First Accounting <5588>, which operates in the field of AI solutions specialized in accounting (accounting AI business), announced its financial results for the interim period of the fiscal year ending December 2024 on August 14th. The revenue increased by 40.5% year-on-year to 785 million yen, and the operating profit increased by 77.0% to 99 million yen, despite incurring office relocation expenses of 37 million yen, achieving significant growth in both revenue and profit.
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) accounts for 83.9% of the total, and usage-based billing based on transaction volume accounts for 11.8%, resulting in a stable and easily improvable revenue structure. Sales have balanced growth through accounting vendors (OEM), large enterprises (via sales partners), and direct sales to large enterprises. The alliance partnership with the ERP market leader SAP is expected to further expand the sales channels. Under the current situation with continued new customer acquisition, ARPA (Average Revenue Per Account) remains around 1 million yen, with contributions from upselling and cross-selling. The churn rate also stayed within the range of 0.5-1.5%. The Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) has steadily accumulated to 1,581 million yen (with an average annual growth rate of 45.8%).
The full-year performance forecast for the fiscal year ending December 2024 anticipates a 34.2% increase in revenue to 1,653 million yen, and a 32.4% increase in operating profit to 167 million yen. Due to additional investment in AI learning servers and talent, the full-year forecast remains unchanged. However, the progress rate for operating profit forecast until the interim period is already at a high level of 59.6%. As the company operates a stock business, there is not significant seasonal volatility in its performance.
Compared to the company's market capitalization of 10.5 billion yen, the proportion of foreign corporations and institutional investors appears to be relatively high. Besides the favorable performance, the company's dividend payout, although not high-yielding, has already been implemented, which seems to have successfully attracted investors for whom the presence of dividends is a criterion. Furthermore, the ongoing establishment of a nominating compensation committee indicates that the company's future-oriented structure is also being appreciated. As for its medium to long-term objectives, it aims to achieve a revenue of 10 billion yen and an operating profit margin of 10% by 2028.
The company's services are centered around the Robota series, which modularizes AI-OCR related algorithms and accounting entries, as well as Remota, a platform specializing in invoice processing with a user interface (GUI), and the Peppol Access Point Service, which enables the sending and receiving of digital invoices.
One of the features of the Robota series is its high reading accuracy not only for standard document formats but also for non-standard document formats and handwritten documents. It also has functions such as sorting documentary images, cutting out multiple pieces of documentary evidence attached to a backboard, and checking if the read content is correct, in addition to simply entering the characters and numbers read from the document. It can also be used for expense settlement and invoice payment reconciliation. It is a SaaS-type cloud service where necessary products can be selected and combined according to the needs of automated accounting operations. Its billing system is based primarily on a monthly recurring revenue (MRR) for a period of one year or more, with variable charges based on the number of documentary evidence read.