Money Forward,Inc. Q4 FY2026 earnings call

• Company Overview & Vision
  • Batonz was spun out of Japan M&A Center Holdings and established in April 2018, entering its 9th operating period as of April 2026. Its vision is to create a society where anyone, anywhere can easily and freely complete M&A transactions, addressing Japan's growing challenge of 70,000 annual business closures, half of which are profitable businesses unable to find successors.
  • As of the 2025 March fiscal year, annual completed M&A deals reached 805, a 20x increase from the ~40 deals closed in the founding period. Cumulatively, the company has supported approximately 3,300 M&A deals.
• Core Service Segments
  • M&A Platform: Includes three core service lines: 1) Matching: earns success-based deal fees from matching sellers (direct seller inquiries and listings from M&A support institutions such as regional banks and M&A brokerages) with buyers; 2) Sourcing Support: a monthly subscription service for active strategic buyers to assist with deal search; 3) FA (Financial Advisory) Support: provides consulting services for first-time M&A sellers in exchange for advisory fees. The platform hosts over 42,000 seller deals and has over 300,000 registered buyers spanning from individual entrepreneurs to listed enterprises.
  • M&A SaaS: Provides technology to automate and streamline labor-intensive M&A processes (including company analysis and offering memorandum creation) for M&A professionals, earning system usage fees. It is used by over 1,950 entities including more than 300 dedicated M&A brokerages, plus tax accountants, small business consultants, regional financial institutions, and management consultants, enabling local M&A support capacity across Japan.
• Competitive Positioning
  • Unlike traditional labor-intensive, high-fee M&A brokerage focused on large deals, Batonz operates a technology-enabled marketplace focused on small-scale M&A, with 80% of its transactions having a transfer value of under 0.1 billion yen, serving small businesses such as local restaurants that could not previously access M&A support. It holds a leading market position with far more users than competing Japanese M&A platform services.
  • Core competitive advantages: 1) A self-reinforcing virtuous cycle: the M&A SaaS draws professionals across Japan, whose listed seller deals attract more buyers to the platform, increasing deal flow and matching volume, which in turn generates more data to improve SaaS functionality for professionals; 2) High platform safety and integrity: it maintains strict vetting and monitoring to block bad actors, partners with Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance to offer transaction insurance, and leads an industry-wide information sharing initiative to prevent improper M&A activity, functioning like a credit center for the M&A industry.
• Market Context
  • The total addressable market for small and medium-sized M&A support services in Japan is estimated at 48 billion yen annually. The sector is growing rapidly, with a 13% annual average growth rate in closed deals at the government-run SME Succession Support Center, and 17% annual average growth for private M&A support institutions, as M&A for business succession and growth becomes increasingly mainstream.
• Mid to Long-Term Growth Strategy
  • Short-to-medium term (2-3 years) priority 1: Expand the circulation of seller deals, including support for private listings for companies that cannot be publicly posted on the open platform to grow the overall addressable market.
  • Short-to-medium term (2-3 years) priority 2: Drive discontinuous efficiency gains for M&A operations via full AI utilization, leveraging the company's proprietary dataset of buyer and seller needs to improve matching accuracy and automate large-volume document creation to dramatically boost productivity.
  • Long-term (3-6 years) priority: Expand into solutions for surrounding management challenges related to M&A, building on the already launched post-M&A talent matching service developed in partnership with a human resources firm, to offer a broader range of post-transaction support solutions.

The transcript does not provide disaggregated financial performance data for individual product segments. Aggregate company-wide financial results for the 2025 March fiscal year (most recent completed period) show total revenue of 1.379 billion yen. Revenue contribution percentages per segment are not disclosed in the provided transcript.

• For the ongoing 2026 March fiscal year, management expects total revenue of just over 2 billion yen, and profit of approximately 340 million yen.
• The company has maintained an annual aggregate revenue growth rate of just under 40% since founding, and management expects continued strong growth aligned with the expanding Japanese small M&A market.

No explicit discussion of business risks or operational failures is included in the provided transcript.

Q: The company's business is built on two core pillars, M&A Platform and M&A SaaS. Will the business shift to focus more heavily on one pillar going forward, or will it maintain both pillars? / A: Management states the two business lines are inseparable parts of the company's core structure. Improving the functionality and adoption of M&A SaaS increases the volume of seller deals available on the M&A Platform, which in turn increases matching and transaction demand for the platform. The company plans to continue investing to strengthen both pillars simultaneously. No other non-routine material exchanges are fully transcribed in the provided document.