Yuichi KounoRepresentative Director, Group President and Chief Executive Officer
SEPTENI HOLDINGS CO., LTD.
April 2026

Leveraging the Full Capabilities of the Group to Maximize Client Corporate Value as a “VALUE MAXIMIZER”

Over the past two years since I assumed the role of Group President, I have managed the Group under the medium-term theme of “Focus & Synergy.” Historically, our group has expanded by respecting individual challenges under our mission: “To inspire the world with entrepreneurship.” However, in today’s environment where market and competitive shifts are further accelerating, I believe we can enhance our competitive edge by shifting toward management that “exercises entrepreneurship through teamwork with a strong sense of unity.” To this end, I have steered the company in this new direction. Moving into 2025, our efforts in cross-business synergy and partnerships with external stakeholders began to bear fruit, producing tangible results and seeds for future growth. Consequently, we achieved record-high consolidated revenue and a V-shaped recovery in Non-GAAP operating profit.

Through these “Focus & Synergy” initiatives, our business and organizational foundations are coming together even faster than I had anticipated. Given this progress, I felt it was necessary to define what kind of value the Septeni Group aims to provide over the mid-to-long term. Therefore, we have established “VISION 2030”—a common pillar for the entire group—defining our ideal state by the year 2030 as a “VALUE MAXIMIZER.”

While there is no single correct interpretation of “entrepreneurship” within our group mission, the concept itself is deeply and widely ingrained in our corporate culture. However, I recognized a challenge: terms like “the world” and “inspire” remained highly abstract, lacking a concrete image for our employees to rally around. Therefore, in establishing ourselves as a “VALUE MAXIMIZER,” I felt it was essential to redefine these terms to ensure our strategic alignment. To us, “the world” is not a distant, abstract entity; it represents the immediate stakeholders we engage with daily through our business—our clients and partners. Furthermore, while there are various ways to “inspire” stakeholders depending on their unique positions, we believe our primary focus must be on “enhancing the corporate value of our clients.” We believe that by driving client sales and profits to increase their corporate value, we inherently enhance our own. This creates a virtuous cycle that ultimately inspires a broad range of stakeholders, including our employees, shareholders, and partners, by delivering meaningful value back to them. Becoming an organization that realizes this chain of value is precisely what we aim for as a “VALUE MAXIMIZER.”

Historically, each of our business units has operated by leveraging its specific expertise to address individual client issues, such as improving advertising effectiveness or streamlining system development. However, what clients truly seek is not just a collection of these local optimizations, but a sustainable improvement in their overall management indicators, such as revenue and profit. Moving forward, we will elevate our perspective to focus on our clients’ P&L structures. We will evolve our approach to value creation by determining which combination of capabilities can best enhance a client’s corporate value. By mobilizing the collective capabilities of the entire Group, we aim to contribute to the maximization of corporate value by providing comprehensive solutions to our clients’ core business challenges.

To achieve this, we have incorporated our basic policies and key initiatives for the three-year period from 2026 to 2028 into our Medium-Term Management Plan. The first basic policy is “Deepening Businesses.” Building on the foundations for synergy established over the past two years, we will evolve our efforts into “Synergy & Collaboration.” Beyond mere mutual complementation between businesses, we intend to transcend business boundaries to develop new products and solutions, thereby accelerating value creation across the Group. Our second basic policy is “Exploring Businesses," through which we aim to expand into areas that will become our next pillars of revenue. Specifically, we are looking at the HR sector as an area for proactive investment. Starting in 2026, our expansion into HR will serve as a model for creating value that directly contributes to the improvement of our clients’ P&L.

Finally, our options for growth are not limited to internal business creation. Collaborating with external companies that complement our existing businesses and expanding our capabilities through M&A are also vital options. By prioritizing affinity with our vision and the potential for creating synergy, we will connect adjacent business domains, broadening the scope of value we offer and increasing the certainty of our growth.

The fountainhead of our value creation lies in our people, who continue to embody entrepreneurship. Conversely, I believe our greatest risk is the erosion of this spirit—that is, a cultural shift toward complacency, where “not changing” or “avoiding failure” becomes the norm.

To ensure we continue to cultivate this entrepreneurship and transform it into organizational strength, we have established "Strengthening Management Foundation" as the third basic policy of our Medium-Term Management Plan. A critical component of this is sophisticated governance to ensure disciplined decision-making. On the executive side, we have introduced a CxO system. Under this structure, Group Senior Executive Officers will be empowered to swiftly execute cross-functional initiatives and actions based on the Group’s overall performance. Furthermore, to enhance our succession planning, we will ensure healthy turnover among the management team through close collaboration between the Human Resource Development Committee and the Nomination and Remuneration Advisory Committee.

We have consistently evolved our people, our organization, and our management style, starting with entrepreneurship as our foundation. By maintaining a "Keep Young" mindset, we will harmonize a highly fluid management structure premised on generational change with a disciplined decision-making framework. This ensures an organization where entrepreneurship is continuously unleashed.

Our vision of becoming a "VALUE MAXIMIZER" by 2030 is a milestone to measure how much value we provide to our clients and society in pursuit of our Group Mission. It is, ultimately, just one point in our journey.

For over 30 years since our founding, we have turned market and social shifts into engines for our own growth, updating our business and organizational models through constant challenges. At the core of this history is "entrepreneurship." We view this spirit not merely as an individual trait, but as a universal value that transcends generations and organizational boundaries to become the driving force of the entire Group. We will continue to be a "Keep Young" organization that powerfully manifests entrepreneurship, striving to be a presence that constantly inspires the people and companies we engage with. By adhering to a management style that embraces evolution in step with the times, we will commit to long-term value creation as a partner capable of maximizing client corporate value.

Together as a Group, we will move forward to further inspire our "world"—our clients, business partners, shareholders, and employees. We invite you to look forward to the continued challenges and growth of the Septeni Group.