This time, we invited Mr. Miyakoshi, the corporate officer in charge of investor relations, and heard his views on the followings themes:

Miyakoshi:

During the current fiscal year, there are many live performances and event activities of our major artists such as Masaharu Fukuyama, Southern All Stars, and Perfume. Live stages are expected to attract the largest-ever audiences, which will result in growth of product sales and fan club. On the other hand, the ticket prices are basically on a rising trend, while the range of increase varies depending on the artists. I feel that these various factors are contributing to the numbers (performance) in this fiscal year.

Miyakoshi:

That's right. In some cases, we raise the ticket price by attaching promotional goods, however, basically (we raise the ticket price) as we believe the live stages offer invaluable experiences worth paying for the price we set.

Miyakoshi:

Amuse has its prominence in a sense that a large number of various artists including musicians and actors are lined-up in a well-balanced manner. There are the cultivation methods that are possible precisely by taking advantage of such prominence.

We have been training young artists at the "KIDS Project Division", and figured that music is the field which can actually give them the first opportunity to demonstrate their activities. Amuse has the internal resource to provide them the element of music, and vice versa (= we can provide the element of act to the musicians). The example of the former is BABYMETAL, and the latter is Masaharu Fukuyama. By bringing together total capabilities of Amuse, we can easily highlight various talents of the artists. That is one of the answers to your question.

Miyakoshi:

Such interaction gradually became possible, and I believe that's one of our achievements in recent 7-8 years. We have a variety of artists and there are many opportunities for various experiences, such circumstance actually serves for training good managers as well.

At the previous interview, we talked about that the artists are choosing Amuse for its strong "infrastructure power". Could you tell us recent examples of such power?

Miyakoshi:

I believe we previously talked about our investments in Broadway musicals and TV drama via Amuse Group USA, Inc., which was incorporated in the U.S. Recently, we have growing opportunities to cast our affiliated artists on the works we invested, and such opportunities started to contribute to further enhance the "infrastructure power" of Amuse.

In October 2015, the musical "Prince of Broadway", one of the works we invested, was performed in Japan. The only Japanese cast in the show, Reon Yuzuki , is a former top star of the Takarazuka Revue who chose to be affiliated with Amuse in 2015, seeking worldwide success.

DEAN FUJIOKA who we started to produce in Taiwan, is also becoming popular in Japan as "re-imported" actor. He firstly appeared in the work of drama fund in the U.S. that we invest, and then appeared in NHK's morning drama series in Japan in 2015, which became a springboard of his success.

Miyakoshi:

We started to enter the so-called "inner circle", a group of local people who produce movies and stages, and that means a lot. Only a few Japanese management companies are involved in such circle. Therefore, in overseas markets, when local companies seek to partner up with a Japanese entertainment company or to cast Japanese artists, they have Amuse in mind as a candidate. It is quite significant factor, and I believe Amuse started to have such kind of power now.

Miyakoshi:

Yes, I do. Previously, the main roles of overseas bases are gathering information of local market and providing support for deployment of live stage (of the affiliated artists). However, in recent 6 months, overseas bases started to play different roles. For examples, as I just mentioned, they started to proactively participate in the overseas entertainment markets to expand the activity field of the affiliated artists.

Such network expansion serves to globalize the activity field of our affiliated artists, and it also enables us to invite artists from overseas to Japan. I believe network expansion is a factor that comes into play in the medium-to-long-term value enhancement of Amuse’s infrastructure power.