01 · THE RALLY Plus Alpha Consulting sells Japanese-language analytics software to business teams, especially HR and marketing teams. Its core product, Talent Palette, helps companies use employee data for hiring, retention, and employee development decisions. The HR-Solutions subscription base reached 2,171 contracts at the end of Q1 FY9/26 (Talent Palette + Yorisor + R-Shift + R-Kintai). Large customers matter because they drive recurring revenue: 40% of customers are above 1,000 employees, and those larger clients account for 73% of segment recurring revenue. Waters, the company's proprietary Japanese NLP engine, helps convert Japanese business-language data into usable analysis and has been trained over seventeen years. The in-house consulting team then feeds customer workflows back into the product roadmap, creating what management calls the PAC loop: sell, consult, productize, resell. That loop has supported HR Solutions revenue growth above 30% CAGR over the last three years while margins expanded. The current profit model has three moving parts. First, higher revenue from existing software contracts: Talent Palette monthly ARPU reached ¥468,000 in Q1 FY9/26, up 11.3% year-on-year, with management attributing roughly half to price revisions (started in FY9/24 Q3) and half to option attach and plan upgrades. Second, sales-efficiency gains: as go-to-market shifted from broad marketing aimed at many prospects to sales activity focused on larger named accounts, total SG&A fell 15.9% year-on-year in Q1 FY9/26, including an approximately 34% drop in the marketing line. Third, selling through partner channels: Plus Alpha is now adding partner channels, with Mynavi TalentBase (launched October 1, 2025) as the first scaled example. The spring-summer 2025 stock move reflected this repricing. Shares bottomed at ¥1,170 on April 7, 2025, then recovered after H1 FY9/25 showed operating profit up 28.8%. Momentum strengthened after the August 13, 2025 guidance raise (FY9/25 operating profit target from ¥5,600M to ¥6,100M). By August 18, 2025, the stock reached ¥2,510, implying about 12.3x forward EV/operating profit on then-known guidance — a four-month re-rating into the upper range of the JII universe.

02 · THE CONSOLIDATION On November 12, 2025 management did three things in a single disclosure. First, it raised the FY9/25 operating profit forecast a second time, to ¥6,378M against the August-revised ¥6,100M, reflecting continued marketing-cost compression and a clean operating beat. Second, it disclosed a goodwill impairment of ¥1,154M on the Growup and Attack subsidiaries acquired in 2022 and 2024 — Growup's new-graduate direct-recruiting platform Kimisuka and Attack's recruiting-BPO business had both run below the original acquisition plan, and the company elected to write the residual goodwill to zero (Growup ¥1,092M, Attack ¥61M). Third, it announced cancellation of the company's entire treasury balance — 472,250 shares, or 1.10% of pre-cancellation shares outstanding — effective November 28. Two days later, on November 14, the FY9/25 results confirmed revenue up 22.8% to ¥17,084M and operating profit up 40.8% to ¥6,379M, with group operating margin at 37.3% reported and 44.7% on a segment-weighted basis. The same disclosure pack carried the FY9/26 initial guidance: revenue ¥19,500M (+14.1%), operating profit ¥7,500M (+17.6%), operating margin target 38.5%. The headline growth rate compressed from +40.8% to +17.6% — a meaningful deceleration — and yet the stock barely moved, closing at ¥2,393 on the day. The reason was that the operating-leverage proof had landed alongside two capital-return signals (treasury cancellation, raised dividend guide from ¥29 prior-year actual to ¥38), and that the market read the impairment as the cleansing of M&A residue rather than a fresh problem. The plateau extended through the Q1 FY9/26 print of February 13, 2026 — revenue ¥4,439M (+14.0%), operating profit ¥1,676M (+49.5%), operating margin 37.8% against the 28.8% prior-year quarter — which confirmed that the H2 FY9/25 margin slope had carried into the new fiscal year.

03 · WHERE WE STAND NOW Two events in late April and early May 2026 reset the case. First, Oasis Management Co., Ltd. disclosed in two consecutive large-shareholder filings (April 23 initial, April 27 amendment) that it had built a 10.6% position in the company — an explicit activist filing, with stated purpose of seeking higher shareholder returns, board-effectiveness improvements, and engagement on capital allocation. The May 1 filing additionally states the firm's intent to acquire more than 5% further within the next twelve months. Second, on May 13, 2026, management published H1 FY9/26 results — revenue of ¥9,341M, up 14.2% year-on-year, with operating profit at ¥3,692M (up 32.2%) and net income at ¥2,518M (up 36.0%) — alongside a dividend policy revision: payout ratio target raised from approximately 20% to 30%, a return-on-equity-by-dividend (DOE) indicator newly introduced, and FY9/26 dividend per share forecast raised from ¥38 to ¥50 (a 72% increase versus the FY9/25 actual of ¥29). H1 booked 49.2% of the full-year operating profit guide and H1 operating margin landed at 39.5%, one point above the 38.5% full-year target. The capital-return lever that the activist is pushing on has therefore partially landed already — though on FY9/26 forecast net income of ¥5,200M the 30% payout works out to ¥1,560M, 1.5% of market capitalization, modest against the ¥14.56bn net cash that still sits at 14.4% of capitalization. The next four quarters will resolve three things: whether H2 FY9/26 operating margin holds at or above 38% (which would imply a full-year operating profit upward revision); whether the Mynavi TalentBase OEM is disclosed as a separable revenue line, proving the partner channel as a distribution leg; and whether the FY9/26 results announcement in November 2026 layers a recurring buyback authorization on top of the 30% payout, converting the activist debate from observation into program.