Top Message

Message to Shareholders and Investors

Representative Director and President 
Executive Officer and 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 11th fiscal year. I’d like to take this opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to all of our shareholders for your generous support.

Looking Back on Our 11th Fiscal Year (FY2023 ended October 31, 2023)

The 11th fiscal year marked the GA Group’s 10th year in business, and we achieved record-high results with revenue of 146.6 billion yen, gross profit of 22.6 billion yen, business profit of 2.1 billion yen, 1090 employees, and a cumulative M&A of 10 deals.

However, we have not been able to reach our high vision at all. Therefore, having felt it is necessary to change everything in order to achieve even greater growth over the next 10 years, we fundamentally reassessed everything in the past year. First, we renewed the corporate brand. This is the fourth time we have reassessed the corporate brand, having previously done so at times of occasional corporate change. At this point in time, as the company entered its 10th year in business and needed to undergo a major transformation, we took a fresh look at Our Ambition and proceeded with a rebranding. We reassessed and reformed all aspects of our business, including our management vision, action guidelines, management strategy, business vision, business strategy, organizational strategy, human resource strategy, group business management, and governance. Generally speaking, when the size of a company's employees triples, it is said that the company's existing ways of doing things, including business, reaches its limits. In retrospect, the GA Group had been doing well with 300 employees, and as a result of the extension to 900 employees, management began to take a back seat around 700-800 employees. The reason for this was that they were not prepared in advance for the tripling. If you try, you will always fail, but if you don't try, you will never fail. I don't believe there has been a problem with the challenges we have faced over the past 10 years to grow bigger. Because making the most of failure the next time is a rite of passage to growth. However, not taking advantage of failures is a disqualification for management. Therefore, to avoid making the same mistake, during the past year we have been working on organizational reforms to ensure that GA Group will be able to withstand the future growth of three times of its current size. When the number of employees reaches 3,000, we will reform the organization to be able to withstand 10,000 employees, and we will take firm steps in advance to ensure sustainable growth.

Measures Undertaken on Our 11th Fiscal Year

Specific measures undertaken in the 11th fiscal year are shown below.

 (1) Formulate a 10-year management plan
 (2) Reassess the HR system
 (3) Reassessment of hiring rules, promotion and advancement rules(4) Reassessment of decision-making authority
(4) Reassessment of decision-making authority
(5) Reassessment of meeting and committee structure
(6) Introduce a divisional/matrix organization
(7) Delegation of authority/exceptional promotion
(8) Implementation of portfolio management(9)
(9) Formulate and implement financial strategy
(10) Set objectives and key results (OKRs), reassessment of KPI management

We have implemented various reform, including the above, to achieve Our Ambition of the GA Group. I believe that how well we have grown in the next 10 years, the 20 years since our founding, will be extremely important to achieve Our Ambition. I think the same is true for human growth, but the more time goes by, the less we can change. We are unable to change. I believe that if a company is not ready to compete on the global stage within 20 years of its establishment, it will be extremely difficult for it to grow significantly from there. This is because after 20 years, a company's organizational culture has become somewhat established, and it is no longer willing to take on challenges and grow even larger. As a founder, I believe that if we cannot reach the  trillion-yen level within 20 years, I should step down. With this commitment, I have taken advantage of my mistakes and given my all to the management of this company in the past year.

Looking towards the 12th Fiscal Year (FY2024 ended October 31, 2024)

Toward increase of the market share through the implementation of “Online Real Estate” 
Since our inception, we have consistently worked to bring innovation to the realm of real estate. In previous "Letters to Our Shareholders,"  we have explained the issues in the real estate industry and the future we hope to change by solving those issues. In the previous letter, I mentioned about the future 10 years from now, and states that the future will be "where complex real estate transactions, including global expansion, can be executed seamlessly with a single click." In a one word, our worldview can be summed up as "online real estate. This year was positioned as the first year for “online real estate”, since the revision of the Real Estate Brokerage Act on May 18, 2022 was implemented. It was a significant revision that brought us closer to the world of "Online Real Estate," where real estate can be easily rented, leased, bought, and sold. Since the real estate world cannot be completed digitally, there are certain hurdles to overcome in terms of whether customers will switch to a new service with the speed of a social networking service or a digitally completed service. Because despite all this technological advancement and the age of generative AI, Web 3.0, and NFT, the real estate industry still operates the way it did 20 years ago. Even today, there are many asymmetric information and property information that cannot be grasped in real time, and analogous measures such as face-to-face customer service and paper procedures are still being taken. Despite these circumstances, we have persistently worked on the online marketplace, and as a result, the RENOSY Marketplace has achieved approximately 10% of market share within a SAM (Note 1) of 1.5 trillion yen (Note 2). Furthermore, ITANDI has also grown to capture approximately 30% of the market, with 970,000 applications for occupancy via the ITANDI system, out of approximately 3.2 million (Note 3) applications for leases annually.

Customers will choose the easier, more convenient option if they are the same. Create a strong organization to continue to face the customer and keep facing the customer. And with high aspirations, we are willing to take on big challenges and sometimes make bold changes. I am convinced that with these thoughts, we can become the overwhelming market leader and provide an indispensable service and infrastructure. To achieve this, we aim to increase our market share to 30% for RENOSY and 50% for ITANDI as soon as possible. A stronger focus on technology is necessary to achieve this. For a business that is completely digital, the process of building its own technology organization may be a matter of course, but in the “Online x Real” domain, which cannot be handled entirely digitally, some companies do not have their own development and marketing organizations but outsource them and consider them as a cost. However, we are committed to being self-sufficient and have built our own marketing organization, development organization, data organization, and AI organization. At the time of the downward revision, shareholders and investors suggested that we reassess our costs. However, we did not make any cutbacks to our investments in technology. Our strength lies in our ability to innovate in the “Online x Real” by putting technology into the real domain. To become a market leader with a sense of speed, we will invest more than ever in technology as our first and foremost strategy for the 12th fiscal year.

Investing to Win 
Going forward, we intend to manage our business with a balanced approach based on "investment to win in one year," "investment to win in three years," and "investment to win in ten years." The key to this is the balance between new and existing business, and between domestic and overseas business. Our first priority is to invest in our existing business and domestic operations with a one-year time horizon. The reason for this is that a solid business allows for solid investment in new and future areas. We intend to use 70 to 80% of the investment to improve our domestic and existing business, and to limit the investment to the extent that it will not have a significant impact on new and overseas business in three years or ten years from now.

I also believe that human resource development, recruitment, and placement are important to strike a good balance between the present and the future. Without strong human capital, we cannot invest in the present and the future in a balanced way. We are reviewing our HR system so that we can hire strong talents, introducing a mission grade system that allows compensation to be set according to the mission, and strengthening member cultivation. Also, we place the greatest emphasis on how to select young people, give them high goals, and have high hopes for their future. I believe that the key to growing existing business and creating new business is the ability of these young people to integrate with experienced members and create good synergy.

Team building 
A company is a team. Even if you collect high-achieving individuals, you cannot achieve big results without competing as a team. That is evident from history. To do this, the first thing is to strengthen the team building between the executive officers, who hold executive responsibility on site. Specifically, increase communication and build a relationship based on trust. Understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I believe that an institution that can show its weaknesses is strong, and so showing team building between the executive officers will strengthen the team building of the employees and make the company into a strong team as a whole. Furthermore, from the latter half of the 11th fiscal year, we have implemented a division-based system, bringing together members from a variety of job descriptions from sales, planning, marketing, PdM, engineers, designers, data scientists, AI engineers as a monolith. Because we are an “Online x Real” company, if we do not take measures, the online and real will separate without us realizing. Therefore, by implementing a division-based system, we have strengthened the team building of “Online x Real.” Up until now, there was a culture where the leaders on the Online side did not consider the employees on the Real side as their subordinates and were somewhat reserved. To get rid of the separation of the “Online x Real,” I believe it is first necessary for the leaders to change their way of thinking.

Strengthening of Technology 
Going toward, the strengthening of technology is our highest priority. As I mentioned earlier that the strengthening of technology is our focus, and I truly believe that technology is the most important. When promoting “Online x Real” in the past 2 years, we prioritized the strengthening of the Real side. However, going forward, I believe that we need to further strengthen the Online side. This is because the development of technology, including generative AI, Web 3.0, NFT, and 5G cannot be stopped. Specifically, we will expand personnel and raise the standard of our institutional strength through branding, strengthening the hiring process, reviewing the development process, increasing understanding of on-site operations, building career plans, and reviewing institutional culture. Generally, at companies that promote both “Online x Real,” the Real side members’ opinions tend to become stronger due to differences in personality. However, I believe “Online x Real” will truly be complete if we are able to take advantage of the merits of the division-based system by aiming for an institution where each can express their opinion towards each other, leaders perform management duties properly, and there is respect for each other. In addition, we will create a comfortable working environment for engineers. By this, I do not mean the surface-level aspects such as “fully remote” or “have many days off” (even though such things are also important). I believe that a culture that encourages invention, a flow where decision-making is speedy, transfer of responsibility, an environment where that allows for innovation, and a construction of an institution that is accepting of change is more important.

5-Year Management Vision/ Management Strategy

At this time, we have created a 5-year management vision/management strategy. Below are the Group’s 5-year management vision and management strategy.

5-Year Management Vision 
“Transforming industries by pursuing inspirational customer experiences through the power of Real x Technology”

Management Strategy 
(1) Market Environment: Compete in an environment where we can achieve No.1 in market share
(2) Human Resources: Become a professional group that excels in Real x Technology
(3) Financial Targets: Aim for a business that does not hold inventory However, if necessary for a superior customer experience and scaling, it is acceptable to hold inventory that is under 10 percent of revenue
(4) Business Model: Scale with technology(5) PL target: The maximization of gross profit and expansion of profitability
(5) PL target: The maximization of gross profit and expansion of profitability
(6) M&A: Aim for discontinuous growth
(7) Business domain: A business domain that allows us to take advantage of the Company’s strengths

While each company and each business have a business strategy, at this time, we created a management strategy of the whole Group basis. As group companies have increased and we have entered various space besides real estate, such as finance and M&A brokerage, it was necessary to create a Group management strategy in order to align vectors between group companies and maximize group synergy. Actually, this management plan was originally created as a 10-year goal, which we created over the course of 6 months in detail. So, why did that become a 5-year plan? This is because, when the 10-year plan was mostly decided, I suddenly told the leaders, “Let’s do this in 5 years!” Since it was already a high goal to achieve in the 10-year span, when I said that I wanted to make it a 5-year plan, at first, everyone was shocked lol. However, this is where we show our strengths as a group, and they were only shocked at the beginning after which that astonishment turned into “We just have to do it!” I was proud from the bottom of my heart that we had a collection of truly incredible members who were willing to go up against any difficult challenge. So, why did we change the 5-year plan to a 10-year plan? This is because the vision we have for Our Ambition is still at a high summit and we must realize the extremely high vision to “build a world leading company that inspires and impresses people with the power of technology and innovation” as soon as possible.

In closing


We want to achieve our vision with high aspirations, united as a Group. We look forward to your continued support in our 12th fiscal year, ended October 31, 2024.

Representative Director, President Executive Officer CEO

Ryo Higuchi

(Note 1) Market scale of investment pre-owned condominiums. Tokyo Appraisal Co. “Press release Capital city area New/pre-owned apartment market” (January, 2021), Tokyo Appraisal Co. “Press release Market trend of New/pre-owned apartments (Capital city area)” (May, 2021), Registered property data by Real Estate Information Network for East Japan, estimated based on business performance of Top 10 investment real estate companies (Note 2) Serviceable Available Market

President and 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 star. 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 estate. 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.

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