Communicating with Investors and Shareholders

Basic Policy

Actively conducting a variety of investor relations (IR) and shareholder relations (SR) initiatives with the aim of maintaining trust in our company management, receiving proper evaluations, and achieving sustained business growth along with medium- to long-term improvement in our corporate value is our basic policy. Additionally, our senior management and Directors place prime importance on actively responding to meeting requests from shareholders as well as individual and institutional investors when such meetings can reasonably be judged as contributing to this basic policy.

Furthermore, in addition to disclosing management information required for investment judgments in a timely and appropriate fashion, we strive to actively provide an environment that facilitates dialogue with shareholders and investors while also working to earn trust in the capital market.

IR & SR activity framework

We select Operating Officers to oversee IR (investor relations) and SR (shareholder relations) and have set the Corporate Planning division IR office head as the IR Operations Liaison. With this framework in place, the Corporate Planning division IR office actively implements IR and SR activities.

In addition to attending important internal company meetings, the IR office head views internal company approval requests as needed and gathers necessary information in close cooperation with related divisions. The IR office head considers and facilitates requests for meetings with senior management and Directors based on decisions made in a reasonable scope relying on Basic Policy.

The information as well as market evaluations and opinions gained through IR and SR activities are reported at meetings of the Board of Directors twice each year. In addition, after the IR office reports as necessary to the Operating Officer, and that overseeing Officer reports to the overseeing Board of Directors, the solutions are reflected in management going forward.

Dialogue with institutional investors and analysts (including shareholders)

We hold financial results briefings aimed at institutional investors and analysts twice each year (second-quarter and year-end financial results). At the briefings, the President and CEO provides easy-to-understand explanations using charts, etc. regarding financial result information and the overview and progress report on the Medium-term Management Policy. We also actively engage in individual meetings as necessary.

Dialogue with individual investors (including shareholders)

Previously, we gave company briefings for individual investors with the cooperation of nationwide branches of securities firms and IR support companies. However, due to the spread of COVID-19, we have suspended in-person briefings and held online briefings instead. One major merit of online briefings is that in addition to live streaming on the briefing day, they can also be viewed on-demand at a later date. This allows individual investors to watch briefings at their own convenience.
Also, enabling communication with the chat feature and issuing questionnaires online make it possible for us to receive participant feedback. In fact, we value this as a new dialogue style that can replace in-person dialogue.