Message to Shareholders and Investors
CEO
Ryo Higuchi
To Our Shareholders
We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your continued support.
Thanks to your support, we have successfully completed our 12th fiscal year. I would also like to take this opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to all of our shareholders for their generous support.
Looking Back on Our 12th Fiscal Year (FY2024 ended October 31, 2024)
We see the 12th fiscal year as one in which we steadily planted seeds for the future of the real estate industry. Since our founding, we have consistently strived to improve the customer experience and enhance the services we provide to real estate agencies.
Japan has approximately 120,000 real estate agencies which operate across five sectors: (1) development, (2) distribution, (3) investment and asset management, (4) property management, and (5) leasing. We provide SaaS products to the real estate agencies operating in the (3) investment and asset management, (4) property management, and (5) leasing sectors. Although we have yet to offer products in the (1) development and (2) distribution sectors, in January 2024 we welcomed Housmart, a company that works on SaaS for real estate sales brokerage companies ((2) distribution) to the GA Group, enabling us to provide SaaS products to the real estate sales brokerage sector as well. Then in August 2024, Mercury, a company that provides products to developers ((1) development), also joined the Group, putting the GA Group in a position to offer its products across every sector of the real estate industry. While major real estate companies affiliated with conglomerates cover all five of these sectors, mid-sized real estate companies tend to focus on one of them. On the other hand, there are cases where small-scale companies handle every sector except (1) development.
As of the end of the 12th fiscal year, the GA Group has gained the ability to provide its products to all real
estate companies regardless of size across these five sectors. As a result, we now provide our services to
approximately 7,400 of the 120,000 real estate companies operating in Japan (Note 1). We take pride in
accepting the responsibility for improving productivity and driving the development of the Japanese real
estate industry as a whole.
Looking ahead, we believe that by providing even more real estate agencies with our products, we will not
only make them more efficient, but improve the customer experience for individual customers. This is
because by eliminating operations that involved printed documents and faxes for real estate companies,
individual customers will also be able to avoid dealing with printed documents and faxes. Traditionally, the
industry has been heavily reliant on faxes and printed documents, and this has made it difficult to collect
customer, contract and real estate data. Providing SaaS for these operations enables the collection of that
Looking Back on Our 12th Fiscal Year
(FY2024 ended October 31, 2024)
2024 © GA technologies Co., Ltd. 2
data, and we believe this ultimately contributes significantly to the purchasing, selling, leasing, and renting
decisions made by individuals. Since the real estate industry has traditionally had a lack of transparency
with considerable information asymmetry for customers, without accumulating the correct data and making
it available, customers are not able to make well-informed decisions.
The GA Group has managed to acquire application data for roughly 1 million of the 2.6 million rental applications submitted in Japan each year, which represents a 38% share (Note 2). In addition, for data on newly built condominiums, we have now acquired data on about 3.42 million units, or 49% of the approximately 7 million stock of such units in Japan (Note 3). We are still only part of the way there, but with the power of technology, we have started to see results in our efforts to steadily transform the real estate industry. To further accelerate innovation, our most important task in the meantime is to secure talents specializing in tech.
Recruiting and Developing Talent Specializing in Tech
In our letter to shareholders last year, I mentioned that strengthening technology would be a top priority for
the 12th fiscal year, and indeed this year, a third of my time has been devoted to recruiting talent specializing
in tech.
As there was no one in charge of technology for the entire Group, I dedicated myself to hiring someone for
that position. I met several CTO-class candidates but had trouble finding someone with the right fit. That
was until I met Masanori Goto, who developed his career at Google. He assumed the post of Managing
Executive Officer CTO on December 2. Goto was involved with the development of Google Maps as an
engineer from the early stages and had until recently served as the Director of Engineering at Google. In
other recruitments, last year we welcomed Jun Okumura, who led the AI division for the dating app Pairs, as
our CDO, secured former Rakuten Travel product manager Kotaro Kumagai as our CPO, and also brought
on Makoto Shinohara on the creative side, a top creator with numerous awards to his name including au
Santaro television commercials. We are proud to have built technology- and creative-focused teams which
are top class, even by Japanese standards.
In conjunction with hiring talent, we have also been focused on the development of their skills.
Generally speaking, many start-up companies approach human resource development based on the idea
of learning on the job and entrusting employees with responsible tasks. We have also followed the same
approach, and we have found it to be effective in practice, so we will continue to employ it. However, with
this approach alone, an organization will start to see differences in the abilities of managers in the field and
the number of responsible tasks they can be entrusted with. That is why in the 12th fiscal year, we have
focused on off-the-job training in addition to on-the-job training. Internally we refer to this management
development system as GALILEO, and I have also taken part in it, both as instructor and student. Just last
Recruiting and Developing Talent Specializing in Tech
2024 © GA technologies Co., Ltd. 3
year, 55 of these training sessions were held, with 430 employees attending. I think that company
management comes down to hiring talented people, and providing those talented people with opportunities
to learn and develop so that they can further advance, succeed, and play an active role. Of course,
business strategies, including market selection, are key concerns. But a company cannot scale up
sustainably over the long term purely based on the certainty of its business strategies and the wisdom of its
market selection. That's because markets change, times change, and the nature of business also changes.
But even if the markets around us change, if we have hired and properly fostered the development of
talented people, I am certain we will be able to adapt to the changing times.
About RENOSY
RENOSY's business has also undergone significant changes.
While iDeco and NISA have gained traction as a part of people's asset formation efforts, property
investment, another type of asset formation, has yet to take root as a popular strategy. That is why the brand
vision and brand concept for RENOSY was recently renewed. RENOSY's vision is to "make real estate a
standard practice for asset building." The brand concept is "a reliable, seamless, and optimal service
for real estate investing." I am confident that we can become a service where instead of "iDeco, NISA and
property investment," it is "iDeco, NISA and RENOSY" that is the first thing that springs to mind. With the
social security burden continuing to expand, the need for each person to engage in asset formation will only
grow more. With this perspective in mind, we have been expanding our product lineup, offering greater
convenience for buyers and sellers, and enhancing our products.
Our third challenge is the launch of third-party businesses.
To create a world in which property investment is commonplace, there are limits to working on a first-party
basis (direct sales) alone. To realize property investment across Japan and anywhere in the world, third-
party business operators will absolutely be needed. Since we are still in the early stages, we will likely
encounter many issues going forward, but if we leverage RENOSY's current recognition rate of 50% (Note
4), expansion to around 500,000 members (Note 5), offering approximately 30,000 AI-driven property
listings (Note 6), and utilizing the wealth of accumulated data spanning multiple sectors of the real estate
industry, as well as lessons from past failures, I believe we can make the third-party business a success.
To ensure that, we are now thoroughly focusing on improving the customer experience.
I am also getting personally involved, visiting our staff in the field, holding meetings that focus on customerfeedback, and thoroughly addressing customer needs. Internally, we have created a Customer Centricitydepartment. Customer Centricity is the concept that the long-term satisfaction of customers leads to long-term corporate growth. I strongly believe that a company which addresses customers with sincerity will bethe first choice of those customers in the future. Just as you see Uber being synonymous with foodAbout RENOSY2024 © GA technologies Co., Ltd. 4deliveries, Google with search and Amazon with e-commerce, I believe we can ultimately create a situationwhere RENOSY is synonymous with property investment. If we can create that situation, profitability willskyrocket, and it will greatly contribute to enhanced shareholder value.
Expansion into the US
In March, we acquired the US company RW OpCo. RW OpCo matches property investors in the United
States and then provides them with property management services, which becomes stock revenue. It
follows the same business model as the RENOSY Marketplace business. GA technologies has already had
offices in Asia (Thailand and Shanghai) for three years, but this marks our first foray into the
Eurpoean/North American area.
We receive questions like "why now?" "won't this spread your resources thin?" and "won't this increase
costs?" As for why now, a year-and-a-half ago we began researching US-based Prop-Tech companies and
in the process encountered RW OpCo at the right time. As with our previous acquisitions, this prospect was
not brought to us by investment banks or brokerage companies; it was a company we found ourselves,
based on our own business strategy. I feel there are many companies that are given suggestions for
prospective acquisitions from outside parties and even though it doesn’t align with their strategies, they
press forward in a mistaken belief that they do and end up failing when post-merger integration goes poorly.
That is why we generally focus on prospects we have discovered ourselves.
Regarding the concern that we are spreading our resources too thin, our business strategy that focuses on domestic operations remains unchanged and 95% of our resources are allocated to domestic business. Expanding overseas by launching a new business involves spreading out existing personnel, but when you expand overseas through acquisitions, you can utilize the existing resources in place at the acquired company. That is another of the reasons our approach is to utilize acquisitions in our overseas expansion.
Similarly on the cost front, it is not our policy to acquire loss-making enterprises and grow them from there.
In our letter to our shareholders last year, I wrote that we wanted to be in a position to compete globally by
our 20th anniversary, and that is another reason for our current expansion into the US. Eight years from
now, when we reach our 20th anniversary, I believe this US expansion will influence whether we have laid
the foundations for expanding globally, and this explains why we picked this moment to expand into the US.
Our management policy is to try things at a small scale and in the early stages. As we acquired ITANDI after
just five years after our founding and only two months after going public, we experienced the successes
and failures of M&A activities at an early stage and implemented the PDCA cycle. As a result, we were able
to run subsequent acquisitions smoothly. The same will apply to our overseas expansion. Since we will try
things at an early stage, we will be able to accumulate that knowledge and steadily increase the likelihood
of success. Again, this is why our policy is to try things at a small scale and in the early stages.
About ITANDI
With our business expanding from the acquisitions of real estate data company, Mercury, and real estate sales brokerage SaaS provider, Housmart, the ITANDI BB inter-agency site we released four years ago has come to be widely used by brokerage companies and management companies alike. According to a recent survey on usage trends in the Tokyo metropolitan area (Tokyo and the three surrounding prefectures), ITANDI BB is the second- most used service after REINS and has emerged as the top private sector inter-agency site. Inter-agency sites operated by competitors have been around for 20 years, and we managed to grow larger than them in four years. We have acquired new customers by leveraging the convenience of real-time property listings as a strength, and recently have become competitive, not just on a quality basis, by on a quantity basis as well. Our listed properties have also grown to 60 to 70% of competing sites (Note 6). To further improve convenience in the future, in addition to rental properties we will add further valuable information including sales properties, real estate transaction data and property brochures, steadily building an inter-agency site that will become indispensable for real estate agencies.
We have created momentum for real estate SaaS companies to join the GA Group. Starting with ITANDI in
November 2018, we have steadily added companies to the Group with the acquisition of Dangonet in September
2022, Housmart in January 2024 and Mercury in August 2024.
Mercury, the most recent acquisition, is a company we had been reaching out to for seven years.
Seven years ago, ITANDI had only just joined the Group and our annual recurring revenue (ARR) was still around
200 million yen. Even RENOSY only had a market share of 1% at that stage. But since that time, we had
envisioned becoming a real estate infrastructure company and data company several years down the road,
which is why we reached out to Mercury. Mercury's President Jin told me, “Seven years ago when you talked
about GA Technologies' vision of becoming a real estate infrastructure firm and a data company, I couldn't
imagine it," but now he has recognized what the GA Group has been successful in making steady progress
toward that future and decided to become a member of the Group. We will continue to refine our products going
forward to reach that day where people believe that they cannot work without ITANDI in real estate sales and
leasing transactions. Beyond that, we want to create a world where individual real estate transactions become
seamless.
Announcement of Medium-Term Management Plan 2026
Under the Medium-term Business Plan 2026 which we announced in June of the 12th fiscal year, we set the target of 323 billion yen in revenue with business profit of 10 billion yen by 2026. This breaks down to 313.7 billion yen in RENOSY Marketplace revenue (GMV) at a GAGR of 30% and business profit of 16.5 billion yen at a CAGR of 36%, along with ITANDI revenue of 8.4 billion yen at a CAGR of 38% and business profit of 1.46 billion yen at a CAGR of 28%. We aim to return to top line growth of 30% while enhancing profit margins to bring business profit into the 10-billion-yen range. Beyond that, we aim to generate GMV of 1 trillion yen, SaaS/annual recurring revenue (ARR) of over 10 billion yen, and ultimately a world where ARR reaches 30 billion yen.
Becoming a Passionate Organization with High Aspirations
When it comes down to it, I think the difference between companies that change the world and those that don't, lies in how high they reach and an overwhelming gap in passion. Organizations with high aspirations and exceptional passion change the world.
The people working at fast-growing startups in the US and China are putting in the hard work while truly
embodying those high aspirations and overwhelming passion.
No matter how widespread the Internet becomes, the story of how startups begin out of a room in an
apartment or a person's garage remains the same. I think there are many startups that managed rapid
growth right around the time they launched but only managed mediocre growth thereafter. I believe the only
reason for this is that the aspirations and passion their founders, executives and members once had
waned; they stopped taking on challenges and instead switched to defense.
The question is whether we can maintain a single-minded focus on transforming the world in front of us.
Can we convince ourselves that our presence is driving the world forward?
Only a handful of companies continue to grow ten years on. Whether or not we will be a company that can continue to grow another ten years from now depends on whether we can maintain those high aspirations and passion.
As the founder, my aspirations and passion have not faltered since day one. To ensure we maximize value for the shareholders who have continued to support us, we are committed to transforming the world, innovating and becoming a global company with high aspirations and a wealth of passion.
Ryo Higuchi
December 2024(Note 1) As of July 2024. The total service provision figures of our company are calculated simply by adding up the figures. Please refer to page 4 of the Tender Offer for MERCURY REALTECH INNOVATOR Co., Ltd. (announced on July 16, 2024) (https://ssl4.eir-parts.net/doc/3491/tdnet/2474984/00.pdf)
(Note 2) Target period: April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024. Based on the 2 million rental brokerage transactions in the Nikkei Compass Real Estate Brokerage Industry Overview (https://www.nikkei.com/compass/industry_s/0481), the number of tenant applications was calculated to be 2.85 million based on a 30% cancellation rate from application to contract on ITANDI, and the percentage was estimated from the number of online tenant applications on ITANDI.
(Note 3) Percentage of share of GA Group's condominium data units out of the total number of condominiums at the end of 2022 of approximately 7 million units, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's "Trends in Condominium Stock Numbers."
(Note 4) As of the end of October 2024. Research Company Cross Marketing [Survey method: "Quantitative survey on brand penetration" (multiple choice questionnaire via the Internet) / Number of survey subjects: 1,000 people])
(Note 5) As of the end of October 2024
(Note 6) As of the end of October 2024. According to research by the company.
President, Representative Director, Executive Officer CEO (Chief Executive Officer)
Ryo Higuchi
Born in Tokyo in 1982, Mr. Higuchi was a talented youth soccer player who dreamed of becoming an International recognized soccer player. He was on JEF UNITED ICHIHARA as a trainee (Currently known as J2 of Japan’s professional soccer league). At the age of 24, however, he gave up on this dream and switching his career path into business by working at a real estate company. He was inspired by the possibility of the real estate industry and with a desire to “change this profitable but technically outdated” industry, Mr. Higuchi founded GA technologies in 2013, as the representative of the company. Started from the early days of the business, the Company has been engaged in the brokerage business of existing real estates. Currently, it aims for building a data-driven, highly user-friendly real estate transaction model. Mainly focusing on its end-to-end real estate brokerage platform, the company is also working on improving its internal business operations by bringing technology such as AI and RPA into the workflow and working on other data-driven improvements.