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, 2024, as detailed below. As announced on December 6, 2024, the Company will continue to offer shareholder benefit program to shareholders as of the end of December 2024. This is to show our gratitude to shareholders for their continued support whilst deepening their understanding of the Rakuten Mobile service that our group is focusing on.
1. Reasons
Considering the current financial situation of the Company, under the financial policy of ensuring financial soundness, we have actively promoted various types of capital procurement without relying solely on interest-bearing debt. This approach allows us to secure investment resources for growth while simultaneously working to reduce the balance of interest-bearing debt. Under these circumstances, we believe that limiting capital outflows due to dividends for the fiscal year will lead to the stability of our financial base and ultimately to increased shareholder value.
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 2025 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.