Kao Corp Ord (KAOCF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

I will talk about the results of 2024 and the forecast for 2025. There are a lot of materials today to cover, so it may take a little longer than 20 minutes. Please forgive me for that. First, please take a look at page four. These are the key highlights. We have been monitoring the three points listed up here as key points throughout the year. In particular, the top two points contributed greatly. In other words, the recovery of profits centered on the promotion of higher added value products and the improvement of brand loyalty and the improvement of competitiveness through cost reductions while maintaining quality and performance, both represented by the reformed earning power under structural reforms, contributed significantly, and we were able to take a strong step towards achieving the K27 targets beyond expectations. I believe this reformed earning power will further advance parallel strengths of YOKI Monozukuri. In 2024, we worked on earnings power reform as part of our structural reforms. But from 2025 onwards, we will enter a new stage and will mainly focus on reformed earning power and make it a core engine that will accelerate global growth while also sustainably increasing it. In 2025, we'll position the year as one in which we will steadily continue to grow our profits while also establishing a solid foundation for global growth. In 2025, we also expect the cosmetics business to contribute to profits, partly due to improvements in China. As you can see in this table, we are able to achieve results that exceeded the upwardly revised forecast announced at the first half earnings briefing last year in all aspects, including capital efficiency. We believe probability of achieving K27 has increased as a result of the ongoing reforms in earning power, which h...