2492.T

• Overall 2025 Full-Year Performance

  • Total company revenue reached 18.817 billion yen, up 20.4% year-over-year. Operating profit reached 2.863 billion yen, up 138.6% year-over-year (approximately 2.4x the prior year level), driven by revenue growth and data center cost reduction from cloud migration completed in September 2024. Operating profit came in 2% above the revised company guidance, as data center costs were lower than expected.
  • Gross profit margin improved to 73.1% due to cloud migration cost savings. The stock revenue ratio remained at a very high 97.2%, building a stable revenue base. Total user companies across the business exceeded 1.25 million, representing approximately 34% of all domestic companies in Japan. Q4 2025 revenue hit an all-time high of 5.013 billion yen. The company added 140 full-time employees in FY2025 to strengthen its workforce, and concentrated sales promotion spending in Q4 focused on regional promotion in areas like Hokkaido and Okinawa.

• Corporate Vision and Mid-Term Strategy

  • The company's core strength is its DtoD (Data to Data) BtoB platform, which keeps all commercial transaction processes (negotiation, contracting, quoting, ordering, invoicing, document storage) as pure digital data, eliminating waste from analog conversion and enabling full digitalization. The corporate vision is to become the top industry DtoD company.
  • Mid-term management priorities (FY2022 - FY2026, FY2026 is the final year): 1) Strengthen the core BtoB platform business, focusing resources on new service development, feature enhancement, sales capability building, brand awareness improvement, and customer satisfaction improvement; 2) Maintain sustained revenue and profit growth and return to high profitability, targeting 20 billion yen in revenue, 5 billion yen in operating profit, and 25% operating profit margin for FY2026; 3) Expand synergies and achieve profitability from existing investee companies, and consider shifting to medium-to-large sized new investment targets for future acquisitions.
  • Growth strategy: For the FOOD Business, pursue vertical expansion to deepen penetration in specific industry segments. For the ES Business, start with horizontal expansion across all industries, then explore expansion into the food industry, construction industry, and other specific industries. The company will expand vertical services from regional bases, having added new sales offices since 2024 to build a locally focused sales network with regional partners to drive digital adoption.

• AI Strategy

  • The company emphasizes full digital data including invoice line-item details, which delivers three core benefits: reduced manual data entry, lower document storage costs, and enabled advanced data utilization with AI.
  • AI-enabled services will deliver value to both management and frontline users: For management, AI enables strategic cost reduction via purchase data analysis, optimized cash flow and advanced financial strategy, and improved collaboration and relationship building with suppliers via shared demand forecasting for end-to-end supply chain optimization. For frontline users, AI reduces manual work burden, eases reconciliation work for quotes, orders and invoices, and reduces task dependency on specific individuals by predicting and suggesting next tasks.
  • The company is currently preparing three AI-powered services: a generative AI dashboard, AI-OCR for the construction industry, and AI integration into existing services.

• Strategic Partnerships

  • Invox: The company deepened its existing partnership with invox, acquired additional shares to make invox an equity-method affiliate, and will jointly develop a new comprehensive next-generation invoice service that leverages invox's AI technology to cover analog to digital conversion, to pursue complete frictionless digitalization of BtoB transactions and leverage Infomart's broad customer base to expand the new service, driving long-term corporate value growth.
  • Dai-ichi Life Group: The company entered into a capital and business partnership with Dai-ichi Life Group, which will become a major shareholder. Infomart raised approximately 17.4 billion yen through this deal, with planned use of 10.9 billion yen for equity investments/acquisitions, 4.5 billion yen for system development and partnership strengthening costs, and 2 billion yen for loan repayment. The partnership scope includes: Dai-ichi Life Group supporting Infomart service expansion, Infomart supporting expansion of Dai-ichi Life Group services (group insurance, Benefit Station) to Infomart's customers, joint development of product collaboration and new projects, joint market research for new Infomart businesses, and joint research on AI technology.

• Shareholder Return

  • The company maintains a 50% basic payout ratio. The FY2025 full-year dividend is planned at 5.44 yen per share, and the FY2026 dividend is planned to increase to 6.58 yen per share based on the earnings outlook.

• For FY2026 (ending December 2026), the company guides total consolidated revenue of 21.348 billion yen, representing a 13.5% year-over-year increase, and operating profit of 5 billion yen, representing a 74.6% year-over-year large increase, bringing operating profit margin to 23.4% (significant improvement from FY2025).
  • Both FOOD and ES businesses are expected to deliver more than 1.2 billion yen in additional revenue each. On the cost side, data center cost suppression will continue, so the increase in cost of sales will be limited. Selling, general and administrative expenses are planned to only increase by 1.7% year-over-year, driven by efficiency improvements in sales promotion spending while continuing investment in human capital, enabling 2.136 billion yen in total operating profit growth.
  • Segment-level guidance: The FOOD Business is expected to deliver 10.3% profit growth, driven by increasing store count for BtoB Platform Receipt/Order and expansion of TANOMU. The ES Business is expected to deliver 19% revenue growth, driven by invoice price revision effects and expansion of BtoB Platform TRADE, with operating profit guided to 845 million yen, marking the segment's entry into a full-fledged profit contribution phase.
  • Capital efficiency guidance: ROE is expected to reach 14.3% and ROIC is expected to reach 15.2% in FY2026. Even after the new share issuance for the Dai-ichi Life partnership, ROE will remain above 10%. 2026 EBITDA is expected to be 6.9 billion yen.

1. FOOD Business: Q4 2025 revenue was 3.159 billion yen, full-year 2025 revenue was 10.817 billion yen, representing a 19.9% year-over-year increase. The segment accounts for approximately 57.5% of total company revenue. BtoB Platform Receipt/Order grew steadily, while BtoB Platform Receipt/Order Light and TANOMU grew more than 30% year-over-year. As of the end of FY2025, the number of buyer companies for BtoB Platform Receipt/Order reached 4,311, with 82,799 stores, and seller companies exceeded 48,000. The number of wholesale ordering companies for Receipt/Order Light and TANOMU reached 1,535. Q4 2025 operating profit margin was 17.1% (a temporary decline from Q3 due to concentrated sales promotion spending), and full-year operating profit was in line with plan. 2. ES Business: Q4 2025 revenue was 1.854 billion yen, full-year 2025 revenue was 7.999 billion yen, representing a 21.2% year-over-year increase. The segment accounts for approximately 42.5% of total company revenue. BtoB Platform Invoice grew 22.6% year-over-year, and BtoB Platform TRADE grew 62.2% year-over-year. As of the end of FY2025, the number of paid companies for BtoB Platform Invoice reached 15,190, and total user companies including free IDs exceeded 1.24 million, with strong network effects. After years of upfront investment, the ES Business achieved full-year profitability in FY2025, recording a 100 million yen operating profit for the full year; Q4 posted a temporary loss due to aggressive sales promotion spending.

No explicit material operational risks or failures were discussed in the provided transcript. Management noted the changing competitive landscape in the invoice business segment and the uncertainty from rapid AI technology development, but outlined strategic responses to these industry changes, and did not identify material near-term risks to performance.

Q: What was the share of revenue from the food service industry within the FOOD Business in FY2025, and what is the outlook for FY2026?

A: Infomart holds around 30% market share in the Japanese food industry, so revenue share aligns with that level. For FY2026, the company will continue to strengthen its core offering for chain restaurants (BtoB Platform Receipt/Order) and also expand TANOMU, its ingredient ordering service for small restaurants. In the prior year, revenue from chain restaurants grew 22% and revenue from small restaurants grew 31.7%, and the company expects to continue growing small restaurant revenue in FY2026.

Q: Can you provide more detail on the collaboration with Dai-ichi Life Group, including cooperation on expanding Dai-ichi Life Group services and product joint development?

A: Details of cooperation around expanding group insurance products, Benefit Station and other Dai-ichi Life services, as well as product collaboration and joint development, will be finalized going forward. No specific details can be shared at this time.

Q: Will any new services be developed as part of the partnership with Dai-ichi Life Group?

A: The company is currently focusing on developing new industry-specific AI products, working on DX functionality and regulatory compliance for sectors like retail and healthcare, and will continue developing new industry-specific efficiency tools and AI-powered new products.

Q: The FY2026 guidance projects a decrease in sales promotion expenses. Is there any risk that this will hurt top-line growth?

A: FY2025 actual sales promotion expense was 1.7 billion yen, compared to around 1.2 billion yen in FY2024, so the company brought forward 500 million yen in sales promotion spending to FY2025 and deployed it efficiently. The projected decrease in FY2026 is just a reversal of this one-time front-loading, not a real cut to promotion investment. The company does not expect this reduced spending to weaken top-line growth, and expects the effects of the front-loaded promotion to appear earlier than originally planned.

Q: What does CEO Kimura see as Infomart's challenges and future direction?

A: This is less a challenge and more a priority area for the company to focus on. Infomart's core strength is enabling customers to have fully digital transaction data down to the line-item level, and AI services only deliver value with this high-quality data, so the first priority is to focus on AI service development. The second priority is advancing the mid-term strategy of deepening penetration in individual industry segments. The company will continue to expand its service offerings by adding the features that customers in each industry need to improve convenience, and will pursue this development in close collaboration with partner companies.

Q: What is your view on the competitive environment for the invoice business in the ES segment?

A: Infomart has offered the BtoB Platform Invoice service since 2015, well before the start of the Japanese invoice system, and has served many customers for years. Now that the invoice system has been in place for a few years, competitors' strategies are starting to shift, and Infomart is focusing on a vertical strategy focused on specific industries. We can deepen our penetration industry by industry, and we can expand adoption by connecting invoice services end-to-end starting from the quoting phase. We are focusing on building industry-specific invoice support for sectors like food and construction. We are also deepening our partnership with invox, which has a leading market share in invoice reception with AI-OCR and high service quality, and we aim to build a great combined service that expands horizontally while connecting all transaction data to Infomart's digital platform, to build a service that existing customers will actively want to adopt.

Q: When will your data-focused AI services be launched?

A: We cannot specify a launch date at this time, but we are steadily progressing R&D on the three services we have outlined, so please stay tuned for updates.

Q: Why did software amortization increase in Q4 compared to Q3, by 60 million yen?

A: There are no special one-time factors driving this increase. We adjust development priorities quarter by quarter, so this just reflects a temporary concentration of capitalization that made Q4 amortization look higher sequentially. This is part of the annual development plan, not a result of any large new program, so the increase is just a timing effect.

Q: How will Infomart maintain its competitive advantage in the era of generative AI?

A: The core of Infomart's BtoB platform is connecting companies with each other via unique IDs on our network. Unlike internal enterprise services that only help a single company improve efficiency with AI, our core value is connecting multiple companies to each other. This inter-company connection is a sensitive area that cannot be easily replicated by AI, and we build the platform, accumulate data on it, and deliver services on top of this connection. We do not expect AI to erode our competitive position at this time.

Q: What is your future pricing strategy for the FOOD and ES businesses, after prior price increases?

A: We cannot share fine-grained details, but we do not rule out future price revisions for existing services. However, our core strategy is to grow revenue per customer by adding more valuable services for customers in both vertical and horizontal segments, rather than relying on general price increases. We will grow revenue per user by expanding the value we deliver to customers.

Q: What is your response to the risk of "SaaS death" from the rise of AI agents?

A: Unlike single-company internal services that can be replaced by AI agents, Infomart's platform is a multi-party network that connects different companies via their unique IDs to enable data exchange between them. This multi-party interconnected platform model is very difficult for AI to replicate, so there will continue to be a clear role for Infomart to play even as AI technology advances.

Q: What is your adoption of internal AI tools like Claude and Codex to improve internal productivity, and what are the productivity benefits?

A: We cannot comment on specific product names, but we have already adopted equivalent internal AI tools. We also cannot share specific productivity improvement figures at this time. That said, we have moved from scattered AI trials across individual departments to establishing a dedicated centralized AI department, which will evaluate AI utilization and identify the best use cases for AI internally, and we will continue to invest in this area to improve internal productivity.