News Releases

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you, our stakeholders and employees, a Happy New Year. I am very grateful to see that we can face the New Year together, happy and healthy.

This year marks the last of the Mid-term Management Plan, RESET, that we set forth in November of 2005. Starting in April, we will begin a new mid-term plan. When we decided on RESET, we did not anticipated that a subprime mortgage crisis in the US would precipitate a worldwide financial meltdown. Despite these conditions, the brand strategy up to this point, restructuring of operations based on RESET, reorganization of management with an emphasis on sustainability and the fostering of informal communication networks have all positively contributed to achieving favorable results. Because we have been able to firmly solidify the core characteristics of our management structure through RESET, we are thankful that we will not have to downgrade the forecast to our targets, and can plan on finishing the fiscal year well within our projected budget.

However, we are beginning to feel the effects of market trends beginning with lower capital investments, and all companies can expect to face some difficult challenges in the next couple of years to come. Therefore, it is only appropriate that we reevaluate and clearly define our weaknesses and threats. It will be up to the management team to take the lead in developing a strategic road map to navigate these challenges based on constant reevaluation of circumstances, and reflect it in a Balanced Score Card.

I would like to ask all of you to come together and work as hard as ever to achieve our targets as we approach the last three months of this fiscal year. But most of all, I wish you the best of health and happiness this year.