Bridge Report:（3937）Ubicom the fiscal year ended March 2023

President Masayuki Aoki	Ubicom Holdings, Inc. (3937)

Company Information

Stock Information

*The share price is the closing price on June 1. Each number is from the consolidated financial results for the fiscal year ended March 2023.

Earnings Trends

*Unit: million yen, yen. Forecasts are those of the company. The definition for net income means net income attributable to owners of parent.
The company has adopted the "Accounting Standard for Revenue Recognition" etc. at the beginning of the first quarter of the fiscal year ending March 2022.

This Bridge Report overviews the financial results of Ubicom Holdings, Inc. for the fiscal year ended March 2023 and more.

Table of Contents

Key Points
1. Company Overview
2. Fiscal Year ended March 2023 Earnings Results
3. Fiscal Year ending March 2024 Earnings Forecasts
4. Efforts and progress toward realizing the medium-term vision
5. Conclusions
<Reference: Regarding Corporate Governance>

Key Points

• In the term ended March 2023, sales increased 11.0% year on year to 5,246 million yen. The global business posted double-digit sales growth on the back of continued strong demand. The medical business, too, performed well. Operating income declined 2.1% year on year to 1,011 million yen. Despite the sales growth, gross profit margin declined 3.3 points due to strategic investments and other factors. Gross profit increased 2.4% year on year, but operating income declined slightly due to additional investments not initially planned, such as retraining of personnel, including advanced technology personnel, increased hiring, and expansion of business footholds, against the backdrop of the first sharp increase of inquiries since the company's founding. Net income declined 31.0% year on year to 573 million yen. The company posted an extraordinary loss of 106 million yen due to a loss on valuation of investment securities. Although sales and profit fell short of the initial forecasts, sales continued to increase.

   

• For the term ending March 2024, the company forecasts a 22.0% year-on-year increase in sales to 6,400 million yen, a 33.5% year-on-year increase in operating income to 1,350 million yen, and a 36.4% year-on-year increase in ordinary income to 1,369 million yen. As the company continues to invest for the second growth phase (investment recoupment phase), it plans to increase both operating income and ordinary income by more than 30%, factoring in the constant investment in advanced technology personnel.

   

• In the global business, the company will respond to the surge in demand, and strengthen recruitment, education, and re-education investment to expand its development capabilities, increase key customers and profitability of each project, to continue to promote its “GO GLOBAL Strategy.”

   

• In the medical business, the company will strengthen its sales strategy to promote the sales of the Mighty series. The company will start applying new pricing based on the cost-effectiveness of installation in the term ending March 2024 in order to improve profitability of products, including the top-end product "Mighty QUBE Hybrid" launched in October 2022.

   

• In terms of sales, the global business saw double-digit sales growth on the back of continued strong demand, but profit declined due in part to additional unplanned investments in response to increased inquiries. The medical business achieved a record-high-level of operating income margin despite a slight increase in sales due to a strategic narrowing-down of low-profit commissioned development projects. It will be interesting to see how the application of new pricing and cross-selling, including those for the top-end product "Mighty QUBE Hybrid" launched in October 2022, will contribute to sales and profit. In the term ending March 2024, we expect sales growth and higher profit margins due to a significant increase in development volume in the global business, especially against the backdrop of the Economic Security Promotion Act and other favorable factors.

1. Company Overview

Ubicom Holdings is a one-of-a-kind business innovation company that creates IT solutions to social issues, such as the shortage of manpower and a medical crunch. It recognizes the medical, financial/public, automobile, and manufacturing/robotics etc. markets as strategic markets, and offers a broad range of IT solutions and services.
It has about 1,000 engineers mainly at the development center in the Philippines and operates two core businesses. One is the global business that solves the shortage of IT personnel and promotes digital transformation (DX) in Japan, by developing software and advanced solutions including AI. The other is the medical business that offers healthcare optimization solutions, such as medical claims inspection, support for medical safety, and cloud services, as a leading company that offers IT solutions for supporting the management of medical institutions. It established a highly profitable business model through business restructuring by implementing scrap and build. Furthermore, the company will promote a win-win investment model for accelerating its business through strategic alliances and M&A with leading companies and burgeoning enterprises, and quickly aims to establish new businesses with different approaches from the existing businesses, such as the platform business.

1-1 Corporate History

Mr. Masayuki Aoki, who had entrepreneurial ambition all along, took the position of President and CEO at WCL Co., which was a new business subsidiary of WORLD CO., LTD. in March 2005, and then found out that there are many young talented engineers who work vigorously in the Philippines when he visited there during his domestic and international search for seeds of various new businesses. As the adoption of IT on internal operations of companies progressed in Japanese companies, he thought that conducting the system development in the Philippines will open the possibilities to offer a wide array of system solutions globally at high performance and capture the demand and decided to commercialize the idea. In December 2005, He founded Advanced World Solutions, Ltd. (currently: Ubicom Holdings, Inc.)
Following the trend of ICT adoption, the increase of new clients progressed well, and the business expanded thanks to the competitive advantage of having a development center in the Philippines, which possesses many capable top-class engineers. In 2012, the company acquired AIS Co., Ltd., which is the largest company in the field of systems for medical claims, as a subsidiary. In June 2016, the company was listed on Mothers of Tokyo Stock Exchange. After it changed its name to Ubicom Holdings, Inc. In July 2017, it was listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December of the same year.
In April 2022, the company got listed on the Prime Market of TSE after the restructuring of the market.

1-2 Corporate Ethos and Vision

The company advocates the following three management visions as the one and only business innovation company that creates innovative IT solutions combining people and technology.

Based on five core assets: technology, human resources, intellectual property (IP), foresight, and partnerships, the company creates business innovations aimed at solving issues such as Japan’s aging society, healthcare crunch, a lack of IT personnel, and digital transformation (DX), which it sees as its social responsibility and raison d’être.

(From the company’s website)

1-3 Business Description

1-3-1 Overview
With more than 20 years of experience in embedded software development, application development, testing, and quality assurance services, the company perceives social structure changes such as globalization and the decreasing birthrate and aging population, as well as technological advances in the field of Medical Life Sciences, Cybernetics, and Robotics, as an opportunity to develop new businesses. In the medical, financial/public, automotive, and manufacturing/robotics sectors, which are strategic markets, the company has developed its own core solutions in the field of mainly AI (Artificial intelligence), Analytics and Automation/RPA (Automation of the running and management of software testing etc.), and is now working to develop and implement them, and provides services for many client companies.

1-3-2 The business environment surrounding the company
The business environment of Ubicom Holdings, which pursues the growth by offering IT solutions to social issues, such as the support for solving the shortage of manpower and the support for healthcare optimization, is as follows. The environment surrounding the global business and the medical business (which will be described in detail later) is favorable.

(From company’s document)

1) Nationwide promotion of digitalization、Worsening labor shortage in the IT field
With the government's flag-waving for digitization in full swing, according to “Survey on the demand and supply of IT personnel” published by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in March 2019, it is important to secure IT personnel who can contribute to the improvement in productivity by creating added value and streamlining business operations in an innovative fashion, but it is difficult to secure them, due to the declining birthrate and the aging population. When the growth of IT demand is classified into “minor,” “medium,” and “significant” ones, it is estimated that Japan will be 584,000 engineers shortage in 2025 and 787,000 engineers shortage in 2030 in the case of “significant” growth.

2) Augmentation of national medical expenditure and tightening of examination of Medical Claims, Crunch in medical institution management, work-style reforms for healthcare providers
The estimated medical expenditure (excluding expenses such as workers’ accident compensation insurance and payments when the full payment is covered with own expenses. It accounts for about 98% of the national medical care expenditure, which is the overall estimate of all expenses required for treating injuries or diseases after examinations by doctors in medical institutions) has marked a record high in 2021 at 44.2 trillion yen. As medical expenses are in an increasing trend due to the progression of the aging population, the financial situation of medical insurances keeps getting worse. In order to reduce insurance costs, the national government is implementing a measure for rationalizing medical expenses by tightening the examination of Medical Claims,etc.

(What are the medical claims?)
Under the current system of health care services provided by health insurance, medical institutions receive up to 30% from patients and the other 70% or more from the health insurance association, mutual aid associations, city or ward offices, etc.
Medical institutions define the detailed statement of diagnosis and treatment, which is required to claim the amount covered by insurance from these public institutions, a Medical Claim; and the tasks performed to issue the Medical Claim are a very important procedure, which makes up most of the revenue of medical institutions.
The submitted Medical Claims are meticulously scrutinized by the Examination and Payment institutions. In case there is a mistake in its content, the Medical Claim may be sent back (returned) by the Examination and Payment institution, or the scores of medical fees may be reduced. In case the Medical Claim is returned, it must be carefully examined, revised, and resubmitted. Submitting appropriate Medical Claims is an extremely important task for the efficient management of medical institutions.
In 2009, medical institutions were obligated to make online requests for Medical Claims, as a general principle.

(Workstyle reform for doctors, etc.)
While Japan's medical needs are rapidly expanding, diversifying, and becoming more sophisticated with the progress of a super-aging society, the problems of shortage and uneven distribution of medical doctors and workloads such as long working hours are becoming apparent.
In order to alleviate the ever-increasing burden on doctors and promote reforms in the way doctors work in the medical field, a cap on overtime work for doctors with penalties will come into effect in April 2024. As a result, medical institutions are faced with the urgent task of streamlining and optimizing the work of doctors and others.

The crunch in medical care provision systems and deterioration of hospital management caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are becoming serious social issues. Against this backdrop, examination and payment institutions are moving to tighten the examination of medical claims, and work-style reforms are in progress for health care providers. Accordingly, it is now essential for the management of medical institutions to improve revenues through better operational efficiency for medical claim checks, etc., ensure the safety and quality of medical care, and deal with work-style reforms.

3) Medical cloud market that is expected to grow rapidly
Thanks to the notice of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare titled “Regarding places for storing medical records” partially revised in February 2010, it became possible to store medical information at data centers owned by private enterprises, which made it easier for private enterprises to offer medical cloud services.
It is expected that application platforms and cloud services in which servers exist in networks will be utlized in the medical field for electronic charts, medical image management systems, regional medical cooperation systems, and various services for home care support, remote image diagnosis, clinical trials, and dispensaries.
Especially, as the volume of data in today’s medical instiutions increased steeply and networks are used more widely, expectations toward medical cloud services are growing, as cloud services have merits, such as “It is easy to cooperate with other facilities,” “It is unnecessary to maintain and manage data by yourself,” and “They are inexpensive,” and they turned out to be useful for anti-disaster measures after many medical charts were lost in areas devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. Furthermore, the medical crunch due to the spread of COVID-19 made us strongly aware of the necessity of online diagnosis and electronic charts.
Some point out the problem of safety from the viewpoint of protection of personal information, but the medical cloud market is expected to grow considerably for offering solutions to social issues while keeping a balance between the tightening and easing of regulations.

1-3-3 Strategic business domains
The company focuses its efforts to expand its business based on the strategic business domains of the “3As” fields, which will usher in the new age.

1-3-4 Segments
The company reports 2 business segments; one is a global business that provides IT solution services to diverse markets such as Finance/Public, Medical, Automotive, Manufacturing and Robotics, and management improvement solutions etc for medical institutions such as the Medical Claims Inspection Software.

(From the company’s website)

1) Global business
- Overview
Its wholly owned subsidiaries, Advanced World Systems, Inc. and Advanced World Solutions, Inc. are the major development centers in the Philippines, where it focuses on Finance, Public, Medical, Automotive, Manufacturing, and Robotics fields and delivers embedded software development, business application development, maintenance, and testing services.
The company defines “3As” (AI, Analytics and Automation/RPA) as a strategic business domain, and develops its own core solutions, utilizing these 3As technologies. The advanced capability of developing solutions is derived from its development centers in the Philippines, which has a top-class engineering group composed of about 1,000 engineers. This gives it a strong competitive advantage. (Refer to 【1-4 Characteristics and Strengths of Ubicom】 for more details.)

- Clients
Its client companies range broadly from finance, public, medical, automotive, manufacturing, to service industry-related ones. As mentioned above, in addition to the worsening IT personnel shortage, there have been strong needs for the reduction of costs for development and operation, but the company, which has 1,000 IT person who are proficient in Japanese and English, is steadily meeting such needs.
On top of that, the rich experience of development for numerous big domestic clients over many years has further earned their trust and built its reputation.

2) Medical business
- Overview
AIS Co., Ltd., which is a 100% subsidiary, engages in the development and sale of packaged solutions for medical institutions, cloud services, data analysis solutions, development support, and consulting services, contributing to the reform of workstyles of medical professionals and staff in medical institutions, the improvement of revenues at medical institutions, and the improvement in safety and quality of healthcare.
The “Mighty Series,” which improves the management quality and increases the work efficiency in medical fields, is well-received thanks to its user-oriented and cost-effective features. Sales were positively affected by work style reforms as of the end of March 2023, the Mighty series occupied the top market share and was being used by approximately 44% of hospitals with a patient capacity of 20 or more (3,559 facilities), and 15% of clinics with a patient capacity of 19 or less (15,598 facilities), for a total of about 19,157 facilities.

These products and solutions not only support the reform of workstyles of medical doctors, but also promote the development of new medical platforms. The company aims to create new markets based on intellectual property.

- Mainstay products and services
(1) The Medical Claims Inspection Software (Mighty Checker®)
As improvement in efficiency and precision of Medical Claims Inspection were required, the company was ahead of competitors in releasing Medical Claims Inspection Software (Mighty Checker®) in 1999; it was well-received for its usability and it managed to establish its position as a leading maker of “Medical Claims Inspection Software.” In FY 2019, it released “Mighty Checker® EX,” an AI-based new-generation Medical Claim check system and reaffirmed its market position.

Mainly, the company strongly supports the Medical Claim issuing process with the following features:

(Benefits of adopting the Mighty Checker)
Adopting Mighty Checker can reduce the time required for health insurance claim inspection by approximately 60% and the inspection cost by about 55% and can increase revenues through its calculation support function.
As staff get used to operating it, work time will be further shortened, and the accumulation of past data and AI detection will further improve inspection accuracy.

(2) Medical Ordering check software, “Mighty QUBE® PRO”
This system utilizes the database of Mighty Checker® to immediately check appropriateness of treatment and medication with disease,　dosage, number of days and administration at the time of ordering prescriptions, and report errors when there is any inappropriate treatment, or any disease name is missed. By preventing the erroneous input of medical instructions and mis operation, it can avoid medical accidents (near-miss accidents) and assessment (reduction of claimed amount), so that medical doctors can concentrate on their primary task, that is, healthcare. It is highly evaluated because it supports the financial and managerial improvement of hospitals through the pursuit of the safety and quality of medical treatment and the streamlining of business operation, and it also brings benefits to both hospital and patients, so many medical institutions have adopted it.

(Benefits of adopting Might QUBE)
The results of a verification study assuming a medium-sized hospital with more than 200 beds showed that its products and solutions can reduce the working hours of outpatient physicians by approximately 28 hours per month per physician and alleviate excessive stress. The company estimates that annual profit will improve 66 million yen due to the sales growth impact of Might QUBE as it reduces overtime pay for doctors and other related costs and assessments due to the omission of disease names.
In addition, it supports the prevention of input errors by supporting electronic medical record input, support for naming diseases, and efficiency of non-clinical work so that doctors can concentrate on patients.

The company officially launched its top-of-the-line product, "Mighty QUBE Hybrid," in the term ended March 2023 (October 2022).

*Features of the new Mighty QUBE Hybrid

(3) SonaM, a medical cloud in preparation for disasters
This is a cloud service for supporting BCPs and preservation of medical data in medical institutions with one of the most advanced security bases in Japan.

Due to the spread of COVID-19, the necessity of online diagnosis and treatment attracted public attention, the diversification of diagnosis and treatment methods is progressing, and the demand for security in digital and cloud healthcare services is growing.
In addition, at medical institutions that take more important roles at the time of disasters, it is imperative to secure safe, reliable places and methods for storing in-hospital medical data.

“SonaM,” which was developed for the purpose of supporting healthcare systems suffering the lack of resources under these circumstances, is used for preserving medical data, including medical claims, medical charts, and examination images, with the security cloud.
In order to handle medical data in the cloud, it is necessary to comply with the three medical information security guidelines (the generic term is Three Guidelines from Three Ministries) suggested by the three ministries: the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, but the company covered all of them, by adopting the advanced cloud security base of NTT East.
Multiple step-by-step plans are prepared for meeting various needs from individual medical institutions with different scales.

This is a new profitable subscription model following the Mighty series, and the company aims to increase the average spending per user by cross-selling it with the Mighty series and increasing direct transactions.

(4) Insurance Knowledge Platform
As a DX solution for the insurance industry, it helps streamline the procedure for claiming insurance money (assessment for payment), shorten the period until the receipt (payment) of insurance money, and popularize simplified procedures for insurance claim.

(Overview and features)
Until now, insurance companies have needed to exert a great deal of effort to cover the scattered information in examinations of insurance claims from clients, such as medical practices, medical products, names of injuries and illnesses, advanced medical care, and law revisions.
The company estimates that a major life insurance company processes about 300,000 documents related to insurance claims annually, and the annual cost, including personnel expenses, is about 1 billion yen.

The insurance knowledge platform, which uses a unique medical database backed by the company's track record of providing services to more than 19,000 medical institutions, can greatly streamline cumbersome screening operations.
After the insured person is discharged from a hospital, it currently takes 2-4 weeks to receive benefits after completing paperwork with the insurance company and the hospital, and the insurance company also takes about 2-3 weeks to complete the processes from payment examination to payment. By introducing a medical information search system, the company aims to improve the efficiency of insurance payment operations made by individuals. In addition, the introduction of the DX program, "Yuragi Hosei" (Fluctuation Correction), which specializes in improving the reading accuracy of medical documents using OCR, promotes the popularization of simple billing, which is considered challenging in terms of cost and technology, for example, by supporting the partial automation of insurance payment operations.

(Monetization concept)
The company is aiming to achieve a high-priced, high-profit subscription model that surpasses the Mighty series.
Revenue consists of basic initial costs, basic connection usage fees, optional initial costs, and optional connection usage. The company has developed multiple options to meet diverse needs, planning to secure high profits by offering a wide range of solutions.

(Strengths of the platform)
1. Intellectual Property (IP)
Utilizing the company’s own medical database backed by a track record of providing solutions to more than19,000 medical institution users for many years, the platform is equipped with medical treatment, drug codes, advanced medical information, etc., used for insurance examinations.
The platform also benefits from the knowledge of AI development.

2. Business model
The platform is operated via a cloud-based, next-generation service model with a high unit price and monthly subscription.
In addition, as the platform can be rolled out from the next year of development with only the burden of maintenance costs, its potential future value is enormous.
Also, the utilization of IT should reduce the burden of insurance claim procedures and shorten the number of days until insurance benefits are received. We also expect the company’s participation in the "Life Insurance Ecosystem Concept,” which aims to significantly reduce the administrative burden of insurance companies, to accelerate the platform’s market penetration.
Another big advantage is that the company can utilize its development resources in the Philippines to brush up its services.

3. Marketability
The company believes it is the first industry player to foray into an uncontested market space.
There is a potential client base/market of approximately 100 companies, with an annual usage fee of several millions to tens of millions of yen per company.

(Future developments)
The company aims to expand the Insurance Knowledge Platform across the entire insurance industry in the form of a new subscription-type solution in the medical business, as well as develop and implement a new menu equipped with AI and other advanced technologies geared toward further evolution of solutions for the insurance industry. Furthermore, it is focusing on capturing development demand associated with digital transformation and increased use of AI technology across financial services (including the insurance industry), boosted by the need to switch from "face-to-face services" to "non-face-to-face services" due to recent measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

In addition, in November 2020, it was decided that the company would participate in the Life Insurance Ecosystem Concept for expanding the Insurance Knowledge Platform.

The life insurance ecosystem concept aims to reduce the burden of insurance claim procedures and shorten the time required to receive insurance benefits, as well as significantly reduce the administrative workload of insurance companies by utilizing IT.
IRRC Corporation (1st section of TSE, 7325), a company that has atypical AI-OCR technology and engages in insurance sales, solutions, and system businesses, as well as Assist Corporation, a company engaged in software sales and technical support, forms the core of the concept.
In order to develop and expand this concept, the company's insurance payment automation technology in the "Insurance Knowledge Platform" was highly acclaimed, and the company decided to participate as the first company to strengthen the concept.
Against the backdrop of many business inquiries for the "Insurance Knowledge Platform," the company is preparing to implement multiple functions as an option in addition to the "medical information search engine" for insurance payment examination operations, which is a basic function, in order to expand the user-oriented functions and strengthen the appeal of the platform.
In order to develop the provision of a subscription-based platform for the insurance industry, which is a new initiative for Ubicom, as one of its new core businesses, the company will create mutual benefits for insurance companies and their clients, synergies with collaborating companies, and establish technological innovations and business models.
In addition, from the third quarter of FY 3/21, the company expanded the use of its approximately 1,000 global IT personnel to develop advanced solutions for the insurance industry, including the Insurance Knowledge Platform, and to further strengthen its DX promotion.
Furthermore, the company plans to invest in human resource development to train the next-generation engineers specializing in advanced fields such as AI, to further increase its corporate value with an eye on the future.

1-4 Characteristics and Strengths of Ubicom

1-4-1 Training and utilizing approximately 1,000 engineers, mainly at its development sites in the Philippines
As was touched upon in the corporate history section, the president Aoki had inspected the site several times, and considered the Philippines as an optimum location for IT development. It not only is the source of the company's competitive advantage, but also plays an extremely important role for driving the future growth strategy.
The development center in the Philippines and its predecessor have about 30 years of development experience, and their main characteristics are as follows:

1) The optimum location for global IT development: the Philippines
The Philippines enjoys the demographic dividend period, where a long-term population growth, especially in young age groups, continues. It maintains an economic growth rate of roughly 6% on average. Moreover, young citizens are full of vigor and strive for upward mobility.
In addition, the fact that English is the official language plant the seeds for engagement in global activities, the high IT literacy, its easily accessible location at the center of ASEAN countries, etc. make it an optimum location as a global base for IT development.

2) Employing elite staff
As many as about 1,000 engineers enrolled mainly in development centers in the Philippines, but it does not only boast of the quantity (number of people), but also the quality (their aptitude), which is unrivaled.
Backed by a long track record, the engineers who seek employment at the company highly value the development center in the Philippines, and the group receives a few thousand applications for engineer positions almost every year. However, only top 4% of applicants are accepted.

3) Human resources development with original education and training
Building a top-class engineering group cannot be achieved just by hiring elite personnel.
One of the differentiating factors that make it hard for competitors to catch up with the company is, in fact, its educational system and training, which turn staff into capable top engineers.

In April 2003, the corporate group established its own training center ACTION in the Philippines and started in-house developed training programs. It is constituted by 4 categories: basic concept for IT, advanced technologies, interpersonal skills, and the Japanese language. The training is conducted aiming employees to pass the PhilNITS (The Philippine National Information Technology Standards exam) and the Japanese Language Proficiency Test level 4.
After completing the training, the trainees present their achievements to the board members, and after going through interview assessments, they are finally assigned to projects. Even for elite students, the journey up to the point of being able to handle job assignments is not an easy one. The program graduates who overcome such hurdles acquire the skills needed for fulfilling their duties in an advanced technical field and a Japanese-speaking environment, hence they are overwhelmingly superior in the Japanese IT market, and they are the engine driving the company’s growth.
Furthermore, the company is always handling numerous challenging cutting-edge projects, giving highly motivated staff chances to shine. This is also one of the reasons why the corporate group is so popular as an employer in the Philippines.

4) Further upgrading and reinforcing of solution development capabilities
The company is already outshining competitors with its advanced solution development capabilities, but as it aspires to make robust use of this advantage, the company established the “Advanced Technologies Development Center” in 2017.
About tens of the center’s advanced engineers specialize in AI and big data analysis. By taking advantage of their native English to connect with top-class researchers globally, the company established a system that gives access to the latest cutting-edge technologies.
With this, it became possible to produce a prototype with highly added value that matches clients’ needs in a short period of time at low cost and directly offer it to major clients in Japan. Accordingly, the company’s capability of giving a proposal is improving considerably.

5) Receiving external acclaim
The work of its top engineers, who had overcome high hurdles and managed to participate in projects, has received high external acclaim, which led to the winning of numerous awards.
* In 2020, its Philippine subsidiary was awarded the Export Excellence Award for Software Development Services by the country’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
* In 2020, two engineers were selected as Asian top guns, who are outstanding among top passers of Asia’s common standardized version exam of the Japanese Information-Technology Engineers Examination.
* In 2017, its Philippine subsidiary, Inc. was awarded as the best software company across the Philippines in the “International ICT Award.”
* Its training program “ACTION” has been consecutively awarded the Outstanding Company Program award at the "e-Services Philippines Award” for 6 years.

1-4-2 A robust customer base
Armed with a strong competitive advantage of having both a global division and a medical division, the company has established a robust customer base.
The robust client assets are considered to play a big role for the expansion of the recurring-revenue business, which is based on subscriptions in the growth strategies, and matching the win-win investment model partners (growing corporations) with client enterprises, etc.

1-4-3 Feeling of partnership inside and outside the Group, and a corporate culture with a sense of ownership
The president Aoki considers all the employees, including those who work overseas, and their family members as "fellows." He thinks that one of the Group's strengths is that it achieves leaping growth thanks to all the employees who positively work with a cheerful never fading smile yet are never satisfied with status quo; each and everyone has a sense of ownership and thus pioneer the new times.

This feeling of partnership that values harmonious relationships extends to even outside the Group.
“The win-win investment model,” which is one of important growth strategies of the company, promotes the collaboration and strategic alliances with leading companies and growing enterprises, to accelerate the growth of existing businesses and create new businesses. The mindset that investors and investees aim to grow together as “fellows” regardless of business scale and the relationship between shareholders and portfolio companies is expected to motivate alliance partners further. This is probably the big difference from general VC (venture capital) and CVC (corporate venture capital).

1-5 ROE analysis

*The asset turnover ratio and leverage are calculated with the average amount between the beginning and the end of the term. Calculated by Investment Bridge Co, Ltd. based on annual securities reports and brief financial statements.

*Created by Investment Bridge Co., Ltd. based on disclosure material.

Although the company has been achieving high levels of ROE, all three elements decreased in the term ended March 2023. The company expects net income margin to be 15.0%. It will be interesting to see whether it can exceed 20% again.

1-6 Shareholder Return

While the company recognizes returning profits to shareholders as one of the management priorities, it has been prioritizing expansion of its internal reserves for future business development and reinforcing the management quality. However, in FY03/19, the company paid a dividend of 5.00 yen per share for the first time considering the recent increase of orders received, robust business performance, and the establishment of the foundation for a profitable recurring-revenue business model. In the previous fiscal year March 2023, the company also paid a dividend of ¥11.00 per share, an increase by 2 yen, and the payout ratio was 22.6%.
From now on, the company will concentrate on the improvement of measures for returning profits to shareholders with the aim of achieving a payout ratio of 30% or higher in the future, while considering the balance between the improvement in business performance and strategic investment, based on the creation of stable cash flows through the shift to the subscription business model.

1-7 ESG-related initiatives

The company believes that it has a social responsibility and raison d'etre to create business innovation based on its five core assets: technology, human resources, intellectual property, foresight, and partnerships, and solve issues such as the declining birthrate and aging population, the shortage of medical care, the depletion of IT human resources, and DX. The company's ESG initiatives are as follows.

2.Fiscal Year ended March 2023 Earnings Results

2-1 Earnings Trends

*Unit: million yen

Increase in Sales, Decrease in Income

• In the term ended March 2023, sales increased 11.0% year on year to 5,246 million yen. The global business posted double-digit sales growth on the back of continued strong demand. The medical business, too, performed well. Operating income declined 2.1% year on year to 1,011 million yen. Despite the sales growth, gross profit margin declined 3.3 points due to strategic investments and other factors. Gross profit increased 2.4% year on year, but operating income declined slightly due to additional investments not initially planned, such as retraining of personnel, including advanced technology personnel, increased hiring, and expansion of business footholds, against the backdrop of the first sharp increase of inquiries since the company's founding. Net income declined 31.0% year on year to 573 million yen. The company posted an extraordinary loss of 106 million yen due to a loss on valuation of investment securities. Although sales and profit fell short of the initial forecasts, sales continued to increase.

   

2-2 Trend of Segments

*Unit: million yen. Sales is the sales toward external customers. Ratio to sales in Operating Income is profit margin.

*Created by Investment Bridge Co., Ltd. based on disclosure material.

(Global Business)
Sales increased and profit decreased.

The company received many inquiries from new potential pillar customers, including those who utilize AIoT technology, such as smart factories, as well as existing pillar customers. In order to further strengthen efforts to nurture cutting-edge DX human resources and to develop sub-pillars, the company actively recruited new graduates and mid-career workers, aggressively implemented the "ACTION" training program, and carried out a leader engineer education program to meet the demand for large-scale development that will be in full swing from the next fiscal year onward.

In the enterprise business unit, the company has expanded human investment in response to the trend of offshore promotion in multiple countries. The company expects strong demand not only from manufacturing, finance, and public sectors, but also from large "maintenance needs" in the future.

The company has strengthened negotiations for collaboration with overseas technology companies for AI solution development and the development of personnel versed in AI. The company accelerated investment toward the second growth phase in addition to regular investment. Since the second half of the term ended March 2023, the company has been implementing measures to respond to changes in the external environment, including exchange rates, in addition to price policies.

(Medical Business)
Sales and profit increased.

While reviewing low-profit commissioned development projects, such as maintenance and operation of medical institutions' internal information systems, the company saw a slight increase in sales. The stock (number of medical institution installations) related to the Mighty series package sales expanded steadily, with contributions from the new products Mighty Checker EX and Mighty Checker Cloud.

With the establishment of a high-profit subscription model and cross-selling solutions, operating income margin reached 58.9%, a record high level.

The company has fully launched its strategic solution, "Mighty QUBE Hybrid," which supports medical workers’ workstyle reforms. The company has received numerous orders, including those from medical hospital groups, and is strengthening its direct sales force to install more systems after a transitional period.

The company continued to monetize its new solution for insurance companies, "Insurance Knowledge Platform," and conduct demonstration tests with several insurance companies. The company aims to further increase the revenue from subscription services that have been already started in the next fiscal year and beyond.

The company is promoting proof of concept (POC) for a new pricing policy that considers the economic effects of adopting its solutions in medical institutions. The company is also strengthening its efforts to provide solutions that contribute to the improvement of management in medical institutions, as well as the quality and safety of medical care.

2-3 Financial position and cash flow

Main Balance Sheet

*Unit: million yen

*Created by Investment Bridge Co., Ltd. based on disclosure material.

Total assets increased 173 million yen from the end of the previous year to 5,797 million yen mainly due to an increase in cash and deposits.
Total liabilities decreased 104 million yen to 1,706 million yen.
Net assets increased 277 million yen to 4,090 million yen due to an increase in retained earnings.
As a result, capital adequacy ratio rose 2.8 points from the end of the previous term to 70.6%.

◎Cash flow

*Unit: million yen

Cash position increased.

*Created by Investment Bridge Co., Ltd. based on disclosure material.

2-4 Topics

◎Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed for expanding global business
In February 2023, during the business agreement signing ceremony held on the occasion of the official visit of President Ferdinand Marcos of the Republic of the Philippines to Japan, MOU was signed to promote further economic activity between Japan and the Philippines and strengthen investments for expanding the group's business to advance the "Ubicom Group's second growth phase." The company was the only participating company from the IT industry.

◎MOU signed for AI solution development and talent development
In November 2022, the company signed an MOU for AI solution development and talent development with SIXAI, an Israeli next-generation technology pioneer.
The company will continue to promote collaboration with global partners based on its "GO GLOBAL strategy."

The company has invested in GoAhead Ventures III, a fund that invests in cutting-edge IT companies in the U.S. ELEMENTS, Inc. became the first company in which the company has invested to be approved for initial public offering. The company will continue to actively promote investment in excellent IT ventures in Japan and overseas.

◎Headquarters’ relocation
The company has decided to relocate its head office in order to strengthen its human resources and head office functions. The relocation is scheduled for July 1, 2023.

3. Fiscal Year ending March 2024 Earnings Forecasts

Earnings Forecasts

*Unit: million yen. The forecasted values were provided by the company.

Forecasted increase in sales and profit
For the term ending March 2024, the company forecasts a 22.0% year-on-year increase in sales to 6,400 million yen, a 33.5% year-on-year increase in operating income to 1,350 million yen, and a 36.4% year-on-year increase in ordinary income to 1,369 million yen. As the company continues to invest for the second growth phase (investment recoupment phase), it plans to increase both operating income and ordinary income by more than 30%, factoring in the constant investment in advanced technology personnel.

4. Efforts and progress toward realizing the medium-term vision

4-1 Trend of each business

(1) Global business
◎Direction of the global business: Promoting the “GO GLOBAL Strategy”
In order to meet such demand, the company is improving its business strategy with an eye on the global market.
Specific initiatives are as follows.

(1) Promotion of global M&A, investments, and business alliances
(2) To strengthen overseas marketing (the U.S. and Israel)
(3) AI education through alliances with companies in advanced digital countries
(4) Further improving the high added value of the Philippine base

In particular, regarding the base in the Philippines, which is the source of the company's competitive advantage, the company aims to
・Realize projects using English skills
・Strengthen recruitment of university graduates and human resources with science backgrounds
・Provide services to European and U.S. countries by utilizing geographical advantages
・Meet vast demand through offshore promotion in multiple countries

The company sees the potential market size for domestic software development at around 10 trillion yen, while the global potential market size is more than 10 times that of the domestic market, and it aims to meet this huge demand.

◎Promoting business growth through expansion of development resources
The company plans to respond to the rapid increase in demand by strengthening recruitment, education, and re-education investments.
The company has recruited 100-160 people per year, but this year, it plans to recruit over 350 employees.
The company will focus on "strengthening recruitment," "re-educating employees with new skills (to respond to evolving and advanced needs)," "providing leader education for about 50 people (to respond to increased orders and quality management)," "pooling resources (to maximize operational rates through collaboration between departments)," and "expanding development volume to improve profit margins.”

◎Strengthening customer relationships (turning them into pillar customers) and increasing profitability of projects.
The company defines its pillar clients ("mainstay clients") as market leaders in their respective industries with whom it has an ongoing business relationship and sales of several hundred million yen.
For new clients, 1-5 people are initially dispatched to the client's site for on-site development, but as sales expand, the number of engineers assigned to the client's site increase, and the company begin to shift to an offshore development system. The goal is to eventually have a big-pillar clients with more than 50 people working on development on a continual basis.

In the process of reaching this stage, an increase in profitability is expected, owing to the advantage of scale, the elevation of development productivity based on the accumulated industrial knowledge, the development of their original solutions for test automatization, etc.

(2) Medical Business
◎Promotion of external environment and business strategy
The company is focusing on marketing its medical solution/platform concept in accordance with the medical healthcare DX policy, and is actively preparing to obtain business qualifications for its medical platform business.

As a business strategy, the company is implementing various strategies such as strengthening its intellectual property strategy, enhancing medical engineering training in the Philippines, improving solutions for medical doctors’ workstyle reform, cloud, and DX, enhancing its sales strategy for the post-pandemic period and medical doctors’ workstyle reform. By these, the company continue to capture the demand for DX in government, medical healthcare DX, medical doctors’ workstyle reform, and to improve the quality, safety, and accessibility of medical care.

◎ Growth potential of each solution
Each solution in this business is characterized by high profitability with a gross profit margin of 75% or higher. The company will promote further improvement of unit price per customer and the capacity of earning recurring revenues through up-selling, cross-selling and direct sales.

For Mighty QUBE and the New Mighty QUBE, the company has identified nearly 1,000 new targets (medium-sized hospitals) for "workstyle reform for doctors in 2024" and will improve consulting and proposals to medical institutions by leveraging the company's strengths; its "uniqueness in the market" and "high price."
For Mighty Checker EX, the company will encourage existing users to switch (up-sell) from the standard product "PRO" to the top-end product "EX" and will promote cross-selling the menu through direct accounts after acquiring new users through direct sales (price).

◎Target market size for medical platforms
The company aims to become the niche No.1 platform in the medical field by using its position as a market leader in DX solutions specialized for medical institutions.

(From company’s document)

In addition to its current solutions for insurance, medical doctors, and medical affairs division, the company aims to attract user communities related to medical care and healthcare (with a potential market size of 300 billion yen) and create new markets for further growth in its second growth phase.

◎Direction for the current fiscal year
For the term ended March 2023, the pace of increase of clinic users slowed due to the discontinuation of the old system caused by the transition to a new system. The company recognizes this as a transitional period and plans to focus on sales activities to promote the adoption of solutions for the new system in the term ending March 2024.

◎Strengthening sales strategy
The company plans to strengthen its sales strategy for the promotion of the Mighty series.

In customer support, it will focus on "building user communities," and in marketing, it will emphasize "strengthening cost-effectiveness messaging."
In pricing, the company plans to promote "a new pricing policy based on cost-effectiveness" and will conduct a PoC verification of new pricing for new users before implementing it this fiscal year to strengthen sales and expand its market.
For the top product, "Mighty QUBE Hybrid," the company aims to increase gross profit margin by 5% and will begin applying the new pricing policy starting in the term ending March 2024.

For existing users (19,157 medical institution users in the term ended March 2023), the company plans to apply the new pricing policy when they switch to higher-tier products (support end date of lower-tier products is undecided) and aims to create an impact on its performance in the long run.
The company believes that the Mighty series' strengths, such as its functional advantages, customer value-added by consultants and customer support, and economic effects in medical institutions, can significantly improve customer lifetime value.

◎Effects of investment in main solutions (results of the verification study assuming a medium-sized hospital with approximately 200 or more beds)
Mighty Checker (MC) for medical affairs division has been verified to reduce work hours for checking health insurance claims by 60%, as well as to reduce checking costs by 55%.
Mighty QUBE (MQ) for medical doctors has also realized improvement in profitability of 66 million yen per year by reducing the working hours of outpatient physicians by approximately 28 hours, reducing overtime and related costs for medical doctors, and increasing revenue by reducing audits due to omissions of disease names, etc.
In addition, the company supports the prevention of input errors and disease naming support of diseases in electronic medical records, and helps improve the safety and quality medical care by improving efficiency of non-clinical operations so that medical doctors can focus on patients.

◎Value Chain of Main Solutions
The adoption of "Mighty QUBE Hybrid," an electronic medical record linkage system, and "Mighty Checker EX," a health insurance claim checking system, will improve efficiency in all processes from consultation and electronic medical record entry to online claiming of health insurance claims, contributing greatly to the realization of workstyle reforms for medical doctors and medical affairs divisions.

(From company’s document)

◎Insurance Knowledge Platform
Out of the approximately 50 companies in the life insurance market, business negotiations are in progress with 7 companies. PoC verification is underway with three of these companies with the aim of installing the system by the end of FY 2023.
In addition to direct business negotiations with insurance companies, the company is promoting the provision of embedded solutions. Negotiations and PoC verification have begun with BPO companies and other candidates for installation.
The business model is based on a monthly fee based on the number of insurance claim documents, with annual sales of several million to several tens of millions of yen per company and a gross profit margin of 75% or higher.

◎Promotion of M&A strategy
The company has been successful in the expansion of sales and profit and the improvement of profit ratio in M&A of this business section by going through the steps of implementation of the reform of awareness, elevation of profit ratio, and success of taskforces in the Group. They are aiming for the realization of new M&A contributing to the platformer strategy, utilizing their post-merger integration (PMI) know-how.

4-2 Growth Vision

The company will maximize synergies between existing businesses and M&A, and promote the accumulation of new recurring/SaaS models.
In order to realize its growth vision for each business, the company will pursue further earnings growth in the second growth phase by implementing growth strategies and strategic investments in line with global trends.

(From company’s document)

5. Conclusions

In terms of sales, the global business saw double-digit sales growth on the back of continued strong demand, but profit declined due in part to additional unplanned investments in response to increased inquiries. The medical business achieved a record-high-level of operating income margin despite a slight increase in sales due to a strategic narrowing-down of low-profit commissioned development projects. It will be interesting to see how the application of new pricing and cross-selling, including those for the top-end product "Mighty QUBE Hybrid" launched in October 2022, will contribute to sales and profit. In the term ending March 2024, we expect sales growth and higher profit margins due to a significant increase in development volume in the global business, especially against the backdrop of the Economic Security Promotion Act and other favorable factors.

*Created by Investment Bridge Co., Ltd. based on disclosure material.

<Reference: Regarding Corporate Governance>

◎ Organizational structure and composition of directors and corporate auditors

◎ Corporate Governance Report
Last updated: September 22, 2022

*Basic Policy
The corporate ethos of our company is “to remain a one-of-a-kind business innovation company,” “global business operation,” and “co-prosperity based on a win-win model.” We recognize that it is essential to enrich and tighten our corporate governance, in order to improve our corporate value and maintain our global competitiveness under this ethos. In detail, our basic policy is “to aim to enhance our profitability and maximize the profits for shareholders by conducting more efficient, sound business activities” and put importance on compliance. Under this policy, we strive to strengthen our corporate governance, while considering that it is essential to fulfill our social responsibilities toward all kinds of stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, business partners, and local communities, and achieve sustainable growth and expansion.

<Reasons for Non-compliance with each Principles of the Corporate Governance Code (Excerpts)>

<Disclosure Based on each Principles of the Corporate Governance Code (Excerpts)>