Highlights of the Current Period

Over the past two years, we have transformed LIFULL HOME'S website and its ancillary services into a Super Hyper Assistant for users and real estate professionals. By leveraging user information, we make it easier for individuals to find their ideal home and help real estate professionals streamline their operations for greater efficiency.
To accelerate this strategy, we established a new department focused on generative AI in May 2023. We are also enhancing the user experience through innovative solutions like the AI Homes-kun Beta chatbot. This chatbot enables users to ask real estate-related questions via LINE and receive personalized listings in a more intuitive search environment. Additionally, we have prioritized the quality of our listings and initiated several collaborations with major real estate management companies to ensure our information is consistently up-to-date and accurate.

Overseas, we are advancing our Moving to Direct strategy in LIFULL CONNECT. This strategy focuses on accelerating business growth by increasing revenue from direct sources such as real estate portals and transaction-related services. We have made notable progress toward this goal through two strategic acquisitions in FY 2023/9.
In Mexico, we acquired Lamudi Mexico, one of the largest real estate portals in the country, and expanded our sales resources there. By leveraging traffic from LIFULL CONNECT's aggregation sites, we aim to further accelerate business growth in Latin America. In Thailand, we acquired FazWaz, a tech-enabled agency that facilitates real estate transactions with various online tools. Given Thailand's fragmented real estate market, consisting of many small-scale professionals, our direct facilitation of transactions between buyers and sellers enables us to expand our business domains to include real estate transactions in this region.

By addressing the current issue of abandoned houses in Japan, we are bringing more listings to light for LIFULL HOME'S while also creating new opportunities for the Japanese real estate market. In recent years, we have continuously worked to strengthen these initiatives through collaborations with local governments and enterprises. Moving forward, we will continue with these collaborations while reducing the overall scale until we see profitability in the overall business.

We believe that fostering an environment where employees can start their own businesses is crucial for cultivating the next generation of leaders and expanding the scope of the LIFULL Group. In the past, we have invested in promising business ideas generated through our business pitch competition, SWITCH. While we continue to see new business development as vital to our Corporate Philosophy, we have temporarily paused SWITCH over the past year to concentrate more on growing our core businesses.

Since rebranding to LIFULL in 2017, we have enhanced our corporate branding to increase brand recognition and create a more positive image, which we believe will positively impact our revenue. While we continue to see branding as essential for making more users aware of our services, we have shifted our resources from traditional TV commercials to online advertisements and owned media. This adjustment aims to sustain effectiveness while improving cost efficiency.