According to the financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 announced by SoftBank Group on August 7, the operating income of the domestic telecommunications business increased by 9% year-on-year. was found to have decreased. Domestic telecommunications operating income had been steadily increasing until now, but it fell from 239 billion yen in the first quarter of fiscal 2016 to 218.5 billion yen.
Operating income from domestic communications decreased by 9%This is due to aggressive sales of Y! ``Home Discount Hikari Set'' that offers discounts, ``Giga Monster'', a large-capacity plan with a low unit price per 1GB, ``SUPER FRIDAY'' that offers benefits every Friday, Yahoo! Shopping points 10 times, Yahoo! Premium free... It is said that this is due to the impact of upfront investment in such measures.
Strive to expand customer base through upfront investment"I believe that (the domestic telecommunications business) will be able to grow sufficiently soundly over the next five, ten, or twenty years. Rather than maximizing short-term profits, we want to increase our customer base as much as possible, so we are implementing several sales promotion measures to make sound upfront investments,” explains SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son.
In particular, the home discount Hikari set is doing well, and Mr. Son said, "Optical fiber service (Softbank Hikari) is increasing more than expected." He believes that these measures will serve as material for sound earnings growth next year (2018) and the year after next (2019).
Because of the collaboration with Softbank (10x points, Yahoo! Premium free), the number of Yahoo! It doubled in June. “I believe that the growth rate is higher than Amazon and Rakuten.We have created synergies between Yahoo! By the way, the cost of 10 times the points is split between Softbank and Yahoo!.
The number of Yahoo! Shopping users of SoftBank and Y!mobile is increasing rapidlyThe number of mobile phone contracts reached 32,448,000 as of June 30, and 4 from March 31. A net increase of 8,000. The number of subscriptions for feature phones and data terminals decreased from the end of the previous term, but smartphones increased significantly. The net addition of smartphones was 450,000, up 61% year-on-year.
The churn rate for mobile phones alone was 0.79%, an improvement of 0.06 points from 0.85% in the previous term. According to Mr. Son, this is due to the Home Discount Hikari Set. In addition, the mobile phone churn rate fell below that of KDDI for the first time. However, due to the increase in cancellations of data terminals due to the impact of the 20GB and 30GB large-capacity plans (Giga Monster), the total cancellation rate of SoftBank lines was 1.13%, the same as the previous term.
The churn rate for mobile phones has improvedThe composition ratio of SoftBank and Y!mobile brands among SoftBank lines is not disclosed, but the ratio of Y!mobile is increasing. As a result, SoftBank's overall ARPU (sales per line) fell from 4,610 yen in the previous term to 4,380 yen.
On the other hand, looking at other companies, NTT Docomo offers new rate plans such as "docomo with" and KDDI "au Pitatto Plan" and "au Flat Plan". Is SoftBank considering following these plans? Ken Miyauchi, president of SoftBank Corp., said, "I'm not thinking about it at all." "Y!mobile is doing well, and Softbank's smartphone numbers are growing due to smartphone debut discounts, etc. I've been watching the situation for the past month or so, but there has been no impact at all. Y!mobile and Softbank's differentiation is well directed. It's done and it fits the user, so there's no direction to change," he said.
Mr. Son said, "(The new plan of docomo and au) is a separate plan, so it is not actually a particularly large price reduction. We do not recognize that many customers are flowing into (to other companies). No.” It seems that they will continue to attack with the current measures.
Mr. Son is willing to expand the domestic telecommunications business to areas such as IoT, robots, AI, cloud, autonomous driving, and electric power. It can be said that the extent to which sales can be increased from smartphones and fixed line users, which have increased due to upfront investment, is a showcase of skill.
Expansion of domestic telecommunications areasIn the U.S. business, Sprint posted increases in both sales and profits. ) will be a growth engine,” said Mr. Son.
Regarding the point that the SoftBank Group will acquire T-Mobile and integrate its business with Sprint, Mr. Son said, "We are negotiating with multiple business integration partners assuming that Sprint will be integrated. We believe that is in the 'near future.'