January 17, 2007 Chairman Yano's regular press conference

(Chairman)

Hello everyone.
Before I report on the current state of the business, I would like to say a word. On the previous Saturday, the Hida TN penetration ceremony was successfully completed. Many people in the mass media also participated, and a large number of local people also participated. We thank all of you for coming. We will do our best to work together for the opening in March next year. We would like to ask for your continued support.
And as you know, today is the day of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. We are doing various drills this week on "Disaster Prevention and Volunteer Day." Apart from that, we have been promoting the seismic reinforcement of piers. I would like to report that the construction work is proceeding smoothly. We have a total of 9,950 units, but in fiscal 2006 and 2007 we are planning to start construction on the last 510 units. The schedule is a little ahead of schedule, and we are making progress. In any case, it is clear that it is clear that we will be able to start the construction of all of them in the next fiscal year.

Then, it is the general condition of the business. Please see the materials you have. First, it is the business situation. The total fee income in December was plus 4.3%. The number of traffic was plus 10.4%. High speeds are plus 4.5% and Ichiyu is plus 2.4%. As you know last year, there were frequent traffic closures due to heavy snow in the Tokai region, but one year later in December, it was an increase due to mostly good weather. ¡I think these can be said to be the price and the number of passing cars.

I have already reported the construction status, so I will omit it.

It is the contract contract successful bid rate of the main work types. It was 83.14% in December. The cumulative total for the year was 82.05%.

Regarding the ETC situation, the average daily usage rate from January 5th to 11th is 68.0%. During this period a month ago, it was minus 0.3% from December 8th to 14th, but there are holidays in January. Since there are many days, I think that the content is roughly flat. On weekdays in December and January, it is a very high rate of 70.8% or 70.9%.
By all means holidays are in the first half of the 60% range, which is currently reducing the overall utilization rate.
Regarding the status of SA, thanks to you, this month, it increased by 7.6% compared to the previous year, and it increased by 5.0% for the cumulative total of the year. The breakdown of 7.6% was 6.6% in the food and drink department, 8.1% in the product sales department, and the service department. The increase was 3.0% for GS and 8.2% for GS. I think it may be because of the weather, but it is doing well.

Next, as some topics, I have given some materials, so I will report them.

First of all, it is given as a reference, but it is about the disciplinary action for employees who have caused a property damage accident due to drunk driving. On January 9th, a fine of 300,000 yen was paid for violating the road law, but he was in the management position of our company even though it was a property damage accident on a holiday. We are a highly public company. We took this very seriously and decided today to dispose of "demotion and suspension of work for 3 months." At the same time, we will change from the manager of the Regional Head Office Office of the Maintenance Service Business Division to the planning and supervision team of that division. As a company engaged in public business, we are very sorry and sorry for the occurrence of such an incident.
At 2 pm today, I am making a press announcement to the Kanagawa Prefectural Press Club with this content.

Next, we will hold an ETC promotion and use promotion thank-you campaign. We have set a target of 73% ETC utilization rate at the end of this year. We would like to achieve this. As stated in the handout, For those who purchase a new in-vehicle device from now on, it will be partly subsidized for the purchase cost, gifts of mileage points, or if you install it by one-stop service, you will receive mileage points, so detailed explanation is omitted. However, the first point is to carry out our own campaign as described here. Then, the three companies on the next page jointly carry out, but this is actually using ETC. We will give double points to those who use it from February to March for use on Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays. The daily usage rate may be 72-73% depending on the day, but it is the current situation that the usage rate on Saturdays and Sundays does not rise. I wanted to increase this. I also wanted to increase this campaign flyer. Please check it out.
Then, apart from this campaign, it is about improving the processing of offers for ETC time zone discounts. Currently, it is a condition of time zone discount to pass through the entrance toll gate with ETC, but when it can not be done due to various reasons, it takes time to process at the exit or it will be deducted later, Because the displayed price is normal or a little inconvenient, you can charge a discount at the booth at the exit, or reduce the time it took from a few minutes to 30 seconds. I wanted to improve convenience as much as possible.

Next, we will announce that the reorganization plan of the 4 maintenance operations into a group subsidiary has been materialized. As you know, on October 30, we will make two 100% owned subsidiaries and relate We are discussing with 9 companies. We are proceeding with talks on the assumption that actual business transfer will be completed by the end of FY 2007. We plan to build a company with the target of the remaining 3 work within the next fiscal year. Intends to create 2 companies for traffic management, 1 company for maintenance and inspection work, 4 companies for maintenance and repair work, and 7 new companies. Together with toll collection, there are 9 companies. Currently 9 companies are targeted. There are 30 companies, and it means that the operations of 30 companies will be reorganized into 9 companies. 9 of the 30 companies are already proceeding with fee collection. 2 of the 9 subsidiaries to be established are also the same. We are proceeding as a fee collection.
The purpose is to reorganize the four operations that are indispensable for road management from the perspective of consolidated management to improve governance, improve services to customers, and improve efficiency. Although we do not write it, in our various documents that outline the work, we say that the number of employees of our company is 2,400, but if you bring the current number of these 4 maintenance work as it is 、 Adding all, it will be about 8,000 people. It means that this kind of new group management will take shape within the next fiscal year. Considering future management with a share of 8,000 people, not a share of 2,400 people We will continue to expand the scope of our business. Our management policy is to further strengthen the perspective of such consolidated management and materialize this within the next fiscal year.
Please see the specific number on the back of the document.
Toll collection is in progress from 9 to 2 companies. Traffic management is from 2 to 2 companies, maintenance inspection is from 1 company, and maintenance is from 12 companies to 4 companies.

Next, we are handing out the material "We will expand into the web-related business". We are pleased to announce today the new website "High Speed Weather" which will be the platform for new businesses such as advertising, sales of original products, and travel business.
Specifically, I would like you to take a look at the materials, but for the sale of original products, I will try to do "High-speed weather weather online shop". "Rika-chan key chain", "Hifuku tunnel in commemoration of invitation" "Sarubobo" etc. I would like to expand the range in the future. "Drive special car GO with a full load of seasonal drive information". Will continue to add content, but it is also an example of it is already available have already been described are doing the reservation of the inn is affiliated with Kinki Nippon Tourist called "Sokuyado". Then, Expressway tolls search engine " It is called “Drive Compass”. Currently, we are doing “Dora Navi” jointly by three companies, and in parallel with that we will set up such a web.

At the early stage of the results, I would like to report on how the "Tomei New Year limited early morning discount" was considered as one of the ways to alleviate the traffic congestion that I explained to everyone at sunset. Regional Head Office president will also explain the results.

(Regional Head Office length)

My name is Yoshikawa, the president of the Yokohama Regional Head Office. First of all, as I mentioned from the chairman, the employee of the Yokohama Regional Head Office who was punished for drunk driving, I have been instructing me to take action to eradicate drinking driving I intended, but I am very sorry that I have not arrived yet. I would like to raise the Regional Head Office so that this kind of thing will never happen again. Sorry.
Now, let's talk about Tomei's New Year's limited early morning discounts. We announced the ultra-fast bulletin version on January 5th, but since the analysis has been put together, I will briefly explain it. The first page is the whole There are materials on page 2 and after in the overview of.
I think that it is 1 win 1 loss 1 minute in the summary of 3 days. Please see page 2. It is a losing team on 2nd, and as you can see here, it is worse than the previous year, such as long congestion ¡Traffic volume from 6:00 to 9:00, which is the discount time, has increased by 20%. I thought this was effective, but the daily traffic volume increased by about 7%, so the discount effect is After that, it did not alleviate the traffic congestion as a result. Explaining the graph, the red line shows the hourly traffic volume of this year, and the hourly traffic volume. The yellow bar graph shows 2006. The year and red represent the length of the traffic jam in 2007. I think that the discount effect did not come out on January 2nd. I will explain the traffic jam situation diagram on page 3 for a while, IC is on the horizontal axis and time is on the vertical axis. Green indicates congestion. Top is 2006, bottom is It is 2007 years. As you can see, YokohamaMachida IC congestion was the top near Yamato tunnel between Atsugi IC from has increased slightly than 2006 years. However, this time Shizuoka IC by using a discount from, The traffic congestion at Numazu IC and Fuji IC has decreased significantly, and I think that this was more effective.
Continuing, I think that there was an effect on January 3rd. Although the daily traffic volume increased by 3% as a whole, the traffic volume in the target time zone increased by about 10%, which caused the maximum congestion length to be about 2 more. The amount of traffic congestion has decreased by about 35%. I think that it was effective for 3 days.
On page 5, there is a traffic jam at that time. The red one indicates that there was an accident and there was a traffic jam.
On January 4th, we think this is a draw, and the daily traffic volume increased by about 1%, and the traffic volume increased by 8% in the target time zone, but the traffic congestion increased by 1%. The result was not so different from the previous year. The congestion was written on page 7.
Based on the results of this time, we conducted a questionnaire survey on January 2nd and 3rd from 6:00 to Ebina SA In-bound line for customers using the target section.
As a result, the awareness that we were most worried about was that everyone really knew or worried about it, but 50% said that half of them knew.
It is written as an information medium below it. 13 newspapers and 2 TV stations were interviewed. Thanks to you, we were able to secure 50% recognition. Thank you very much.
When I asked the people who knew that I was using the discount time zone from the originally scheduled time zone, half of them answered that they changed it. Especially around 10 o'clock at the beginning. 、 People who were thinking of going through this heavy traffic tunnel moved around 8 o'clock. Half of the respondents answered that they changed.
Next is the usage pattern, but since it was January 2nd and 3rd, the initial point was to clear the congestion of homecoming U-turn, but in reality, those who are still going to play for 2 or 3 days. Therefore, 57% were going and 43% were returning, which was overwhelmingly more likely to go out. This area is a reflection material, I would like to think about it when considering the next time. I will.
Eighty-three percent said that such congestion discounts were effective in eliminating traffic congestion.
On the 10th page, 92% of people are interested in such rate discounts to alleviate traffic congestion, and ask if they will use such rate discounts in the future. In response, 96% of respondents said that they would use it.
This is the last page, but I have come to see future issues that have been implemented this time. When I implement it next time, I would like to incorporate this into consideration.

There are two major issues.

One is that there are few shifts from Atsugi IC. Although there is a table on page 11, blue shows the discount amount when you get to Tokyo IC, yellow shows the discount amount when you get to Yokohama-Machida. For example, Shizuoka. From 4100 yen to 2050 yen, the discount merit will be 2050 yen, but in Atsugi 1250 yen will be 650 yen and it will be 600 yen. That kind of amount is almost In a proportional manner, it can be said that the increase in the number of vehicles using each IC is gradually declining and almost no change has been made in Atsugi. It seems necessary to take measures against vehicles flowing from Atsugi IC. That is one issue.
As can be seen in the table below, the number of vehicles that flowed in from Atsugi IC was close to 25,000 on January 3, overwhelming other ICs. So, this Atsugi IC countermeasure is one theme. I am thinking.

Another point is to consider discounts for the afternoon peak. This time, I thought about moving ahead of the peak traffic volume around 9 am and 10 am in the morning, but I found that there would be another big peak after 2 pm, so I am thinking of a discount that will delay it a little more.
As I mentioned above, I would like to call this social experiment, or I have tried these things and discovered some issues. Therefore, we would like to add this area to the next GW. I would like to consider rate discounts.
that's all.

(Moderator)

That's all for the explanation from us. If you have any questions, thank you.

(Reporter)

In the story of Hida Tunnel, you said, "There have been countless unforeseen circumstances." Please tell us what happened specifically, one or two, and a case example. ¡

(Chairman)

It's a difficult construction that goes down in history, and especially for the past three years or so after entering the fault zone, I think there was a big problem, and I think you have overcome it well.
In fact, the one who is having the most trouble is President Takahashi, so please add something. I came almost when it was finished.

 

(Regional Head Office length)

Due to the fact that the geology was fragile after entering the fault zone, unexpected flooding, up to 70 tonnes of water per minute, and devastating battle with that water, and geology being fragile 、 TBM was confined, etc.

 

(Reporter)

This is a maintenance management subsidiary, but is this done ahead of schedule as originally planned? And is this that the reorganization of family companies is all over? The third is family. Will the new company take over the assets remaining in the company?

 

(Chairman)

First of all, regarding the schedule, in our medium-term plan called Challenge V, it was planned to take 5 years for the whole to finish, although it will precede some, but at the meeting on March 17, last year. It was a concrete direction, but I actually decided that it was too late. Road maintenance is literally the foundation of road management, and one that is not working properly is 1 It was a situation that I could not spend the day, so it was shortly after Challenge V started to move forward by trying to realize it as soon as possible, but in a hurry, I decided to change the policy and moved forward.
I think this will end the problems of family companies. Of course, family companies also have their own business in addition to the business that we want to receive the transfer, so the company itself is soon It does not mean that it will not disappear, but it is a so-called family company, 12 of 30 companies correspond to it, but I think that by transferring the business to us, they will not be so-called family companies.
I think that assets are the underwriting of related assets. People and assets. Since each person has their own specifics, we will discuss them in detail based on our basic policy. I would like to come.

 

(Reporter)

How much will annual sales and profits increase, including toll collection?

 

(Chairman)

The current total order amount is less than 40 billion yen, but what will happen to this scale will be decided depending on how to operate the road in the future. And how much the cost will be increased by grouping the company itself I think that the purpose of the question is whether or not there will be any merit, but it is definitely indirect expenses that will decrease. I think that there are indirect personnel, assets, assets owned, and some borrowed. However, there is no doubt that such general overhead costs will be reduced.
However, we cannot negotiate how much it will be, and we will negotiate well to make decisions. The positive part of it is that we basically improve the service. I would like to give back to you.

 

(Reporter)

In the latter half, the purpose of the question was different. Regarding the profit, there was a criticism that in the past, profits that originally remained at Central Japan High Speed and returned to users were leaked to family companies. I have a question about how much of that amount can be taken into the inside.

 

(Chairman)

It was created as a Expressway related social contribution council, and we have been discussing what to do with the surplus accumulated so far. For the time being, in the first 10 years, 100 100 million yen, which is about 10% of the total amount. Since the total amount of surplus is 100 billion yen, we will contribute 10% of it and use it for social return. It's currently my second year since I plan to spend 1 billion yen each year on AEDs, ostomates, and stockpiling food in emergencies.
However, we are in the process of negotiating if we can contribute more. Our hope is about 10%. We are talking about whether we can contribute about 20% instead of 10%, but each is an independent company. Yes, we cannot enforce it, so there may have been various events in the past, but we would like to proceed in the discussion.
This story of 20% is mentioned in various places, and it seems that Mr. Kondo, the predecessor, said 20% when he was JH, and Western Japan seems to have such an idea, but we at first Therefore, I would like to make an effort to build up as much as possible in actual discussions, not to explicitly use this number.

 

(Reporter)

It seems to me that there will be further reorganization in the material, saying, "We will first reorganize into nine subsidiaries and start it." Is there any prospect of further integration / reorganization? I suppose it will be done, but how much is it supposed to cost?

(Chairman)

Regarding the further reorganization, I would like you to read it as "Start with 9 companies." Although the number may increase a little in some cases, the idea is to start with 9 companies at first.
As you can see in this document, the number of companies is set to 9 in each field, but the idea behind the idea was to improve the service. , There is a problem of scale efficiency. There are also regional characteristics and specialty. Sometimes it is impossible to do business unless qualified people are in the company. Considering such various things, 9 We have established the concept of a company, but even if we start with 9 companies, there is a possibility that one or two companies will increase. For the time being, we would like to proceed with the reorganization of the range we are envisioning. I am.
However, there are maintenance operations outside the scope that we envision. For example, road site management, toll collection machine maintenance, and count management. Whether such operations will be subject to reorganization. This is a range issue, but I would like to consider this elastically as well. However, in that case, we will not be the only company, so we will have to discuss it well with East and West and decide. ¡
And, as for the cost, we have not reached the stage to give a definite figure about the cost yet. However, fair, fair and just evaluation of assets, due diligence. There is a word, but I think that we must make sure that we make proper and transparent acquisitions and expenses.

 

(Reporter)

Although it has nothing to do with today's announcement, I think that safety management is very important for the road construction of the backbone of Central Japan Expressway, but how is Central Japan working on safety management now? Please tell me if you are there.

 

(Chairman)

The first is that there are two types of safety: construction safety for road construction and road safety, that is, traffic safety. I think that it is the most important thing to be emphasized. At the beginning of this year's greeting, I appealed to the employee, but there is a word of top priority, safety first, but this is just I think that this should really be the first thing to be done, rather than mindfulness. Since this is the basis of our management policy, we will continue to emphasize this and develop specific measures.

 

(Moderator)

Unless you have any other questions, today's regular press conference will end.

 

(Chairman)

Thank you very much.