Promoting Diversity
SEIBU 
I would like to thank our shareholders for your cooperation and support to the Seibu Group.
In the first half of the fiscal year ending March 2024, we were able to outperform the first half of the previous year both in terms of operating revenue and operating profit. This was thanks to the Group capturing the growth in demand triggered by COVID being downgraded to a type-5 infectious disease, as well as our initiatives to raise prices. Profit attributable to owners of parent declined from the same period last year, when we booked extraordinary income from the asset disposal in the Hotel and Leisure segment.
On September 28, 2023, we revised up our full-year consolidated earnings forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2024, due to factors including our current earnings, as well as the booking of extraordinary income related to real estate.
Seibu Group has been executing bold management reforms, under the “Seibu Group Medium-term Management Plan (FY2021-2023)”, with the theme of “Resilience & Sustainability”, such as the asset light strategy, lowering the breakeven point, and reforming our services to cater to the New Normal post-COVID. We have also reorganized the Group, with the objective of “Pursuing specialization”, to allow each of our Group companies to exert their specialty and pursue sustainable business growth.
Under this new organizational structure, we are accelerating our initiatives to achieve business growth through specialization in each of our businesses, such as the entry into the capital recycling business, and the opening of hotels in major cities in Japan and overseas. In the age of VUCA* in which it is hard to anticipate what will happen in the future, we will not only strengthen our resilience to environmental changes, but also create attractive services based on our specialization and generate Group synergies, to further accelerate the growth of our business.
In order to create progressive and attractive services in each business segment, the “people” in each of our Group companies need to further refine their specialty. The Seibu Group will reinforce its efforts in developing human capital, and focus on developing highly specialized talent as well as senior management members who take on the challenge of creating services and businesses unique to the Seibu Group, in order to further enrich our human capital.
To make the Group slogan “Smiles ahead” a reality, the first step will be to bring smiles to our employees by heightening their abilities and job satisfaction, thereby pursuing the specialization of our businesses and human capital, strengthening the competitiveness and resilience of each of our businesses, and achieving sustainable growth.
We look forward to the continued support from our shareholders.Thank you.
Dividends
As for the annual dividend for the fiscal year ending March 2024, we are planning to pay out 25 yen per share (half-year dividend of 12.5 yen, and an end-of-year dividend of 12.5 yen), after comprehensively considering factors including the full-year consolidated earnings forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2024, as well as our funding status.