Ichigo Group Holdings Co (ICHIF) Q1 2027 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Everybody, thanks so much for joining. I'm Scott Callen, chairman of Ichigo. I'm joined by Dan Morisaku, who is a senior member of finance team and the head of global IR for us. We are doing something brand new. We just did a Japanese earnings call. We were wearing our suit and our tie for the global call. We decided we think to join the globe in recognizing how incredibly hot it is ever in the world right now. So, forgive us if that's okay. We've gone casual very quick, the fact that we're in the middle of July. So, I'm talking off of what's in front of you, which is FY272, the February 2027 Q1 corporate presentation. Let's jump into it. We've got a slightly different format today. We tried to simplify it. Hopefully, that's helpful for you. If you have any feedback, we of course welcome it. So please feel free to come back to us on it. So the summary is, look, we're off to a strong start. It's not surprising. The real estate market continues to be very strong. The Japanese market, real estate market for decades has had a compelling advantage of being very low cost of financing, low interest rates. but with no inflation and therefore no ability to raise rents. And so it's changed in the most profound and powerful ways that rents are going up. And so it's made real estate a more attractive asset class. And it's flowing through in our business both because we have a balance sheet in which the value of assets is going up and second because what's driving this is inflation, construction inflation in particular. And as you know, our business model, which is value-add, is very durable with respect to inflation. We spend very little amount of money on CapEx, and so we are advantaged in the operating environment. And to the extent this is secular, that we have inflation in J...