March 2017
SKY Perfect JSAT - Annual Report Renewal & Contribution to Global IR
SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation is famous for its multi-channel pay TV broadcasting service, SKY PerfecTV!, but they also provide a B2B-oriented, high profit-churning global satellite communications service that is surprisingly unknown to general consumers. Upon settling on a quinquennial medium-term management plan, they partnered with Arc Communications to renew their English and Japanese annual reports.
In this momentous period, we took on the overall production of the annual reports - from initial planning to the very last steps of printing and PDF-making - and consequently met all of SKY Perfect JSAT's expectations.
In this issue, we interviewed the leading members of SKY Perfect JSAT's Corporate Communications & Investor Relations Division, who explain how we went from developing from scratch the Japanese version of the report before producing high-quality translation and design.
From left to right: Hiroshi Watanabe, Yoshihiro Sato, Mariko Ohsato,
Yoko Watanabe, Keisuke Iwase and Shogo Harumoto
- Profile
- Keisuke Iwase: Team Manager, Corporate Communications & Investor Relations Division, Corporate Planning & Strategy Group, SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation
- Shogo Harumoto: Manager, Corporate Communications & Investor Relations Division, Corporate Planning & Strategy Group, SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation
- Yoko Watanabe: Assistant Manager, Corporate Communications & Investor Relations Division, Corporate Planning & Strategy Group, SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation
- Mariko Ohsato: CEO & President, Arc Communications Inc.
- Yoshihiro Sato: Operating Officer, Web & Cross Media Executive Manager, Arc Communications Inc.
- Hiroshi Watanabe: Web & Cross Media, Arc Communications Inc.
SKY Perfect JSAT's Two Pillars - the Famous SKY PerfecTV! and the B2B Satellite Communications Services
Ohsato: When talking about SKY Perfect JSAT, the public knows about the TV broadcasting services, but I'm not sure that many are aware of your activity in the B2B field. So could you start by giving us a brief introduction of your company's services?
Iwase: SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation is the result of the merger and business integration in 2007 of two companies: SKY Perfect Communications and JSAT, that provide respectively broadcasting multi-channel pay TV and satellite communications services. This is why the current SKY Perfect JSAT has two pillars that are multi-channel pay TV services and satellite communications services.
Being a consumer-oriented service, SKY PerfecTV! is broadly known, boasting approximately 3,400,000 subscribers to its satellite-based multi-channel pay TV broadcasting. On the other hand, our satellite communications services expand beyond the Japanese boarders, with a focus on the Asia and Pacific (APAC) region. They are widely used for SKY PerfecTV!'s broadcasting, naturally, but also in corporations, government administration offices and many more.
SKY Perfect JSAT's Annual Report - It All Started in English...
Ohsato: This widely global service may come as a surprise to SKY PerfecTV! subscribers. Could you tell us more about it?
Iwase: Yes, indeed. Actually, both the multi-channel pay TV and satellite communications services are provided on a global scale. In 2014, we launched "WAKUWAKU JAPAN", a service aimed at broadcasting Japanese contents overseas. It's currently offered in Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan among others, and is accessible to 6,900,000 households (as of late November 2016). The Japanese contents are all broadcast in the local language.
Now, the satellite communications service has been developed as an overseas-oriented business from the very beginning: with a fleet of seventeen satellites, it covers the sky from North America to India. Operated exclusively from Japan, we are the largest satellite communications carrier in Asia and rank fifth in the whole world. In the APAC region for example, we provide the communication lines to Indonesian mobile phone companies and Russian resource development corporations. Furthermore, with Intelsat - the world's largest satellite communications service provider - we have developed a joint satellite service, Horizon, that mainly targets the North American market.
Ohsato: That's a huge scale to operate on! Now, this time Arc Communications was in charge of your annual reports, but what king of IR strategies have you developed for this globally expanding business of yours?
Iwase: Currently, approximately 20% of our shareholders are from overseas, so we consider sharing information with our non-Japanese investors as extremely important. And our annual report is our most valuable tool in this regard.
Sato: During the orientation session, you told us that you printed the English version but only sent out the Japanese version in PDF. At the time I thought this was the exact opposite of what most companies usually do, which shows just how much you value providing information on a global scale.
Creating a Wealth of Options Through Partnerships
Ohsato: You selected your vendors through calls for tenders. What were the points you kept in mind, and what were your expectations in doing so?
Iwase: Our reason for making a call for bids was that, with the announcement of our quinquennial medium-term management plan, 2016 was an extremely important year. This called for a drastic overhaul of our annual report, so we wanted to receive various propositions from partners with whom we hoped to collaborate on the report. Arc Communications put forward an extremely complete plan, which made us decide to move forward with you. You had analyzed our previous annual reports in detail, and made various suggestions to improve them. That's why you received such a good response from our team.
Ohsato: We grasped the gist of your expectations in advance and we were able to present you with an Arc Communications-like plan. Also, in order to increase our quality from a specialist's point of view, we collaborated with Optia, a company that creates and operates an Enterprise Information Portal website tailored for IR support and individual investors. We thought that bringing forth a variety of options would prove beneficial, and we're relieved to hear that this decision turned out to be a good one. (Laughs)
Iwase: We were impressed by Optia's work. A specialist's point of view is really something else! It was very instructive for us too, as they gave us advice for each point we didn't understand or weren't perfectly sure about. We are very satisfied with the excellent quality of your work.
The Surprising Quality of the Annual Report Translation
Iwase: I would like to add something about the advantages of a specialist' perspective. Actually, working with you on this project, we felt that the quality of the English translation was impressive. We weren't expecting such a difference in terms of quality, so this really exceeded our expectations. It was a very conscientious work, where you took into account the meaning of our word choices and translated accordingly. We are really grateful for that, and it was a true surprise for us.
Yoko Watanabe: When we received the translation we had ordered, in addition to the expected consistency of language, we often noticed your good taste in choosing English phrases that were both business-like and appropriate for the level and quality required by our investors.
Ohsato: Thank you very much. The aspects that you emphasized are points that truly matter to us as a translation company, so this makes us very happy.
The translation of an annual report revolves around two axes: first, the accurate translation of accounting terms; second, properly conveying the company's strategy. The latter requires more than the merely correct translation of words, here the message has to be presented in an appealing fashion. Even in a single translation, I think it's important to differentiate these two components.
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