Message to Shareholders and Investors

Corporate Mission

Empowering individuals and society through innovation and entrepreneurship

Message from CEO

Dear Shareholders,

On behalf of the Rakuten Group, I would like to thank all of our shareholders for your continued support of the Rakuten Group.

In 2022, the Rakuten Group celebrated its 25th anniversary and announced our “Tech & Green” theme. We renewed our commitment to achieve a more sustainable tomorrow by addressing a wide range of issues that society faces today through the innovative use of technology and by working to conserve our use of the world’s limited resources.

In the Mobile business, the population coverage of our own 4G network area in Japan reached 98% in October 2022, and we launched a new service plan, Rakuten UN-LIMIT VII, leading to an increase in mobile subscriber revenue and continued improvement in profitability. Rakuten Symphony made steady progress in the global expansion of its telecommunication platform business, which is based on the backbone of our fully virtualized technologies.

In the Internet Service business, domestic e-commerce services achieved double-digit growth in both revenue and operating income, thanks to strong growth in our Rakuten Ichiba marketplace and other e-commerce businesses, as well as the recovery of Rakuten Travel from pandemic-related restrictions on travel.

In the FinTech business, we led the industry with significant growth in the number of Rakuten Cards issued, the number of Rakuten Bank customer accounts, and the number of Rakuten Securities general securities accounts.

As a result of these efforts, the Group has grown to become one of the world’s largest internet services companies, with global gross transaction value reaching 33.8 trillion yen in 2022, up 23% year-on-year, consolidated revenue of 1.9 trillion yen, up 14.6% year-on-year, and an expanding global membership base currently at some 1.7 billion members. While consolidated Non-GAAP operating losses of 325.6 billion yen were recorded as a result of strategic upfront investments in the future growth of the Mobile business, including the installation rollout of network base stations which is proceeding well ahead of schedule, performance in the Mobile business is steadily improving each quarter. With the addition of Rakuten Mobile, Rakuten’s unique ecosystem of services, unparalleled worldwide, has entered a new era of growth.

This year, we will continue working together with all of our stakeholders to achieve sustainable growth through ongoing evolution of the Rakuten Ecosystem, further enhancing - 4 - corporate and shareholder value. As the importance of building a more sustainable future only continues to grow, we will continue to strengthen our environmental initiatives in order to achieve carbon neutrality* across the Rakuten Group.

Thank you for your continued understanding and support. Hiroshi Mikitani Representative Director, Chairman, President & CEO Rakuten Group, Inc.