We prefer to borrow at floating interest rates, so there will be an impact from rising interest rates. However, we believe that the impact on our core business will be negligible because the current domestic borrowing costs remain sufficiently low.

As an example, let us consider a hypothetical case in which our funding rate suddenly rises by +1%, although this is unlikely to be realistic.

Once the NEN and ONTSU M&A complete, our interest-bearing debt will be approximately 50.0 billion yen, of which 1%, or 0.5 billion yen, will be an additional cost. Since this additional cost of 0.5 billion yen represents only 3.8% of our full-year EBITDA forecast of 13.0 billion yen, we believe that the impact on our cash flow will be negligible. In the same case of the above-mentioned 105.0 billion yen of interest-bearing debt and 29.0 billion yen of EBITDA, the impact would be only 3.6% of the same.

In addition, this is an estimate based on the assumption that all borrowings are at variable interest rates, but in reality there are also borrowings at fixed interest rates, so the actual impact will be even smaller.

Based on these estimates, we believe that the impact of the increased interest burden resulting from higher interest rates will be negligible, as domestic borrowing costs remain sufficiently low, given our strategy of growth through M&A and our plan to achieve 60% EBITDA growth year over year.