Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Rakuten, Inc FY2020 Third Quarter Consolidated Financial Results

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VluH4iItdQ
 

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

Rakuten Selected for Dow Jones Sustainability World Index

Rakuten, Inc. (hereinafter “Rakuten”) is pleased to announce that it has been selected for the first time as an index component of the 2020 Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (hereinafter “DJSI World Index”). Rakuten has also been selected as a component of the Dow Jones Sustainability Asia Pacific Index for the second consecutive year.

Rakuten has also been listed as a component of other major ESG indices including FTSE4Good Index Series, FTSE Blossom Japan Index, MSCI ESG Leaders Index, MSCI Japan ESG Select Leaders Index, MSCI Japan Empowering Women Index (WIN), and S&P/JPX Carbon Efficient Index.

https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2020/...category=corp%20ir  

You may be wondering to yourself, how does Rakuten make money? Rakuten is actually just an affiliate marketing company.

Whenever you shop at a website using Rakuten, Rakuten gets paid by that site for referring you. Rakuten then passes some of its affiliate earnings over to you in the form of cash back.
It’s almost like you and Rakuten have a partnership.

Rakuten has partnered with over 2,500 retailers and brands to bring you the best cash back deals.
Overall, Rakuten is a great service with a lot of value. And most importantly, it’s completely free.

https://mayofinance.com/rakuten-review/  

Excluding profit and losses from Mobile, logistics and the investments businesses that were affected by market fluctuation due to the pandemic, profits have increased significantly.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/...nings-call-transcript?part=single

Q3/20 Consolidated Results Summary (JPY bn)
Q3/19 Q3/20 YoY

Revenue 319.1 361.4 +13.2%

Non-GAAP Operating Income Excluding Mobile, Logistics and Investment Business
28.3 37.6 +33.1%

global.rakuten.com/corp/investors/
20Q3videoPPT_E.pdf  

im Mobile-Bereich als Investitionsausgaben zu stemmen - aus dem Cash Flow und über Fremdfinanzierung, ohne Kapitalerhöhung mit der damit einhergehenden Gewinnverwässerung durch eine größere Aktienzahl - ist nicht minder stark.

Mobile Segment: CAPEX

CAPEX (capital expenditure) to Acquire Tangible and Intangible Assets (JPY mm) in the eight quarters of the last two years

Q4/18: 5,817
Q1/19: 17,744
Q2/19: 45,500
Q3/19: 47,086
Q4/19: 76,859
Q1/20: 76,034
Q2/20: 58,639
Q3/20: 91,352

That are together 419,032 million JPY = $ 4.02 billion (1 Y = $ 0.0096)

global.rakuten.com/corp/investors/
20Q3videoPPT_E.pdf

 

People also preferred Viber over Facebook, which had become toxic, a hub for fake news and littered with “trolls.” Viber communities worked because the information was tailor-fit to the user. Eventually, it also became an even bigger help to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) who have been affected in unprecedented damaging ways.

With stores closed for months and bazaars cancelled, MSMEs turned to Viber to connect with customers, giving them a fighting chance for survival despite the bleak outlook.

At the “Stories from Viber Communities: Keeping SMEs Afloat in a Global Pandemic” virtual roundtable discussion, “SuperAdmins” Jonathan Richie Yap of Great Eats Manila Community and JC Alelis of Best of Pampanga Community shared their experiences of managing a Viber Community during the pandemic.

Great Eats Manila Community was created in 2018 to help foodies discover new and hole-in-the-wall restaurants and support up-and-coming businesses, Yap recalled. During the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), he said that the community became like a search engine for people who were looking for certain dishes or those who wanted to satisfy their cravings within proximity of their homes, which fostered impactful personal and word-of-mouth recommendations.

“That’s the advantage of a Viber Community like Great Eats Manila. When somebody recommends what they’ve tried in the community, it gives an extra boost to that certain brand or product,” Yap said. This, in return, helped small businesses survive, not to make a huge profit but to earn enough for their employees.

https://businessmirror.com.ph/2020/10/10/...purred-digital-bayanihan/
 

The high-quality user experience provided by Rakuten’s own network

One of the data points presented came from Opensignal, the global standard for understanding the true state of the world’s mobile networks based on measurements of real user experience. Their analyst team has recently published a report detailing one of the first tests of 4G subscriber throughput on the Rakuten mobile network in comparison to other nationwide 4G operators in Japan, demonstrating very promising results – so promising that Rakuten Mobile included the results in the their earnings report.

According to Opensignal, when users are on the 4G network, they are experiencing very good download speeds with the Rakuten network providing great network availability and plenty of bandwidth for applications such as online gaming, video and voice and as seen in the chart below:

In terms of 4G upload speeds, Rakuten is actually outperforming other operators and this is in part due to the superior performance of the open vRAN solution they are using from Altiostar, including patented algorithms which allow operators to realize gains in performance. In addition, customers such as Rakuten benefit from Altiostar’s focus on R&D, state of the art tools and RF measurement equipment, and implementation methodology, which has been field-tested and fine-tuned to allow for improved network performance.

These performance numbers were backed up by a separate blog post from Tutela in October 2020, which reports performance based on crowdsourced data. Some of the conclusions of that report include:

• Rakuten users experienced higher upload speeds and better latency compared to some other operators, which may prove to be important elements for Rakuten’s success. With the world being in a lockdown, these are critical factors for some important use-cases like gaming and uploading content on social media platforms.

• The high-quality user experience provided by Rakuten’s own network, and its rate of adoption by users, suggests that so far, the O-RAN deployment is working well.

Rakuten focused its initial deployment on three cities, Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, where there is the need for high performance in a very dense urban environment. Per Opensignal, “these high speeds indicate the potential of Rakuten’s network to enable a tremendous mobile network experience even at this early stage.”
Another critical factor is how stable the network is despite the rapid rate of new subscriber growth. The chart below shows the rapid daily growth in new subscribers in the red bars, with the green line demonstrating the stable downlink throughput in the face of that growth. That performance matches with network quality metrics of availability, accessibility, and retainability.

https://www.altiostar.com/rakuten-mobile-and-its-network-experience/  

Jun/19: 1,113
Sep/19: 1,132
Dec/19: 1,150
Mar/20: 1,169
Jun/20: 1,186
Sep/20: 1,209

Viber Revenue increased 30.5% YoY (60% content, 40% Telco in Q3/20 against 56% content, 44% Telco in Q3/19)
 
20Q3PPT_E.pdf
global.rakuten.com/corp/investors/
 

101 Affiliate Marketing Stats [Infographic] – Updated in 2020

by Nick Galov
Last Updated: November 13, 2020

The Most Interesting Affiliate Marketing Statistics for 2020 (Editor’s Choice)
• Affiliate marketing spending is bound to grow by 10% in the next few years.
• Worth $12 billion, the AM sector is growing rapidly.
• AM accounts for 15% of all digital media revenue.
• Well-crafted affiliate marketing programs can boost revenue by a staggering 30%.
• That boost amounts to 15%-30% of all sales being generated by AM.
• Together with email marketing, AM is one of the largest sources of online income, accounting for over 16% of all ecommerce orders in the USA and Canada.

https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/affiliate-marketing-stats/#gref  

The Japanese ecommerce group hopes to succeed where other groups in the sector have failed by building and running its own mobile phone network

https://www.ft.com/content/f1513214-6e71-4f89-af43-4c4a7275a93e
 

How messaging platforms created a decade of digital connections

by Cristina Constandache

16 November

... (automatisch gekürzt) ...

https://www.thedrum.com/profile/viber/news/...-of-digital-connections

 

New and Notable Publishers on the Rakuten Advertising Network November 2020
By Rakuten Advertising | November 17, 2020 | NEWS

We are heading into the home stretch of 2020, but there’s still plenty of time to grow your publisher network and reach new audiences. Learn more about the new and notable publishers on our network for November.

https://blog.rakutenadvertising.com/news/...ng-network-november-2020/
 

We’re on track to becoming the number one tech company in Japan and a leader in the global telecom industry

Rakuten executives from across the company’s broad ecosystem of businesses and services gave a series of brief, yet in-depth presentations. While some faces were familiar, such as Rakuten Chairman and CEO Mickey Mikitani and Rakuten Mobile CTO Tareq Amin, the audience was introduced to executives responsible for many of Rakuten’s other services, including leaders from golf, logistics, credit card, payments, fashion and more. Following the video, executives joined financial analysts and media for a live Q&A.

Highlights from the most recent fiscal quarter include:

• Consolidated revenue: JPY 361.4 billion (+13.2% YoY)
– Rakuten achieved double-digit growth in consolidated revenue, despite the impact of heightened consumer demand in Q3 FY2019 ahead of the consumption tax hike and the effects of this year’s global pandemic. Cumulative total revenue for Q1 through Q3 FY2020 was Rakuten’s highest ever.

• Rakuten Mobile launches unlimited 5G with no additional fees – Using the world’s first fully virtualized mobile network, Rakuten Mobile has been able to significantly reduce the cost of equipment and operation at their base stations, making it possible to pass the savings back to customers.

• FinTech Operating Income: JPY 22.3 billion (+34.9% YoY) – The FinTech segment experienced significant growth. Benefiting from integration with the Rakuten Ecosystem, Rakuten Securities is growing rapidly and has led the industry for two years running with the highest number of newly-opened accounts. Rakuten Card also reached a new record of 20 million cardholders in Japan this year.

While much of the presentation was focused on forward-looking plans, Mikitani also found opportunity to look back on how far the company has come in just 23 years.

“At the time of our founding, no one believed people would buy things on the internet, but we made the impossible possible through innovation. We redefined expectations. With tremendous speed, we’ve delivered a constant stream of innovation and we’re not allowing the pace to slow down in our 24th year since foundation,” says Mikitani. “Rakuten is going to take on new challenges. We’re on track to becoming the number one tech company in Japan and a leader in the global telecom industry.”

https://rakuten.today/blog/...-q3-fy2020-financial-results-video.html
 

Japan’s Rakuten Introduces Retail Tool For Digital Transformation

ByPYMNTS
Posted on November 16, 2020

Rakuten, a Japanese tech company specializing in digital eCommerce solutions for retailers, is introducing a new subsidiary to bolster physical stores.

Tentatively called Rakuten DX, the new unit will launch schemes for digital transformation at retailers’ physical shops, Rakuten said in a statement on Monday (Nov. 16).

The subsidiary is tracking to launch in January of next year to meet the accelerating demand for online shopping and digital payments.

Rakuten sees digital transformation as the essential driver of retail’s future and wants to speedup artificial intelligence (AI) innovations to improve inventory control, pricing, forecasting and cashierless technology.

For OMO initiatives, the company is aiming to harness online and offline purchasing data to facilitate a more personalized shopping journey for users.

Rakuten is also looking into new partnerships with companies eager for digital transformation, such as a recent tie-up with Tokyu Corporation.

Rakuten also announced it was teaming up with the U.S. investment firm KKR to acquire 85 percent of the $1.6 billion Japanese grocery chain Seiyu, which is owned by Walmart. KKR will own 65 percent; Rakuten, 20 percent; and Walmart will retain 15 percent ownership.

https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2020/...or-digital-transformation/  

„Rakuten Mobile is more than just a mobile carrier service in Japan. We are planning to build Rakuten Mobile platform global telecom platform. So we have 2, basically, vehicles. One is Rakuten Mobile service in Japan and Rakuten communication platform business globally. We are very, very ambitious, but we are also very, very confident.“

https://seekingalpha.com/article/...-results-earnings-call-transcript  

Let me introduce one more example of how innovative we are, which is Rakuten Medical. Rakuten Medical is our affiliated company and now developing cancer treatment platform called Illuminox platform. This is a technology which are developed to fight against various diseases, including cancer. We combine drugs with laser technology. In September 2020, we obtained manufacturing and marketing license from Japan for head and neck cancer. This is a moment step towards realizing our grand dream of conquering cancer.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/...-results-earnings-call-transcript  

Revenue is also expected to increase nearly 50% from last year.

For Rakuten Super Logistics (RSL), 2020 has been a year of growth. With more and more retailers embracing digital transformation and e-commerce sales soaring across the nation, the Las Vegas-based company — which has been serving American e-commerce companies large and small with cutting-edge smart logistics as part of the Rakuten Group since 2013 — has stepped up.

During the first eight months of 2020, the company already matched its shipping total from 2019. And with the holiday season just heating up, Rakuten Super Logistics expects that number to nearly double by the end of the year — a year-on-year growth of 80%. Revenue is also expected to increase nearly 50% from last year.

“RSL was growing prior to the pandemic,” he reveals. “We positioned ourselves by expanding and doubling the number of facilities in 2017 and 2018, so when the pandemic occurred, we were able to take advantage of the accelerated growth in e-commerce.”

Leveraging a scalable network that reaches every corner of the continental U.S., Manzione has been quick to adapt RSL’s warehouses to the rapidly changing demands of American e-commerce merchants. Pandemic demand brought about shipping disruptions across the country, causing some major logistics providers to restrict their services to essential items — a move which left many merchants of “non-essential” items stranded.

https://rakuten.today/blog/rakuten-super-logistics-success-story.html  

Latest News 2020: Virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) Market by Coronavirus-COVID19 Impact Analysis With Top Manufacturers Analysis | Top Players: Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia), NEC, Altiostar, Wind River, Amdocs, etc. | InForGrowth

         •§Post authorBy basavraj.t
         •§Post dateNovember 16, 2020

https://prnewsleader.com/uncategorized/1990546/...ltiostar-wind-rive/
 

halte ich auch einen Einstieg bei Rakuten für möglich - denn fundamental halte ich die Aktie nach wie vor für extrem unterbewertet.

https://www.msn.com/de-de/finanzen/top-stories/...d=anaheim-ntp-feeds  

Is OpenRAN the 5G alternative to Huawei?

Can OpenRAN be the affordable, customizable 5G networking alternative to the dominance of Huawei, Nokia, & Ericsson?

20 November 202

While OpenRAN tech has been a trending topic among network developers in 2020, the development of open network ecosystems has still to be validated against truly open standards. Most open network technologies, products, and solutions are still in the development or trial phase, but OpenRAN’s mix-and-match approach is already providing service providers with the ability to agilely improve their output and to push cost efficiencies.

This was evidenced by the launch of the world’s first 5G network based on OpenRAN from Japanese operator Rakuten Mobile, which has already save on infrastructure investment by 40%, according to The Economist.

https://techhq.com/2020/11/is-openran-the-5g-alternative-to-huawei/
 

Das ist logischerweise Berkshire nicht entgangen.  

Rakuten Advertising offers solutions and strategies to fit your business goals

Interview with Rakuten’s Ceres Cueva
November 4, 2020 by Chris Trayhorn, Publisher of mThink Blue Book

2020 has seen a movement of major ad budgets to performance marketing and an increased focus by publishers on monetization strategies. Nobody in the industry is more in touch with these changes than Ceres Cueva, Rakuten Advertising’s VP of Publisher Partnerships, North America. Her role focuses on the advancement of the company’s strategic services while increasing partner and client collaboration. We talked to her earlier this week about SaaS, why personal service still matters, and what the future holds for the industry.

Blue Book: Rakuten is such a big company now with so many different divisions. How should an advertiser or publisher thinking about working with you understand the overall strategy? How does it all fit together?

Ceres Cueva: I remember sitting in the audience at the Rakuten DealMaker event in February as a client when Rakuten Marketing announced that it was uniting its media properties, data businesses and award-winning performance marketing network to form Rakuten Advertising and thinking, this is a smart move. This unification has become our key differentiator. It is an opportunity for advertisers, publisher partners and agencies to access a global ecosystem of audiences, consumer insights, media and content networks that is unrivaled in our competitive space.

Whether it is launching your brand in a new region, reaching new customers, or insights and visibility into the online shopper, Rakuten Advertising offers solutions and strategies to fit your business goals.
BB: Many bigger networks seem to be moving towards a technology-focused model, with affiliate marketing functionality presented via a self-service SaaS platform. Is that the way you see the industry developing? What is Rakuten Advertising’s approach?

CC: There’s room for a wide variety of business models in our industry. For us at Rakuten Advertising, the core is our performance marketing solution. We are completely focused and centered on delivering a unique combination of human expertise and proprietary technology, data and inventory. We have solutions that are tailored to fit the needs of many different clients, from platform-only options to managing all of their online marketing and service needs. Experience tells us that when we we are able to truly partner with clients to create strategies that align with their marketing objectives and their overall business goals, that’s when clients find the most success.

A great example of this is our recent win at the Performance Marketing Awards for Best Managed Affiliate Program – Enterprise category. We won for our work with Cult Beauty. Starting in 2019, we worked with the client to identify key objectives for their affiliate channel: maintaining consistent Year-on-Year (YoY) growth and finding new revenue streams through new customer acquisition and new partnership verticals.

Through a collaborative approach with publishers implemented by Rakuten Advertising, Cult Beauty achieved +58% YOY growth. The team also formed partnerships with unique publishers to create a new revenue stream for the affiliate channel. The judges cited a “thorough and intelligent approach to power the brand to the next level” as a major reason for the win.

That’s a great example of how we like to work closely with a client to identify KPIs and implement a strategy to achieve them, and to use the broad capabilities of Rakuten to facilitate success.

BB: The Blue Book survey shows every year that advertisers particularly value customer service and support, with Rakuten Advertising ranking highly on these. How does this fit with the trend towards SaaS?

CC: In our experience working with advertisers, we understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Some brands have a large team of marketers and affiliate managers (similar to the team I managed at Macy’s); some brands may have a manager who oversees all digital channels; while others may have a digital marketing team that is strong in Search or Social, but may not have the expertise in affiliate marketing on staff. Rakuten Advertising is the leader in best-in-class client service. We pride ourselves on the human expertise we can offer. It is the combination of our technology, strategies and publisher partnerships that will continue to distinguish Rakuten Advertising from our competitors and help our partners achieve long term success.

https://mthink.com/interview-with-rakutens-ceres-cueva/  

Anzahl der Unique User IDs bei Viber bis September 2020

Veröffentlicht von A. Poleshova, 19.11.2020

Diese Statistik zeigt die Anzahl Unique IDs bei Viber in ausgewählten Monaten zwischen März 2015 und September 2020. Im September 2020 lag die Anzahl der Unique IDs des Chat-Dienstes für Smartphones und Desktop-PCs, mit dem auch telefoniert werden kann, bei rund 1,21 Milliarden.

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/...tzer-ids-bei-viber/
 

Performance Marketing can generate a 12:1 return on ad spend, making it one of the most cost-effective digital advertising investments

BB: Do you believe that performance marketing will take a bigger share of large brand budgets in the future, or not? Why?

CC: Absolutely – it has been accelerated as a result of COVID-19. The pandemic has reshaped society and the way consumers are shopping. Publisher partners have cultivated an engaged population of valuable online shoppers that brands are seeking. Publishers are optimizing the data they have and employing personalization to capture demand. They are utilizing machine learning and automation that create valuable tools and insight into customer behavior. Performance marketing allows brands to reach these highly coveted audiences. More importantly, affiliate marketing can deliver greater value to an advertiser’s overall marketing mix as a channel that, according to the PMA, can generate a 12:1 return on ad spend, making it one of the most cost-effective digital advertising investments.
Performance marketing is absolutely on a growth curve, and we believe that a customer-centric, technology-enabled approach is the way forward. That’s what Rakuten Advertising is set up to deliver.

Ceres Cueva is Rakuten Advertising’s VP of Publisher Partnerships, North America. Her role focuses on the advancement of the company’s strategic services while increasing partner and client collaboration. She joined Rakuten with over a decade of retail and affiliate marketing expertise. Prior to Rakuten, she drove the affiliate and monetization strategy for Macy’s and served in a variety of roles at a competitive affiliate network.

https://mthink.com/interview-with-rakutens-ceres-cueva/

 

By Ray Le Maistre
Sep 9, 2020

Why Open RAN is just too hot to ignore | TelecomTV