Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

The Rakuten Pay app, which is an integrated app that contains various payment services, continues to be a strong touch point for customers, being used in many daily situations. For example, the amount of Rakuten Cash added through the app increased by 146% in 2021

As a result of these strengthened collaborations, cross-use is steadily expanding, and the number of customers using all three Rakuten Card, Rakuten Bank and Rakuten Securities increased by 89% year-on-year. The FinTech segment will continue to promote cross-use of FinTech services with Rakuten Card as the point of entry and contribute to the expansion of the customer base and profit base of each FinTech company, which leads to the growth of the Rakuten Group

global.rakuten.com/corp/investors/documents/results/

Downloads/21Q4videoPPT_S_E.pdf  

Excellent Development of the Internet Services segment

The Internet Services segment achieved significant growth in both revenue and profitability in FY2021: Revenue was 1.003 trillion yen, up +14.7% YoY, exceeding one trillion yen for the first time in the company’s history. Segment income was 107.5 billion yen, 2.7 times higher than FY2020.

Domestic e-commerce gross merchandise sales (GMS)2 for FY2021 exceeded five trillion yen, up +10.4% YoY. The GMS speed of growth is accelerating every year, reaching five trillion yen in record time, just one year after reaching four trillion yen. In Q4, shopping e-commerce GMS3 grew +11.7% YoY, achieving additional growth even after the impact of increased demand due to stay-at-home trends in FY2020 that led to significant growth of +45.2% compared to Q4 FY2019.

Expanded cross-use between Rakuten Ichiba and other e-commerce services such as Rakuten Seiyu Netsuper, Rakuten Beauty and Rakuten GORA have contributed to the increase in total GMS.

For Rakuten Travel, the total number of guest nights*4 in Q4 FY2021 showed positive growth of +5.1% on FY2019. Travel coupons became available in September 2021 as thank-you gifts through Japan’s Hometown Tax program. These coupons are available for use in more than 200 municipalities, and the number of users is expanding. This initiative is expected to drive growth as travel demand recovers in the future.

Ad revenue in FY2021 increased significantly to 157.9 billion yen, up +22.0% YoY, driven by increased sales of online ad placements.

In Other Internet Services, revenue was 291.5 billion yen, up +7.2% YoY, and operating income was 33.3 billion yen in FY2021, improving upon the 13.5 billion yen loss of FY2020. Increased revenue from Rakuten Kobo, Rakuten Viber and Rakuten Viki contributed to growth. The improved profitability of Rakuten Rewards, which was significantly impacted by the pandemic, contributed to growth in operating profit.

https://bhartiyayojanaye.com/...ighlights-digital-platforms-services/  

In FY2021, the FinTech segment recorded revenue of 619 billion yen, up +7.4% YoY, and segment profit of 89.1 billion yen, up +9.6% YoY, achieving both increased revenue and profit. The steady expansion of the customer base and the increasing adoption of each service as a main service by customers have contributed to this success. The combined customer base of Rakuten Card, Rakuten Bank and Rakuten Securities grew +89.4% YoY, and cross-use between fintech services continues to increase.

In December 2021, Rakuten Card surpassed 25 million cards issued. In addition to this, a recovery in offline consumption led to shopping gross transaction value (GTV) of 14.5 trillion yen in FY2021, up +25.3% YoY. Rakuten Card outperformed the industry, maintaining a high growth rate while total industry GTV growth was sluggish due to the pandemic.

In January 2022, Rakuten Bank surpassed 12 million customer accounts, the largest number among online banks in Japan, and its total balance of deposits (non-consolidated) surpassed seven trillion yen as of the end of December 2021. In Q4 FY2021, the number of payroll accounts increased +55.4% YoY, the number of transactions increased +17.4% YoY, and more customers are using Rakuten Bank as their main bank account for daily life.

Rakuten Securities surpassed seven million general securities customer accounts in December 2021, an increase of two million accounts over the last year, when the number of accounts surpassed five million. Since 2018, Rakuten Securities has held the record for the highest number of new account openings in the industry for three consecutive years. Money Bridge, the service linking Rakuten Securities and Rakuten Bank accounts, surpassed three million accounts and four trillion yen in total balance of deposits in December 2021.

In the Insurance business, annualized insurance premiums of new policies increased steadily in FY2021, with new sales of life insurance increasing +15.8% YoY8 and new sales of general insurance increasing +26.8% YoY9. Online sales in particular drove growth, as online applications for Rakuten General Insurance’s automobile insurance increased 2.4 times YoY.

In the Payment business, which includes Rakuten Pay, revenue increased +19.8% YoY. Operating losses improved by 2.6 billion yen on the previous year at the same time as rollout of proactive marketing activities, including campaign support for new merchant signups for small and medium-size businesses impacted by the pandemic that made payment fees effectively free for one year.

https://bhartiyayojanaye.com/...ighlights-digital-platforms-services/
 

Rakuten Symphony Announces First Appliance at MWC LA 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP6G0KuZg94  

The net increase in cash and cash equivalents of the non-financal sector in 2021 was 305.8 billion JPY (= $ 2.66 billion).

global.rakuten.com/corp/investors/documents/results/

21Q4Supplement  

Thank You for Naming Us Best Affiliate Network for the 11th Consecutive Year

By Rakuten Advertising | January 27, 2022

We are honoured to have been voted the Best Affiliate Network for the 11th consecutive year by our partners and clients in the industry.

Every year, mThink conducts the most extensive research survey in the performance marketing industry to identify the top affiliate networks. The survey, fielded by over 25,000 advertisers, publishers and agencies, identifies the top affiliate cost-per-sale (CPS) networks. The results of this survey are augmented with additional research and insights from a panel of industry experts.

“Rakuten Affiliate Network, part of Rakuten Advertising, has been our #1 network for 11 years in a row and shows no sign of slowing down,” said Chris Trayhorn, Founder and CEO of mThink. “Rakuten is the favourite of our Blue Ribbon Panel of experts, and of our advertiser voting panel, demonstrating excellence across every aspect of their business.”

“We are thrilled to be recognised as the top affiliate network for the 11th year in a row,” said Nick Stamos, CEO, Rakuten Advertising. “It’s an honour to receive this recognition from the advertisers and publishers that we work with on a daily basis.”

“We are proud of the advancements we’ve made over the past year, helping advertisers and publishers reach their audiences in increasingly personalised and data-driven ways,” continued Stamos. “Going into 2022, we look to continue this momentum and help strengthen the relationships between our advertiser and publisher partners. We look forward to unveiling new technologies and services this year that will help all our clients and partners get the most out of their affiliate investment.”

https://blog.rakutenadvertising.com/en-au/news/...liate-network-2022/  

 

https://www.investing.com/equities/rakuten-inc
 

 

 

 

Rakuten Symphony poises for disruption with Symworld

By Dean Ramsay, Principal Analyst, TM ForumFebruary, 2022

On the call with press and analysts this week, Rakuten Symphony announced that its sales pipeline looked incredibly healthy with $3 billion in bookings, and also revealed its latest development in its cloud-native operations journey: Symworld, an app store for building telecoms networks.

This is apparently the realization of a long-held ambition for Tareq Amin, Chief Technology Officer at Rakuten Group and Rakuten Symphony CEO, and will see Symphony customers buying cloud-native apps for OSS, engineering tasks, network management knowledge and people management, or whatever they need to build and run a network.

This concept is of course nothing new, but it is not the industry’s principal procurement or IT deployment model today, so there is an opportunity if Symphony can make it work.

At first the plan is to sell Symphony’s own software apps, with a surprisingly large initial offering of 54 products, but then open up to the vendor community to embed their own apps in the store.

https://inform.tmforum.org/...ny-poises-for-disruption-with-symworld/  

Best Streaming Services for K-Dramas

Kourtnee Jackson

Feb. 21, 2022 4:00 a.m. PT

Rakuten Viki

Best overall with the most K-drama titles for cheap

Streaming K-dramas on Rakuten Viki -- better known as Viki -- is like hitting the mother lode. The streaming service specializes in content from Asia with a dedicated section for Korean offerings. Viki has over 1,000 Korean TV series and more than 200 movie titles that you can watch on demand, including originals. And the platform also airs some shows live. Everything on the service is subtitled, often in multiple languages.

One of the standout features of Viki is its special collections section of curated content. Examples include shows to check out if you like Squid Game, K-drama for beginners, or best Korean dramas of the year.

Rakuten Viki offers a free streaming option with ads and limitations for some content. Paid subscriptions are ad-free: Viki Standard Pass is $5 a month and the Viki Plus Pass is $10 monthly. The Standard Pass includes HD, Viki originals and access to exclusive Standard titles.

The Viki Plus Pass includes everything from the Standard version, plus offline downloads and access to hundreds of hours of additional content. Each paid plan comes with a seven-day free trial. Additionally, there's an option to rent some movies for $2 to $3.

At this time, Viki does not offer multiple streams, so you can only stream one thing at a time per account. However, you can follow shows, actors, collections and set up a watch list if you register a free account. Viki is available on a web browser or via Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast and mobile devices.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/...ices-for-k-dramas/
 

Rakuten Symphony will be the big help for CSPs (Communication Service Providers) avoid a troublesome commercial relationship with the cloud providers

Firstly, Rakuten is openly talking about hyperscaler lock in and how they would act as a management layer on top of a public cloud configuration to help CSPs avoid a troublesome commercial relationship with the cloud providers. This is something that keeps coming up time and time again in the conversations I have with CSPs, a genuine fear that isn’t really being publicly discussed by other vendors.

https://inform.tmforum.org/...ny-poises-for-disruption-with-symworld/  

For example: Dish working together with AWS and Rakuten Symphony.  

January 05, 2022

Rakuten Bank has a well-defined goal: to make the world a more convenient place by offering high-quality online financial services to clients. In Asiamoney’s latest awards period, it made great progress in meeting its objective, making it the pick for best digital bank in Japan for 2021.

It has gone from strength to strength: the number of accounts opened reached 9.45 million by September 2020, surpassed 10 million in January 2021, and had shot past 11 million by July.

These account holders are also transacting actively. The number of total settlements made in the 2020 financial year hit 537 million, driving profits 33.6% higher, year on year.

Rakuten Bank’s deposit balance also grew to over ¥6 trillion ($52 billion) by June 2021, the highest level among all Japanese online banks.

https://www.asiamoney.com/article/...t-digital-bank-2021-rakuten-bank  

The RCP was originally developed to build Rakuten Mobile’s infrastructure in Japan, widely hailed as the world’s first native cloud-based telecommunications network, designed to disrupt the market by having massively lower operating costs.

Now Rakuten Mobile is positioned almost as a living lab that proves the concept works and to help sales of Rakuten Symphony’s expertise, software and tooling, including the RCP, to network operators around the world.

Rakuten Mobile then Rakuten Symphony have also worked closely with Enrique Blanco, Global CTIO at Telefonica. Amin said, “I want to really, really give Enrique, Group CTIO of Telefonica, a huge credit for taking a step forward to work with Symphony, not in a lab environment [but] in a commercial environment across five markets to go validate all the hypotheses that we are talking about.

"For me, this is vital, having one brownfield we know – I recognise completely that this is absolutely essential. At the same time, the Symphony journey is not just about Open Ran, I could tell you today, Telefonica in certain markets are already consuming some of our OSS products."

In his interview with Mobile Europe last year, after winning the Gamechanger CTO of the Year Award 2021, Blanco said, "The Open RAN approach is extremely close to being done. We’ve done the same with software that manages FTTH, but OSS is much more complex to solve. It is one of the most significant pieces of this extraordinary puzzle".

At the press conference, Amin added, “There is also a massive #Tier1 that I hope we can announce at MWC if all goes well…[that] has selected Rakuten Symphony for certain parts of their automation platforms. So we are making progress in the brownfield game. I am really, really super optimistic that Telefonica could be the breakthrough that everybody is looking for.

https://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/press-wire/...strate-efforts-in-europe  

Fulfillment Services Market is Set To Fly High in Years to Come | Red Stag Fulfillment, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), Rakuten Super Logistics, Fulfillrite, FedEx Fulfillment, Xpert Fulfillment, Fulfillify, Whiplash

1 day ago

https://mathandling.com.au/news/21606/...t-xpert-fulfillment-fulfill/  

https://www.iprofesional.com/actualidad/...oca-para-la-temporada-2022  

Carousell said in talks to buy property portal for US$150 million

9 February 2022

Carousell, founded in 2012, counts Telenor ASA, Rakuten Ventures, Naver Corp., and Sequoia Capital India among its backers. The firm has since expanded to eight markets across Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong, allowing users to buy and sell a diverse range of products from cars to gadgets and fashion accessories. It runs several online classifieds platforms including Carousell, Chotot.com in Vietnam, Mudah in Malaysia and OneKyat in Myanmar, according to its website.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/...portal-for-us-150-million-072109317.html  

https://www.reasonwhy.es/actualidad/...ra-wible-carsharing-aplicacion
 

Shares of Delivery Hero for Rakuten in Q2/22 as an important owner of Glovo?

Glovo ends 2021 becoming part of the German Delivery Hero

By David James -January 9, 2022

Delivery Hero, the German local delivery platform that is present in countries such as Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East or North Africa, has signed an agreement with several shareholders of Glovo to acquire a 39.4% stake in the company. Therefore, the German company is now Glovo’s largest shareholder.

Delivery Hero had already acquired 44% of Glovo shares in the last investment rounds made by the Spanish company. With the new shares acquired add up to more than 80%.

The agreement signed between the two companies makes Glovo shareholders become Delivery Hero shareholders. The rest of the shareholders have been granted a period of time to decide if they want to adhere to the agreement. Although, in the statement they explain that “closing of the transaction is subject to certain customary conditions and regulatory approvals, including multi-country merger control authorization, and expected to occur in the second quarter of 2022“.

https://blazetrends.com/...becoming-part-of-the-german-delivery-hero/  

I believe JPY 1,300 is too pesemistic – my target is very higher

Mobile Remains Unprofitable Despite Record High Sales in Q4; Rakuten’s FVE Decreased to JPY 1,300

Kazunori Ito Director
Feb 22, 2022

Rakuten's fiscal year 2021 fourth-quarter results were mostly in line with expectations. Fourth-quarter revenue of JPY 481 billion went up by 15.9% from 2020, mainly driven by growth in internet services. The operating margin of the internet and fintech businesses was stable, but the mobile segment recorded JPY 119 billion operating loss in the fourth quarter, bringing down the companywide operating loss to JPY 86 billion.

We decrease the fair value estimate to JPY 1,300 mainly because of our lower projection for Rakuten Mobile’s revenue and operating income resulting from the declining pace of user acquisition, as well as lower operating margin for fintech due to increasing promotional costs amidst intensifying competition. However, we think the stock is currently undervalued because investors are too pessimistic about Rakuten Mobile’s future, while we believe profitability will gradually improve over the next few years.

Fourth-quarter domestic e-commerce revenue grew by 12.4% year on year. Gross merchandise sales were JPY 1,502 billion, up 4.7% from fourth-quarter 2020 when domestic demand for online shopping was very high and Go To travel campaigns were in place. Given the special circumstances last year, we believe this quarter’s growth was solid and our 2022 projection for total internet services revenue remains broadly unchanged. Meanwhile, we slightly lowered growth rate from 2023 to 2026 by 1%-2% because we believe market growth will slow down postpandemic and competition in the online marketspace will intensify. Fourth-quarter operating margin for domestic e-commerce improved to 12.0% from 10.8% in the previous year, thanks to continuous cost-control policies. We also think the co-operation with Japan Post will help control domestic logistics costs, and domestic e-commerce will be able to maintain around 11% operating margin for the next five years, bringing the total internet services segment’s operating margin to around 8%.

https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xtks/4755/quote  

Published : Wednesday, February 23, 2022, 7:01 am

"We have delivered commercially hardened near RT automation and optimization use cases with our cloud-native eSON software platform and AI/ML use cases with eSON360 at Reliance Jio and Rakuten Mobile. This experience has enabled us to rapidly develop important use cases as xApps and rApps supporting the O-RAN architecture," said Yan Hui, AirHop Co-Founder and CEO. "The Open RAN ecosystem is working to enable accelerated delivery of best-in-class disaggregated components. This has been our experience through the integration of Auptim xApps and rApps with RIC platforms from leading RIC vendors and deployments in trials with leading MNOs."

"AirHop's near real-time RAN automation and optimization applications have provided a key component in Rakuten's journey to drive operations automation and consistent performance across its network," stated Madhukiran Medithe, Head of Network Intelligence & Analytics Department at Rakuten Mobile Inc. "As Rakuten leads the way in making O-RAN RIC (RAN Intelligent Control) a practical reality, we are excited to be working with AirHop and see them bring their capabilities to Rakuten’s O-RAN architecture with the Auptim family of xApps and rApps."

With the growing complexity of 4G & 5G networks and the disaggregation of the RAN stack with Open RAN, the enablement of intelligent automation and optimization solutions has become mandatory for both greenfield and brownfield Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). The industry has recognized the need for both near RT RAN management and AI/ML approaches for intelligent RAN optimization. The O-RAN Alliance is driving a standard architecture and open interfaces to lead this enablement with the Near RT RIC and Non-RT RIC platforms. The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) OpenRAN RAN Intelligence and Automation (RIA) subgroup is enabling an ecosystem of MNOs and vendors to develop of AI/ML based use cases. Auptim near RT xApps and AI/ML based non RT rApps are critical pieces of the puzzle for MNOs to leverage these platforms to realize lower operating costs, improved user experience and provide greater flexibility for service delivery.

https://us.acrofan.com/detail.php?number=620936  

Rakuten Symphony and Qualcomm Technologies collaborate on Open RAN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCXh4RPdeEI