Our corporate mission for sustained growth is stated as: "We create excitement the world has never seen before." We are working toward our vision of becoming "Lifelong partner in the motorcycle lifestyle".
To that end, our 26th fiscal year Medium-term Management Plan established a user experience (UX) growth model with the following aims: (1) to increase customer contact points through store development, (2) to perform marketing activities that are grounded in data created from the construction of a CRM system, and (3) to expand the number of services and create a network in our maintenance business. The results for each of these aims are as follows. (1) We developed ten stores by opening new ones and relocating/expanding current ones. (2) With our CRM system, we made efforts to acquire new members and promote use, which resulted in an increase in members. (3) We started operation of our “BOCS” service, which allows users to find motorcycle shops that meet their specific maintenance needs.
With regards to purchases of motorcycles, the reason for the decrease in the number of purchases was that, despite our proactive investments in ad spending in response to insufficient purchases, we could not sufficiently attract customers to use our purchasing service. As a result, we were unable to achieve the amount of inquiries from customers that is commensurate with the amount that we invested. Moreover, negative press of the used car industry from July 2023 indicated that consumers have a sense of distrust regarding reuse and this may have had a temporary effect on our company, which is involved in the motorcycle industry. This has affected the number of inquiries we receive from customers. Moreover, our thorough efforts for strict unit price management in order to optimize purchasing prices have caused a major decrease in the contract rate during appraisals. However, we improved upturn of purchasing prices by making changes to the management indicators in our purchasing process and implementing indicators that aim at improving the accuracy of appraisals, and taking thorough efforts for strict management of unit price management.
With regards to sales, our wholesale business experienced a major decrease over the previous fiscal year in the number of units sold due to a decrease in the number of units purchased and the strengthening of our retail stock. However, through our efforts to sell high-demand, high-market-value vehicles to achieve sales that maintain the sale price standard, our per-vehicle unit sales price (sales per vehicle) dramatically surpassed that of the previous fiscal year.
In our retail business, we have expanded our openings of new stores to act as an engine for further growth. However, the number of units sold decreased over the previous fiscal year due to a decrease in the sales capabilities of stores because of insufficient employment and training of store staff. Therefore, the per-vehicle unit sales price (sales per vehicle) dramatically decreased due to changes in the engine displacement structure.
The result was, despite the per-vehicle unit sales price (sales per vehicle) dramatically surpassing that of the previous fiscal year, there was a decrease in sales and gross profit due to a major decrease in the number of units sold over the previous fiscal year and the average (per-vehicle) gross profit being significantly lower than that of the previous fiscal year.

Also, in the 25th fiscal year, we recorded an extraordinary dividend from an affiliate as non-operating income. However, this was not the case in our 26th fiscal year.
Moreover, based on a merger between Life & Company and BIKE O Direct Co., Ltd., which are non-consolidated subsidiaries of the company, we experienced a devaluation of shareholdings, there was an allowance for bad debts from the company to our subsidiaries, and we declared impairment of unprofitable shops. As a result, we recorded an extraordinary loss.

At BIKE O & COMPANY, we believe that dividends are an important way of returning profits to shareholders. We decide on dividend amounts by deliberating factors such as business performance while keeping in mind the need for stable dividend distribution.
In accordance with this basic policy, we will not decrease the year-end dividend for the 26th fiscal year. Our forecast at the beginning of the fiscal year was ¥15 per share, and the dividend for the year will be ¥30 per share.
With regards to the dividends in the 27th fiscal year, based on our dedication to activities and improving the composition of profits in order to find new paths for growth in our motorcycle business and in accordance with this basic policy, we are aiming for a 30% dividend payout ratio, with a planned dividend for the year of ¥11 yen (interim dividend of ¥5.5 and year-end dividend of ¥5.5).