At the Board of Directors meeting today, Rakuten Group, Inc. (hereinafter “the Company”) resolved not to pay dividends of surplus with a record date of December 31, 2023, as detailed below. In response to this, we announced a new Shareholder Benefit Program on December 26, 2023, which is an opportunity for shareholders to further enhance their convenience whilst deepening their understanding of the Rakuten Mobile service that our group is focusing on. We have made some changes to the content to enhance the content as shown below.
1. Reasons
Regarding shareholder returns, the Company has endeavored to pay stable and continuous dividends while taking into account investment for medium- to long-term growth and sufficient internal reserves to stabilize our financial base.
Considering the current financial situation of the Company, and with the aim of ensuring its financial soundness, we are currently actively promoting various types of capital procurement without relying solely on interest-bearing debt. We have secured funds for investment in growth businesses without relying on financial institutions, and have also worked to reduce the balance of interest-bearing debt. Therefore, for the current fiscal year, we believe that controlling the outflow of funds through dividends will lead to stabilizing our financial base and ultimately improve shareholder value, so we decided not to pay dividends.
Our basic dividend policy is to pay dividends in a stable and continuous manner, taking into account investment for medium- to long-term growth and the enhancement of internal reserves to stabilize our financial base. There are no changes to this policy. The timing of resuming dividends after the fiscal year ending December 2024 has not been determined at this time, but we will strive to resume dividends in a timely and appropriate manner as we move toward achieving consolidated profitability as early as possible, and reducing interest-bearing debt.