Domestic Transportation Industry

The operating environment in the domestic transportation industry remained severe with intensified competition in terms of prices, despite an upward trend in demand for truck and air distribution services. The Yamato Group focused efforts on improving customer convenience by increasing services offered through the Internet, while aiming to differentiate services in terms of quality, resulting in solid performance.     Total packages handled by TA-Q-BIN grew 7.5% to 899 million. Packages handled by Collect Service increased 19.1% to 48 million compared with the previous fiscal year. In moving operations, we focused efforts on increasing orders by reviewing our lineup of products, expanding moving centers and enhancing system usability. Combining revenues from Yamato Bin, which includes Kuroneko Mail, and domestic air cargo operations resulted in operating revenues from the domestic transportation industry of ¥802,505 million (US$6,471.8 million), an increase of 5.4% from the previous fiscal year.

International Transportation Industry

Although the economy of the United States was strong in the first half, it entered a downturn in the second half of the fiscal year. The economies of European and Asian countries were generally robust. Under these conditions, although international transactions for international transportation industry operations declined due to the withdrawal of financial institutions from overseas businesses, the commencement of airfreight operations in the United States and upgrades to distribution bases in Europe worked to expand revenues. In Southeast Asia, performance was strong as demand grew for airfreight of IT-related goods. In addition, Yamato UPS International Aircargo Co., Ltd. was added to the scope of consolidation. As a consequence, operating revenues from the international transportation industry soared 236.4% to ¥67,568 million (US$544.9 million).

Information Communications Industry

In the information communications industry, a movement toward outsourcing of the maintenance and operation of corporate information systems is gaining momentum. Recently, we have seen an increase in such new information services as Internet data centers (IDCs) that maintain and operate the servers of companies that conduct business on the Internet. In such an operating environment, we aimed to accelerate the speed of host computers and create more open architecture, while promoting higher speeds and the use of Internet protocols (IP) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) in communications networks. We also made efforts at expanding marketing capabilities by increasing utilization of the World Wide Web. As a result, operating rev-enues from the information communications industry advanced 7.6% to ¥19,425 million (US$156.7 million).

Other Industry

Demand for packaging operations was firm due to theacquisition of new customers and the strengthening of marketing efforts in new fields. Sales of books in marketing operations were strong owing to a significant increase in orders placed through the Internet on PCs and mobile phones. Combined with leasing operations and sales, operating revenues in the other industry rose 32.4% to ¥17,446 million (US$140.7 million).