In the fiscal year ended May 31, 2024, we achieved strong net sales and adjusted operating profit. Net sales, our most important metric, increased 32.8% year-on-year, reflecting accelerated growth compared to the previous fiscal year. Adjusted operating profit surged 81.5% year-on-year, far exceeding the sales growth rate. As such, we have demonstrated that our sales growth can be accompanied by profit growth.
This growth was supported by Sansan, in which we strengthened our sales force by hiring personnel while continuing efforts to strengthen the product functionality. Over the past two years, Sansan’s sales productivity has improved by approximately 13%, with the most recent number of new contracts signed having grown significantly. For Bill One, despite undergoing major changes due to the launch of the new qualified invoice system, we achieved growth beyond initial targets by effectively promoting its intrinsic value as an accounting DX service that ensures “fast monthly closing.” For Eight, we achieved profitability on a full-year basis for the first time since its launch, thanks to strong growth in both B2B and B2C services following a shift to profitability-focused operations.
Given this strong business progress, we have announced a new medium-term financial policy through the fiscal year ending May 31, 2027, or FY2026. While our previous goal was to achieve growth in both net sales and adjusted operating profit, we are now aiming for consistent, solid growth in net sales and accelerated growth in adjusted operating profit over the next 3 years. Specifically, we anticipate a net sales CAGR of 22%–27% for the three years from FY2024 through FY2026 and an adjusted operating profit margin of 18%–23% for FY2026.
I view these medium-term forecast figures not as the accumulation of individual business results, but rather as figures that can be achieved by directing our group’s management resources to the most productive services in a flexible manner. I say so because we have learned a lot from the agile management decisions we made in the past, such as those on the optimization of sales resources to improve productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic and the maximization of sales we tackled in the previous fiscal year. Therefore, as long as we can continue these efforts, I believe that we can achieve results that even exceed the forecast for FY2026.
To this end, we will first focus on achieving strong results for FY2024. We will further drive innovation by developing new solutions through Sansan and also strengthening sales of Bill One by developing new functions, which we refer to as Model 4. Looking at the medium to long term, we must also consider how to create the next growth drivers, or in other words, develop the third pillar of business following Sansan and Bill One. We already have several new services, including those provided by our group companies, so we need to implement strategies to put them on a growth trajectory.
We take pride in our ability to create innovation, propose our own unique added value to society, and turn that value into business. As innovation is driven by services, I believe that the addition of each value has led to our current reacceleration of business growth. At this very moment, we are continuing to take on innovative challenges one by one in pursuit of creating solutions from different angles in each of our services and coming up with solutions that can solve emerging issues. I would like to thank all our stakeholders for your continued support.
September 2024
Chika Terada
Representative Director & CEO & CPO
