ORIX Corporation (IX) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2023

February 6, 2023 2:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

It is time to start. Good evening, and thank you for joining us for this telephone conference of ORIX Corporation for the third quarter consolidated financial results for the nine months period ended December 31, 2022. I am from [indiscernible]. My name is Nakone. I'll be the Master of Ceremony for today. Thank you for this opportunity.

Today's conference is attended by Mr. Hitomaro Yano, Executive Officer responsible for Accounting and IR and I would like to ask the participants to kindly either turn off your mobile phone or other communication devices or move them away from the telephone in order to prevent feedback.

Mr. Yano will give the presentation followed by Q&A and we expect this meeting to take about one hour.

Mr. Yano, the floor is yours.

Hitomaro Yano

Hi [indiscernible]. Good afternoon. This is Hitomaro Yano, Executive Officer responsible for Accounting and IR. Thank you for joining us in this financial results briefing today despite your busy schedule.

I will begin by explaining the results for the third quarter of fiscal year ending March 2023. Please refer to Page 2 of the materials on hand. I will first review the executive summary.

First, please note that net income for the first nine months of the fiscal year was JPY211.4, although it was only several millions at the end, but we did manage to record year-over-year. The annualized ROE was 8.6%. Net income for the third quarter increased by 50% from the second quarter. This is ORIX's second highest quarterly net income since the pandemic started following the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year in which we recorded an investment gain on the [indiscernible].

Second, thanks to progress in reopening businesses that have been strongly impacted by COVID-19 and continuing to recover towards higher profits. The Insurance segment also experienced a significant decrease in COVID-19 related payout expenses compared to the first half of the year.

Third, I would like to highlight on capital recycling. In the second half of the fiscal year, we've continued to both make new investments and [indiscernible] exit mainly in our focused businesses of overseas renewable energy and domestic PE. Through this we are increasing profitability by replacing assets.

The fourth key point is shareholders return. Last May, we approved a share buyback program of JPY50 billion and have already completed the acquisition and cancellation of 23.43 million shares, which is approximately 2% of our signing shares. We plan to pay big dividends for the full year as previously indicated.