Message from the CVO and CIOO

AMITA HOLDINGS CO., LTD. held its Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders for the 14th Term on March 22, 2024, in which the appointment of five directors, including the two of us, was approved as proposed. KUMANO Eisuke will serve for another term as Chairman and CVO, and SUETSUGU Takahide as President and CIOO. Both of us are ready to transform the AMITA Group's business as part of our efforts to bolster its financial performance and lay the groundwork for its growth down the road.

The Company consolidated its legacy business segments into the Social Systems Design Business in FY 2021, as a first step toward transforming its business to develop a corporate and community sustainability market. This ambitious transformation initiative, however, did not go as scheduled. This was partly because we became caught in the innovator's dilemma of sticking to an old winning formula in the face of disruptive innovation, and in a fast-evolving business environment brought about by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the clash between Israel and Hamas. And it was partly because Japanese businesses were increasingly focused on initiatives and projects that had a greater chance of yielding short-term financial gains in a volatile operating environment, and postponed decisions to invest in achieving greater corporate sustainability. As a result, during FY 2023, we signed fewer corporate clients than expected to Cyano Project, the centerpiece of our sustainability services, and our revenue from closed-loop recycling of industrial waste dropped. Our sales and profit performance for FY 2023 was below its year-earlier level and fell short of our initial guidance for the year. Acknowledging responsibility for this disappointing financial performance, members of the leadership team have accepted cuts in compensation, beginning in January 2024.

On a positive note, AMITA was selected in July 2023 to work on the Strategic Innovation Promotion Program, sponsored by the Cabinet Office of the Japanese government, to promote the development of a circular economy. The Factory Support Service Package we released in November 2023 as part of Cyano Project has been creating considerable interest and excitement among prospective clients in the manufacturing sector. With all this taken into consideration, the year-end dividend rate for FY 2023 has been set at 4.00 yen, unchanged from the initial guidance announced early in 2023.

The Group has been pursuing AMITA Vision 2030. It is our initiative and commitment to creating an ecosystem society by 2030—a society in which an abundance of relationships among all stakeholders makes a difference. We have redefined FY 2024 and 2025 as the Groundwork Phase, during which we intend to better position ourselves to pursue AMITA Vision 2030 vigorously from FY 2026 onward. Key initiatives planned for this phase include:

1. Completing the transformation of our business to create greater synergy among our businesses and services, with a focus on Cyano Project
2. Upgrading our marketing operations
3. Bolstering our silicon-recycling capacity to meet growing demand
4. Launching the Social Design Business out of our newly established regional headquarters in Malaysia

Furthermore, during the Groundwork Phase, the joint venture between AMITA and the Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing Group will develop new circular services, and we will develop new business under the Co-Creation City community development initiative.

In 2022 and 2023, the World Economic Forum's annual meetings in Davos adopted such disquieting keywords as "permacrisis" (extended period of instability and insecurity) and "polycrisis" (cluster of related global risks with compounding effects), respectively. The tone was more upbeat when the theme of the January 2024 WEF meeting was determined to be "Rebuilding Trust," an indication of an imminent fundamental social transformation. At this critical juncture of transformation, the AMITA Group intends to uphold the dignity of all life forms, to design and build a better future under "AMITA's Five Commitments to Earn and Retain Public Trust."