quarter of last year. In addition, domestic e-commerce GMS, including Travel, decreased by single digit due to postponement of the Go To Travel campaign. The trend has not changed and remained firm. Let's look at revenue and operating income. The e-commerce business centered on Rakuten Ichiba continued to grow even after last year's increased demand due to stay-at-home trends. Both revenue and operating income steadily increased. Here is a breakdown of our operating profit. In our marketplace business, Rakuten Travel was affected by last year's Go To Travel campaign. On the other hand, Rakuten Ichiba's operating profit increased as a result of increased user loyalty. In the logistics business, we established JP Rakuten Logistics, our new joint venture with Japan Post, in the third quarter. JP Rakuten Logistics succeeded Rakuten's logistics business, which led to improved year-on-year results. The e-commerce penetration ratio in Japan is increasing year after year, and in 2020 it was 8.1%. This is still low compared to the other countries, so further growth is expected in the future. Growth rate of Rakuten's e-commerce service are exceeding industry average despite the current conditions. Rakuten will continue to aim for further business expansion as our e-commerce penetration ratio increases. At Rakuten Ichiba, the number of users making purchases and the frequency of purchases per user both continued to grow. We are maintaining a higher user retention rate. Along with Rakuten Ichiba growth, cross-use with each of our e-commerce service is also steadily increasing. We will continue to focus on expanding cross-use and aim to maximize our users' LTV. As an e-commerce operator, we believe we must expand our logistics capabilities in order to meet growing demand for e-commerce going forward. Through collaboration with Japan Post, we will improve user satisfaction and support revenue expansion by making logistics more efficient for our merchant. JP Rakuten Logistics has started operation of its Chuorinkan fulfillment center. Currently, the number of deliveries from Rakuten Super Logistics is increasing, and we are aiming for further expansion going forward. In addition, we are conducting drone delivery trials and achieved the first round-trip delivery in Japan conducted without observers. Going forward, we will make practical use of drone in order to make deliveries more efficient and promote regional revitalization and CO2 reduction in regions where traditional deliveries are difficult. In addition, Rakuten Travel is promoting a variety of pandemic-related initiatives for our customers, business partners, and society at large. Most recently, we are supporting large-scale vaccination operation in several regions by expanding our workplace vaccination centers. Fintech segment achieved increased revenue as a customer base of each service expanded and usage as a main service increased due to initiative to promote cross-use. Rakuten Card posted year-on-year decrease in profits. This is mainly due to last year additional government subsidies for the promotion of cashless payment and upfront investment, such as acquiring new Rakuten Card users for the post-pandemic market and marketing initiatives aimed at ecosystem expansion. These factors contributed to our growing industry presence. Rakuten Securities incurred more costs for customer acquisition and expansion of asset service, but we believe these upfront investment are necessary for future growth. Customer base expansion continued to be strong. In October, the number of Rakuten Cards issued exceeded 24 million. Rakuten Card's shopping transaction value continued to grow at a fast pace. Its industry market share reached 21.4%. Rakuten Bank's usage as customers' main account is increasing. We achieved steady growth in the number of payroll accounts and the transactions made. Rakuten Security is expanding its asset business, which generates stable profit over the medium to long term. The number of investment trust accounts and the amount of contribution have increased significantly. In the insurance business, Rakuten Life started selling dementia insurance as a new form of insurance in response to Japan's aging society. Contract acquisition is steadily increasing. Rakuten Payment succeeded in introducing customers to other Rakuten Group services by releasing a new UI for the Rakuten Pay app with expanded functionality for users. As a new measure to expand our merchant base, we launched a campaign for small and medium-sized stores applying for Rakuten Pay for the first time, giving them one year of Rakuten Pay QR payment effectively free of charge. In June, Rakuten Card began offering a second Rakuten card to customers in order to expand our wallet share. The number of second cards issued exceeded 500,000 at the end of September. The amount spent per customer increased by an average of about 60%. This will contribute to future GMS growth. Rakuten Card has set our next set of goals. The Triple Three, 30 million cards issued, shopping transaction value of JPY 30 trillion, and 30% market share in the Japanese credit card industry. Our transaction value of JPY 30 trillion will put us on the same scale as the global industry players. We are confident we can make our presence much bigger. We also believe that achieving the Triple Three contributes to the growth of not only our fintech businesses, but the Rakuten Group as a whole. Rakuten Bank has increased the number of Rakuten Card withdrawal accounts and Rakuten Securities has significantly expanded its investment trust business since launching Rakuten Card credit settlements. The payment ratio of Rakuten Card in Rakuten Ichiba GMS is around 70%, demonstrating a synergistic effect. Rakuten Bank is preparing for its IPO. We believe this will let us manage operations more autonomously, lead to greater strategic growth, and further contribute to the Rakuten ecosystem. Every day, more people are shifting their daily activities into the Rakuten ecosystem, thanks to Rakuten Card. Fintech businesses will continue to promote cross-use with Rakuten Card as a point of entry, aiming to expand the customer base and the profit base of all our fintech companies. Rakuten Mobile's network build-out is progressing at a rapid pace. At the end of September, there were over 30,000 4G base stations on air. As another 10,000 base stations are also ready to come online as soon as we take delivery of semiconductor components, we're looking forward to a smooth and steady rollout. We expect to achieve our target of 96% population coverage for 4G in spring next year. While the global semiconductor supply shortage has impacted our previous goal of 96% coverage by this summer, compared to the plan originally submitted to the regulator, we're still about 4 years ahead of schedule. Thanks to this progress in the build-out of our network, we are now ready to make solid inroads into switching off the roaming support we have had from our partner, KDDI. From October 1, we've started to gradually decrease these roaming areas, shifting nearly 40 prefectures from reliance on roaming to Rakuten's network. Our single service plan, Rakuten Unlimited VI, has been very well-received. For offering unlimited data usage at a low price. That said, for those in roaming areas, there's a data usage limit of 5 GB per month. By accelerating the transition from roaming, more customers will be able to use our unlimited data plan at a lower price. We expect this to boost data usage for existing customers. As the roaming areas decrease, we will be able to woo those new customers who may have been concerned about 3G data limits. Here you can see the number of applications has increased steadily even without the 1-year free campaign period, which ended in April. We expect the ongoing transition from roaming to our own network to further accelerate customer acquisition. Here are the mobile segment results for the third quarter. We saw revenue grow over the previous quarter. This is thanks to the increase in the number of users coming off our one-year free campaign. The revenue increase from these users outpaced the revenue lost from MVNO users migrating to the MNO service with three months free campaign. On the cost side, network-related costs continued to rise as we increased coverage, resulting in a larger operating loss. As we switch over areas to Rakuten's network, we expect roaming costs to come down after the next switchover scheduled for April first. In addition, the increase in fee-paying customers can be expected to contribute to smaller losses from the second quarter next year. We were ranked as a 5G global leader and best in Japan in both 5G downlink and 5G uplink speed by Opensignal 5G Global Mobile Network Experience Awards. These are testaments that we are on the path of success. We have now started phase II of our journey with Rakuten Symphony. We aim to empower industry, society, and individuals to transform themselves through cloud, edge, and automation technology. With a vision to connect everything to fulfill the potential for a sustainable society, Rakuten Symphony will redefine the telco landscape with its unique approach. We introduced the concept of transparency. Our customers today can engage with us on a full transparent cost model, eliminating friction and establishing true partnership approach with our customer. Component-level transparency and hardware cost, plus approach to software and services, will disrupt this industry for the better. Most recently, I am very delighted to announce to you one of the most advanced products that we have announced in Mobile World Congress, Los Angeles. It is a disruptive solution for the first time in telco industry, combining radio access, network and transport, serving Open RAN and legacy in one environmentally hardened, high-performance platform. This is Symware. It is the new radio-as-a-service platform that Rakuten Symphony is introducing to the market. We also have introduced a new way of consuming telco application in an app store-like approach. We use Medina ourselves in making available to our customer, making network rollout frictionless and automated. RCP next generation OSS provide a simplified architecture, standardized, modern, and cloud native. We have made headway in securing one of the largest Open RAN virtualized network with 1&1 in Germany, and working closely with Telefónica on redefining the evolution of a brownfield networks into Open RAN era. There are a few examples that Rakuten Symphony is already engaging with to help through this transformation journey. We currently have over 100 engagements globally with telcos in all geographies. The future, I believe, is bright for Rakuten Symphony. The future is bright for mobile operators as they transition to 5G, leveraging Symphony disruptive solutions. Here are our third quarter financial results. Revenue was up double-digit year-on-year. This was due to the strong growth of domestic e-commerce, including Rakuten Ichiba and Rakuten Seiyu Net Super. The sports business and overseas businesses, which were significantly affected by the pandemic last year, also recovered. Non-GAAP operating income declined due to higher depreciation costs reflecting an increase in base stations in the mobile businesses. However, non-GAAP operating income, excluding mobile, logistics, and the investment business, which are in the strategic investment phase, showed very strong growth year-on-year. In addition, IFRS operating income improved by more than JPY 30 billion year-on-year, partly due to the gain resulting from the step acquisition of Altiostar. Here is a breakdown of non-GAAP operating income. Domestic e-commerce and other internet services drove profit growth. Rakuten Ichiba achieved profit growth due to steady increase in new users, boosted by continued strong retention rates of new user gain during the pandemic, even after last year's increased demand that arose from stay-at-home trends. Logistics costs were reduced as Rakuten's logistics business was succeeded to JP Rakuten Logistics, our joint venture with Japan Post. Going forward, we will work to further improve logistics quality and cost efficiencies. Other internet services showed a significant improvement in profits as Rakuten Rewards and the sports businesses recovered. Profits from Viber also increased. In the Fintech segments, high levels of cashless return subsidies were recorded at Rakuten Card in the third quarter of last year. Upfront investments such as membership acquisition with an eye on the post-corona world and marketing aimed at expanding the group ecosystem also led to a decline in profits. Rakuten Card's presence in the industry is steadily increasing. In the mobile segment, although profits continue to decline due to upfront investments, our base station rollout is progressing well and population coverage is currently over 94%. As shown here, other internet services have improved significantly. We are starting to achieve profitability. Our business portfolio committee has focused on various cost reductions through business concentration and selection, and we are seeing results. The sports businesses and overseas businesses which were negatively affected by the pandemic have recovered. In particular, Rakuten Rewards is now back on track, showing strong profit growth as the adverse effect of the pandemic subside and following the rebranding from Ebates to Rakuten. Here is a reconciliation from non-GAAP operating income to IFRS operating income. IFRS operating income improved as we recorded a gain on the step acquisition of Altiostar. In April 2019, Rakuten reorganized its group structure. We aimed for swift decision-making by clarifying the accountability and streamlining the organization and operations. Management is now able to optimize the allocation of resources effectively. This April, we changed the company name to Rakuten Group. Our competitiveness and mobility was further enhanced by better capital efficiency. We are accelerating the autonomous growth of Rakuten ecosystem and further enhancing services through advanced technology. In September, we announced the start of preparation for an IPO of Rakuten Bank and the decision to incorporate Rakuten Symphony. Both are expected to strengthen the financial base of the group as a whole and accelerate the autonomous growth of Rakuten ecosystem. In the banking industry, in particular, business models are changing. New institutions such as digital banks and challenger banks are growing rapidly by leveraging their own unique ecosystems. These banks will play a leading role in the future cashless era. Their market valuation is also proving to be completely different from conventional banks. Rakuten Bank aims to grow by ensuring capital flexibility via an IPO. It intends to establish a new model for banks, both as the core of Rakuten ecosystem and as a pioneering bank. In October, two rating agencies, JCR and R&I, announced that they would maintain their current credit ratings. We believe that the announcement of Rakuten Bank's IPO preparation positively affected their decision, and this is just one example of the variety of financing options that Rakuten Group has available. We do not need to rely on the interest-bearing debt only. Rakuten has set membership value as an important KPI. While Fintech continued to perform strongly, membership value decreased due to the rebound in expenses in e-commerce-related businesses. Membership value reached its highest last year during the pandemic. However, membership value increased by 16% in two-year CAGR. Rakuten will aim to continue to increase membership value and corporate value by expanding our ecosystem. Thank you for joining our third quarter results presentation. Please allow me to share one final but important KPI. Rakuten has helped fully vaccinate nearly half a million people in Japan against COVID-19. Just five months ago, no one at Rakuten had any experience with vaccinations. Rakuten culture is known for getting things done, whether it's helping vaccinate Japan's population or building mobile base stations across Japan at unprecedented speed. This can-do culture is what drives Rakuten to achieve its disruptive and ambitious goals. Thanks for watching. Welcome back. Thank you for joining our live question and answer session on Rakuten Group's 2021 third quarter financial results. Now that you've had a chance to watch a summary of our financial performance, our management team is here ready to answer questions. Recording in progress. Please allow me to introduce them. Hiroshi Mikitani. Kenji Hirose. Masayuki Hosaka. Yoshihisa Yamada. Tareq Amin. Kentaro Hyakuno. Yasufumi Hirai. Makoto Arima. Kazunori Takeda. We'll start by taking questions from the media first, and then investors. Let's get started. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming or joining the Rakuten Group's 2021 third quarter financial results meeting. From here on, it is the Q&A session from the media and investors and analysts. This Q&A session will be conducted using simultaneous English and Japanese interpretation. Please select the language you would like to hear in your audio feed from the Zoom navigation bar at the bottom of your screen. Please do not select Mute Original Audio. When the interpreter speaks, the original volume will be lowered, and you will hear the interpreter's voice overlaying the speaker. The presentation materials shown have been aligned with Japanese. If necessary, please download the presentation materials from the investors page on the corporate side. We will address the questions from the media, and then the questions from the investors and analysts. Please raise your hand to ask a question. For those joining from the PC, beneath the participants gallery view, you will find the Zoom navigation bar. Please click Raise Hand to ask a question. If you are joining from your mobile phone, please tap More and then tap Raise Hand in order to ask a question. If your name is called, please make sure your microphone has been unmuted before asking your question. If you're joining by phone, please tap the star key followed by nine to raise your hand. We will unmute you so that you can ask a question. Please note that we can only accept questions regarding the results. In order to answer as many questions as possible, we ask that you please keep your questions to two questions per person and ask them both at one time. You can also inquire by Q&A form. Thank you. If you have a question, please. So ma- The first from Ishikawa-san, freelance. Please ask your question. My name is Ishikawa. I'm a freelancer. In the KDDI financial announcement, the President Takahashi-san said the users are moving to Rakuten. In order to avoid that, they have started a campaign to set the basic fee at JPY 0. Due to that campaign, how is it impacting onto your business? Next, in the DOCOMO, they will now participate in JPY 0 plan. Do you have any comment about that? Well, how should I say this? About the inflow and outflow of the users with other providers, I shouldn't make a comment. The 2.0 that they announced the other day, povo 2.0, I think after that, it is reflected onto their number. Looking from the entire picture, well, we have the net increase, in other words, we have the inflow of users from outside telco providers. From the big picture point of view, we don't see any big impact onto our business due to that campaign. From the entire point of view, the same period comparing to the year before, we have about the double the new application to our services. povo 2.0, we don't see any impact onto our business. Next thing is about the number of net MNP, which is increasing. That's how we feel today. The net increase and also the inflow from other providers has been increasing today. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next question. From NHK, Mr. Okatani, you have your raise hand function turned on, so please unmute yourself and ask the question. Okatani from NHK speaking. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Again, mobile is the theme I'd like to ask you about. The timing of you turning into a profit, I think, you said that 2023, but what is your take on the current progress or progress to date? You said MNO, the users is 4.1 million. What is your evaluation? Is it satisfactory or not as to the increase rate? Okay, basically, using our own network is where we can provide better experience by far. For example, the amount of data that is used by the users, I think it's about double probably. There's a market difference, and therefore, using our own network, at the end of March, it will reach more than 95%, 96%. Accordingly, user experience will be improved as well. New applications, it's about double the number last year. If we can continue with this trend of growth, then roughly speaking, as for application, I don't see any problem going forward. Now, switching to our own network means the data usage will go up, and ARPU will go up as well. Various bundling services, bundling will increase in ratio. ARPU increase and new subscribers as well as Symphony about JPY 300 billion worth of contract. It will increase to maybe JPY 100 billion going forward. When you consider that, yes, we say, you know, being in the black on a per month basis in 2023, I think we will be able to realize that. I hope this answers your question. Yes, thank you. The next question is from Yomiuri Shimbun, Ms. Ichikawa-san, please. I'm Ichikawa from Yomiuri Shimbun. I have two questions. May I ask two questions? I have two questions. First, about Rakuten Bank IPO preparation. What is the current progress toward IPO? I think there are likely subsidiaries for the IPO. Why did you choose Rakuten Bank to go public? Then about the minority shareholder, how are you going to handle them? Because, including that, just let me know the progress of the situation. Is there any plan to make other subsidiary go public? The second one is the partnership with Japan Post. Outside of logistics, such as the payment or insurance area, is there any progress, or is there any to be stated? If you have any, please let us know that. First of all, bank IPO preparation, it's progressing smoothly. The reason why we decided them to go public is because, first of all, we have to think of the independence of the entity, because there is a regulation from the FSA. That is our first reason. The second is about the capital. Capital flexibility is very important. Asset size, as mentioned in this presentation, I think. When we acquired eBank, it was about several hundred billion yen of the deposit balance, which grew up to JPY 7 trillion today. Every day, 7,000-8,000 accounts are newly opened. Given that we need more capital as we move forward, these two reasons are why we decided to select Rakuten Bank to go public. The other possibility of the IPO, nothing is decided at this point in time. Basically, we want to have the business the style under the uniform the style. We have to think about the importance of the capital of that business. We have to be really flexible. As for all transaction, the arm's length the transaction must be done. Therefore, according to the commercial law, we have to abide by the governance and compliance. There is no problem. Also the Rakuten Group, the company, the shareholders, I think, we can contribute to their profit as well. The partnership with JP in the area of logistics, it's really significant. As for JP partnership, well, after a certain period of time, because maybe they will work with other companies. However, we have a partner, business partnership, including capital. It's not just the money. The logistics nationwide, we have to be really accurate to deliver the product. That is very important. Maybe they will have some; they can take advantage of this partnership. I believe EC is very important to JP. Also outside of that, there's some partnership in the financial areas as we made a joint announcement before, and we have been working quite smoothly for those items. Rakuten Mobile will provide in various initiatives, including IoT. It's something we are discussing together in the current state. I think we are creating really great synergy together. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, from Tsuhan Shimbun, Mr. Kawanishi, you have a question. Go ahead. Thank you. Kawanishi from Tsuhan Shimbun newspaper. Can you hear me well? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. E-commerce, I have two questions on that. E-commerce this time was really steady and good. Now, of course, there has to be this one round of people staying home, but I think I didn't grow as much, I think. What was the reason in your analysis for a good performance despite that? Also, this joint venture with Japan Post, what is the synergistic effects and what about impact on DX among others, if you can share with us anything, please. Okay. Mr. Takeda, please. Thank you. This is Takeda speaking. E-commerce, especially Rakuten Ichiba, with regard to Ichiba, new subscribers at a high rate, retained, so they stay with us. On top of that, not just in the area that they made a purchase, but they actually purchase products in other areas. In other words, the scope is expanding. I think that was one of the key factors in terms of the customers. From the side of the merchants, well, e-commerce is where you have a peak and then you try to grow it further. We have what's called a Super Sale, and we also have what's called a Marathon. In other words, these campaigns this time, and this year as well, has really grown as well or grown the performance. More than 50,000 merchants have been working with us, and we were able to really reach this stage and good performance as a result of that collaboration. Supporting that, yet another factor is this introduction of the threshold for free distribution. In the past, people might have wondered how much they have to pay for the delivery because that was one of the hindrance or boundary before people make a decision to purchase online. However, thanks to the merchants understanding, they have agreed to this policy, and they're really cooperating with that. This conversion has been realized very smoothly. I think that really made a tremendous contribution to making the foundation even firmer. Thank you. Nearly JPY 5 trillion domestic e-commerce size. It's not just. Well, actually, for new ones as well, synergistic effects, Rakuten Mobile, Rakuten Points partners being involved as well. I think overall, users have increased in number. As for the repeat ratio, since the peak due to COVID-19, I think we have been able to keep that peak level. Genre strategies is paying off. In other words, we are doing quite well in that. For example, fashion, and we have good, better performance than competitors. The Rakuten brand has taken root, that's another factor. For user experience, social functions as well as search functions, recommendation functions, leveraging AI, I think this is thanks to the engineering power that we possess. Also, as Mr. Takeda just explained, for logistics, cost is another, of course, aspect. In addition, we can actually deliver huge amounts of products. We have a structure in place to enable that. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have a time constraint, so we can take two more questions from media due to time constraint. The next question, from Keitai Watch, Sekiguchi-san, please ask your question. I'm Sekiguchi from Keitai Watch. Mobile business customer acquisition is something I want to ask. The first question is in your initiatives. I think you had the iPhone campaign. From pricing perspective, compared to competitors, I think it's quite unique and relatively low price, similar price to Apple. This kind of an initiative in this quarter is only 3 months. Including the next quarter, what are the impact from these initiatives to your business? How do you view about this? The next question is customer acquisition momentum. You disclosed the number of subscribers in Q3. I think it had been slowed down compared to the previous quarters. As Mikitani-san mentioned, the application has become double compared to the year before. Now you released the break. That's why this number increased. You have increased the coverage more. I just want to get some impression. I mentioned the double. Comparing to the same month of the previous year, we had the new application. This data on a monthly basis, we see improvement in every month. Last year, sorry, this year, as of the end of March, we had the one-year free campaign. That was finished, and then we had the demand increase in the February and March. Excluding that, we receive the double the number in this particular month, and then the pace is increasing. We want to make this double to triple, and that is the current strategy. One of the important points is to expand the native coverage. Because even if you go beyond the 5 GB and 1 Mbps, there is the throttling that is happening today. We can eliminate that if they can use our native network. This will expand to the 96% of the population coverage, which will increase our customer satisfaction because they feel more comfortable with our service. As for the marketing, and of course, users who are using our native network, it gives a better feedback to us. We would like to enhance our marketing initiatives based on those feedbacks. iPhone, our pricing strategy. Not comparing to other providers, we regard them as not the device. We want to generate more profit from the subscription, not selling devices. Unlike other companies, we have ecosystem, and ecosystem revenue will increase. This is different from other providers. For example, other services can be used like 20%, 30%, including [AC] and the Rakuten Bank, if you just join the Rakuten Mobile. We see a great synergy among group companies within this ecosystem. We have a basis to increase the revenue as a group company. In the overall device strategy, that allows us to set the aggressive strategy given this entire ecosystem. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Final question. The person raising their hand is a freelancer, Mr. Onishi. You have a question, please. Thank you. This is Onishi speaking. I have a question to Mikitani-san. About globalization of Rakuten. Rakuten Mobile has RCP, which is really competitive technology available to offer, and that as a trigger, I think you will go further global. But how do you try to plan on using the ecosystem in relation to that globalization using RCP? Because I don't see that really clearly yet. In Japan, I think you're almost complete in the area of fintech or e-commerce, and then you have mobile added onto that. You have that ecosystem here, but how do you plan on expanding that ecosystem elsewhere outside of Japan? What is the broad picture or strategy going forward? Okay. Well, Rakuten basically, I think, is a triplet, three children. E-commerce is one, another is a finance business, and the third one is Rakuten Symphony included, software. These are the pillars or triplets that we run as a business in Japan, but we would like to expand that and deploy them in overseas markets as well. With regard to these three triplets, well, why Rakuten Symphony has so much competitiveness because Rakuten Mobile is here. Because for the first time, a software technology is used in developing the network that was considered impossible in the past. There is an explosive cost advantage, and that is being made aware in the minds of a lot of people around the world now. New mobile companies, not included, but top of the top telco companies are wanting to and are talking with us on equal footing. Why was that made possible? Well, people are actually using Rakuten Mobile services, using this virtual network. This is a physical proof. It's not just talking about things, but it's real. Japan or a Japanese company being able to offer a platform that can be deployed in other markets, I think this is one of the rare opportunities for Japan to really lead the way. Now, when we created Ichiba, it was quite different business models. Buy now, pay later model is now available, and e-commerce is defined differently than in the past. It's not just online, but online to offline is now another mode. The number of Rakuten members is 1.5 billion already, so we can make this into a membership club, point club of Rakuten can then be deployed in the entire global market. That you know, efficient warehousing, no, that's not what we're trying to realize or build, but rather be more efficient. Rakuten Rewards is a good example of, because it is doing quite well even today. We would like to deploy that in the global market. And Viber Among other businesses can also be successful. Viber is becoming successful as well. Of course, we don't need to connect everything, but that's the way forward as I see it. Thank you. Thank you very much. That concludes Q&A session with media. Next, we would like to take questions from investors and analysts. You can ask questions from Q&A forum as well. We will receive questions only related to our results. Please keep your question to two quick questions per person. The first from HSBC, Mr. Neil, could you ask your question? Thank you. Good afternoon. I have two questions relating to Rakuten Symphony please, and specifically the brownfield operator sales outlet. Some recent media reports suggest that weaker 2G support at Altiostar is delaying rollout. The first question is, can you comment on that? Secondly, what do you think the biggest challenge is for existing operators in integrating Open RAN? They seem to be very keen, but in practice it seems to be quite complicated. Where do you think the main barriers are? Thank you. Okay. Tareq, do you wanna go ahead? Yeah. Let me address the first question, which is, you know, about brownfield. Obviously I think when it comes to greenfield, we have proven the point that the technology is stable, mature, and I would say it is almost now the standard approach for building a blueprint network to have Symphony architecture in the design of greenfield operators. Our biggest now next approach for growth is to tackle brownfield. What we are really, really excited about is partnership and collaboration with Telefónica. We think this is a massive opportunity. I think this is a big responsibility for us to prove that Open RAN technology, Open Cloud architecture is not only secluded to greenfield operators. For us, it's just about scale, putting the energy and resources. I think the key partnership that we look at is tackling the proof of concept market with Telefónica for brownfield proof point. The second question is what are the challenges for existing operators to adopt Open RAN technology? You know, I always said that if you look at the strategies for Rakuten, whether it's in mobile or it is in Symphony, the four pillars of our strategy, and one of the first one was to me the most critical parameter is about the organization. Open RAN Cloud architecture requires a specific expertise around cloud and software. These skill sets are the ones that an operator would need to invest in. I would say it's not necessarily about just the technology of Open RAN, it's just about modernization of the organization and being ready to approach a new world in which the fabric of the network is driven by software. Yeah, I mean, this is my answer for the two questions. Okay. Thank you. If I may just add, I think the interest level, as Neil, you mentioned, from big gigantic carriers has completely changed. I think that's because of Rakuten Mobile success. We prove it is gonna work for 4G, 5G, for sub-6 and mmWave. Industry research has done so much research about the performance of our network, which is outstanding. Sometimes even beating the very big telcos, which is based on the legacy technology. It is far more flexible, scalable, and agile. Now, I think the industry is expecting this big transformation is gonna take place. Like one year ago, they are still kind of hesitant and even didn't want to believe, to be honest. Now, you know, they are seriously considering you know, basically changing their religious belief from depending on hardware-based legacy vendors to companies like Rakuten Symphony. Thank you. Thank you very much. From the Q&A forum, there is a question. I'd like to read it out. Astris Advisory, David has asked two questions. First, network construction in the fourth quarter, how much funding will that require from Rakuten in this period? Is this JPY 10 billion? Was third quarter the peak in mobile losses? How much, I think the first question was about how much funding. Yeah. The way we structured the contract and the advantages of Rakuten Symphony, it's a completely software-driven implementation for us. Most of our dependency, I think that Mickey mentioned a bit earlier in his opening speeches, we are using system integrator, which is Tech Mahindra and Accenture to do the implementation. Our contracts are done back-to-back to minimize any capital expenditure that would inflow from us in the early construction days. Most of our activities is really purely focused on software implementation. Rakuten Symphony is not accountable or responsible for the physical build, which is the site development and the construction of the sites. We're accountable for providing software architecture, software integration, IP network integration, radio access software, OSS, and the operation of the network. Inflow of cash from Rakuten to support this product is not significant at this stage. With regard to the financial focus for Rakuten Mobile business, there are basically you know several factors we need to you know consider. One is as Tareq has been explaining we're expecting a continuous revenue growth for Rakuten Symphony which can be turned profitable from the year one. The second is how much roaming cost can we reduce? This is a little bit not under 100% our control because you know we have requested KDDI to turn off some of these stations but they have the rights to decide when to turn it off. We have of course until the end of March. The speed of turning off roaming is not only decided by us, but also it's basically under the jurisdiction of KDDI. Generally, people are starting to use more data. People started to understand the cost advantage of using Rakuten Mobile, so data volume is just increasing, which is good for us in the long term, but that may have a little bit impact. We do not believe that we're gonna do another massive marketing campaign. Generally, fundamentally, financial performance should improve. There are some still moving parts. Okay, move on to the next question from Citigroup Securities. Tsuruo-san, please ask your question. I unmute myself. Thank you very much. I have two questions, one by one. The first question, the 12 months from July and onward, I think the—what is the impact of the ARPU and MNP? What is the net increase in the MNP? Sorry, I think I asked three questions at one time. In terms of the consumer behavior, we don't see any big change. As mentioned earlier, our native network area and roaming area ARPU difference between the two, we do not disclose the number, but there is a gap between the two. Therefore, as we expand our native network area, this will be widened. From the ARPU perspective, for example, 10 minutes, the free phone, so LTE can be used, and also the various bundle services are introduced. ARPU is increasing from here. As for the cancellation of the services, there are some fluctuations, but I think it's moving quite smoothly given the ups and downs. After one year of the free campaign, we had some ups and downs, but now it's under control. MNP. What about the MNP? MNP, it's increasing. It's growing. Where I cannot say where we receive a lot of the traffic most. I think we cannot say that. If it is the industry data, please refer to that industry data. I'm not in those shoes to say where we receive the highest traffic. I think the migration happens from all the players. We haven't seen a great difference in the reach of the providers. Migration is big. If you have any other industry data, please refer to that. The second question, in the Hirose-san's presentation slide about the Rakuten Bank valuation, the PBR presentation, the material, Kakao Bank and others are exemplified like PBR 6x-10x, and my question is this. The expected growth rate over the past five years, Rakuten Bank, the OPM and recurring profit, I think the 3% growth and the challenger banks, the growth rate is different from Rakuten Bank. My question here is how are you going to increase the YoY or the growth rate? Is there any target number of the growth rate, if possible, could you share that information? I mean, there's the challenger bank. I think these banks not generate the revenue as we do. Why are we going to go public? We want to have more capital flexibility so that we can grow our profit. Asset growth. These four banks in the category of challenging bank, I think, the asset is something we have to highlight, and the compliance stability are great. And the Rakuten ecosystem background, 100 million. When it comes to the active, 50 or 60 million active users, and the basis we have within our ecosystem, given that fact, to be honest, the future ambition, the number of account that we can go on par with the mega bank, we believe we can reach that level. That should be part of our business model. How to increase our asset side is another important factor. We have to have adequate capital and not focusing on the thin margin. We have to distribute or take a balance of risks. There is a possibility that we can expand and, for example, the buy now, pay later, which we haven't focused a lot. The back-end finance for the buy now, pay later can be done at Rakuten Bank. This is another thing. We believe there is a great potential to grow our business from this area. We have been operating quite safely in this capital, that the capital safety will be maintained, but we want to have the thicker the capital, then we can take the risk for our business growth. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Global Management. David, please. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity to ask a question. Hi, Mickey. You said earlier that you do not plan on having a big marketing campaign for mobile subscribers. Let's say by early next year when you have 96% national coverage, what are you thinking about by that time? Will you go all out and try to drive up the subscriber numbers in a big way? Because by that time you won't have to pay these hefty roaming fees to KDDI. Second question, if we are allowed to. A second question is about the IPOs of some of your non-Japan operations, for example, like Ebates. Do you believe it is ready for any IPO in the U.S. like Nasdaq, after Rakuten Bank? Thanks. Again, we do not have a plan for you know deploying massive marketing campaign for Rakuten Mobile. I think we are seeing very healthy natural growth of the new so new signups. Again, we are like we have doubled from previous year and now I would like to triple it. This continuous growth is pretty important for us. We have to make sure that we do not get the free non-profitable users. We wanna focus on the profitable users as much as possible, including ecosystem, not just a standalone basis. Now we are doing deep analysis of that data, who is profitable, who is not profitable. You know, we're gonna probably do more personalization of the campaign and so forth. It depends. Of course, I'm not going to say definitely we're not gonna do it. If we see that we are 100% confident this is going to be massive return, we may. We are just continuously analyzing. One thing I can tell you is the feedback from the people who switched from KDDI roaming to Rakuten native network is extremely good. With regard to the IPO of our non-Japanese entities, I will not rule out all the possibilities. That's as far as I can mention about it. Thank you. Moving to the next. Kazahaya-san, please. Kazahaya from Credit Suisse. Thank you very much. Two questions. First, in your presentation from Yamada-san, talk about the profitability improvement timing is the Q2 in 2022 that was set by the Yamada-san. So far it was quite uncertain, so you couldn't clarify this. But this time you mentioned this timeline. Why have you come up with this timeline? The roaming cost. How can we reduce the roaming cost, at which timing, that was unclear in the past. But the base station construction is quite visible today, so now it's clear. Then as of October, we reduced the number of roaming. In the KDDI contract, it will not directly impact onto the P&L after doing some math. April next year, we will have another large scale running off. At that timing, we will see some great improvement in the P&L after the April switch off. We have been constructing a base station. Still the network, the cost is increasing given that situation. Net-net, when we calculate, Q1 of the next year will be the bottom. From Q2 and onward, the profitability becomes better. Now we have become confident, and that's what we want to communicate to the investors. Another point I would like to highlight is Q1 of the next year is likely to be bottom. I'm not saying it's getting worse from here, but from here to the Q1 of the next year, maybe the loss would go up. However, it's very small. This is the line. This at a pace would continue and from Q2 and onward, the situation become better. That is how we view. Thank you very much. May I move on to the next question? I have a question about the card. I think you announced the midterm plan, the Triple Three. In order to achieve Triple Three, what is the most challenging part to achieve this Triple Three? That is my question. Also, this will not be the finish of your business. After you achieve this, you will see the next path. When you achieve this Triple Three goals, what will be the business opportunity after that? Maybe this is still imagination or the point, if you can share any idea after the achievement of that. What is your illusion? Hosaka-san, please. The reason why we announced this Triple Three at this timing is because the Japan is quite lagging behind in terms of the cashless payment, and the government is promoting cashless payment. After the COVID situation, we believe the cashless payment would be accelerated, so there might be some cashless society happening in near future. I'm really confident about that. The conventional growth will be accelerated. What we have experienced in this pandemic is that comparing to other companies, we have maintaining our GTV and keep growing because our card has been used by our customers. Then the number of card holders reached 1 million in 3 months. Given that pace, I think this trend will accelerate even after the COVID situation. The reason why we announced this Triple Three at this timing is because to us, the card growth acceleration is really meaningful. It's not just for the fintech, but it will bring the positive growth to the entire ecosystem of Rakuten, and that will be a trigger. That's why. We have to or must achieve this Triple Three, and this is quite likely to happen, and we can achieve it. The 30% share, after we receive the 30% GTV share, still the card market is behind, but our service for all the card-related services, after we become here, this will become the standard of card services. I think the customer will use our card more, and we actually feel that from our second card issuance. Second thing, looking at the Korea situation today, at the end of the day, I think we can get the 90% share. The card share is above JPY 70 trillion. Comparing to the other payment, I think the market share would grow up. JPY 30 trillion is just a starting point. From here, the Rakuten Card will become more profitable and grow with profit, which will give positive impact to the entire Rakuten ecosystem. Thank you. The well, Rakuten Card has this medium-term plan issued as well. At one point sometime in the future, the impact on fintech overall or e-commerce business overall. Maybe if you can share with us any numbers regarding those, that would be appreciated. That's my request. Thank you. We'll look into that. Okay, we have limited time, so for questions from the investors, and that list next will be the final question. CLSA, Oliver Matthews, please. Mr. Matthews. Hello. Thank you. I have a question about mobile. Compared to last year, your sales are up JPY 10 billion and your costs are up JPY 54 billion. Could you give us a little bit more explanation what's driving the increase in the sales and in the costs? Thank you. Obviously, you know, last year we had, we were in the midst of this one year free campaign. Fees from subscribers driving up sales. Also, we added iPhone to our mix of devices. All those things combined are pushing up sales. In terms of cost, it's mainly, you know, the network cost is increasing because of, you know, the number of base stations that we have built. Also the data consumption is increasing significantly. That's why, and now we are providing 3 months free, I think, right? Three months free. Yeah. Yeah. In order to recognize revenue, we have to wait for three months. Thank you, Mickey. Thank you so much. Marketing hasn't really changed that much. Marketing, it hasn't really changed that much. I mean, there are ups and downs depending on quarter to quarter, but overall it's, you know, as Mickey said, we're not running, you know, huge marketing campaigns. So, not that significant changes. I'm afraid it is. Thank you very much. Thank you, Oliver, for your question. I'm afraid it is now time to wrap up. Mickey, would you have any final comments? Again, you know, I think it was a very, very good quarter for us. With regard to the mobile, now we are getting very, very confident that we can rebuild the nationwide extremely good coverage, which is unprecedented in this industry globally. With the new technology, Symphony will be unbelievable business for us. I think that's very, very encouraging. These are the two twins of our mobile business. Together, you know, I'm hoping that we will fulfill our kind of the pledge that we're gonna reach one month, you know, single month breakeven by the end of 2023, which is probably very doable. After that, this kind of business is going to be awfully profitable. The synergy we have been, you know, monitoring among the services including Rakuten Mobile, Rakuten Card, Rakuten Bank, Rakuten Ichiba is very, very amazing. We also started to be very, very diligent about making every single business we have profitable. That's one of the reason that our what we call red business, money-losing business, is turning profitable or dramatically shrinking their loss. With regard to the capital policy, many people are, many investors are, interested about whether we're gonna bring the independent subsidiaries public or not. Again, it will depend on the funding requirements, but I just wanted to let everybody know that we have a capacity to do so if we intend to do so. Of course, there are pros and cons, but I think the value of the portfolio companies which we own is unbelievably good, including the overseas businesses. And then, you know, we will work on how we can be more transparent with regard to midterm the kind of budget we have internally to external investor and analyst. Thank you for joining today's session. I hope you enjoyed it and gained a deeper understanding of Rakuten businesses and ecosystem. It's not so simple I assume, but I think the diversity of the business portfolio is our strength. We demonstrated even during the midst of this pandemic, our businesses were kind of neutral. Some businesses got hit, some actually enjoyed. I think that's the strength of the kind of diversified ecosystem company for online and also for the offline, and our technology is very, very strong. That's about it from myself, and then I will see you in three months. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mickey. Thank you to everyone for your questions and time. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. This concludes Rakuten Group's 2021 third quarter financial results conference. Thanks again for joining.