SBC Medical Group Holdings Incorporated (SBC) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Welcome to SBC Medical Holdings Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on the call today are Yoshiyuki Aikawa, CEO; and Yuya Yoshida, CFO, COO and AI Evangelist. I am Fukui, Head of IR Department, and I will be your moderator today. Presentation materials for today are posted on our Investor Relations website. Minutes of the call will also be posted as soon as they are prepared. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements do not guarantee the future performance. Actual results may change due to various factors. For details, please refer to our filings with the SEC. Today's discussion may also refer to non-GAAP financial indicators. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures can be found on our presentation material for today. Let me introduce the program today. First, around 10 minutes of presentation will be delivered using AI. Please rest assured since the content has been reviewed beforehand. Then there will be a message from Dr. Aikawa before we move on to the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] We will now start the presentation.

[AI Agent] Thank you for taking the time to join the Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call of SBC Medical Group Holdings Incorporated. I will now walk you through our results for the second quarter of 2026, and update on our business strategies and our capital and IR strategy. If I had to sum up this quarter in a single sentence, it is the quarter in which we completed the structural reforms we undertook in 2025, and SBC's growth entered a phase of reacceleration. On the back of an expanding business base and more sophisticated support functions, including AI, we delivered profit growth that outpaced revenue growth. Let me begin with the clinic highlights. As of the end of June 2026, our number of locations reached 287, up 34 year-on-year. And the annual number of customer visits over the trailing 12 months was 6.92 million, up 10%. Year-to-date clinic revenue rose 11%. Same-clinic revenue was up 6% and average spend per visit in the quarter increased 9%. With both customer volume and unit price rising together, our clinic business is showing renewed strength. Next, our financial highlights. Second quarter revenue was $49 million, up 13% year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $20 million, up 32% and our adjusted EBITDA margin was 41%. Profit growth outpaced revenue growth with profitability improving. In the second quarter, we grew both revenue and profit despite a weaker yen. Because most of our business is conducted in yen, a weaker yen is a headwind for our reported results. Even so, we absorbed it and still delivered strong revenue and operating income. The main driver was higher management services revenue, reflecting the expansion of the points business following the change in our operating policy in June 2025. A revision of certain service fees also contributed. Now to our strategy update. Our strategy is unchanged. We aim to be a health care platform that supports longevity, people living young and vigorous lives from 2 sides: aesthetic medicine, an appearance-based approach; and non-aesthetic or general medicine, a function-based approach. Our goal is to become the name that comes to mind when people in Japan think of longevity. We believe 4 growth strategies will get us there: accelerating our multi-brand strategy in aesthetic dermatology; expanding our non-aesthetic business; expanding globally; and strengthening our competitiveness and reforming our cost structure through AI. I will briefly comment on each of these 4 growth strategies. We believe that AI is developing into a source of SBC's next competitive advantage. In aesthetic dermatology, we are accelerating our multi-brand strategy to capture increasingly diverse needs and raise lifetime value. First half transaction value grew a strong 19% year-on-year. To reach the customer segment that prefers basic dermatological treatments, which is driving market expansion, we are renaming Shonan Aesthetic Dermatology to SBC Skin Clinic. The Skin Clinic name lowers the barrier to aesthetic medicine and broadens our appeal, and we will open 2 additional clinics. Next are our high-value brands for beauty-conscious customers who choose based on the expertise of doctors and equipment. We will add 3 NEO Skin Clinic locations for a total of 4 and 1 JUN CLINIC for a total of 7. And to meet solid demand in men's aesthetics and hair removal, we are launching 2 new formats, THE LASER, a large-scale hair removal clinic; and SBC MEN'S FLASH, which specializes in men's beard removal with high-speed operations. Gorilla Clinic's first half transaction value was $62 million, up 19% year-on-year. Using hair removal and oral AGA treatments as entry points, we guide customers step-by-step towards dermatological and higher-value treatments, and this deeper penetration of our existing customer base drove the growth. Aiming for a Japan where longevity means SBC, we position non-aesthetic health care as our second growth engine. Our transaction value mix is still roughly 84% aesthetic and 16% non-aesthetic, which means the potential upside is significant. To drive this, we established a dedicated team in June 2026, led by Naoya Fujimoto, formerly an Executive Officer at a major health care and IT talent platform company. We will strengthen both customer acquisition and medical management. First, sharpening the acquisition and operations of existing clinics to raise utilization and revenue per clinic and in parallel, using M&A to expand the number of locations. The premise of our global expansion is a stable earnings base in Japan. On that foundation, we grow overseas with discipline. In the United States, we are advancing our collaboration with OrangeTwist, in which we took a minority stake in December 2025. OrangeTwist has 24 locations across 6 states and a membership base where recurring revenue exceeds 40% of sales. We are currently sharing operating know-how and expanding the service menu. And over the medium to long term, we aim to export the model we established in the United States to Japan and Asia. In Southeast Asia, we are exporting asset-light, the operating system honed in Japan, affordable, reliable and standardized. We are proving this out at our first Thai clinic, BLEZ CLINIC. Under our powered by SBC model, the local partner provides capital and operations, while SBC supplies procurement, standardization, training and patient acquisition, earning recurring fees linked to revenue in return. This expands our footprint at a high return on invested capital, or ROIC, while holding down capital expenditure. Starting from Thailand, we will expand the model across ASEAN. AI is a foundational strategy supporting both growth and efficiency. We are leveraging more than 26 years of accumulated management data to support AI development, building a barrier that is hard to replicate. Strengthening our MSO platform through AI lifts growth in 3 directions at once, the number of locations, the fee per clinic and the range of service menus. A more attractive platform draws in new clinics, more active transactions raise service fee levels, and the service menu expands, a virtuous cycle that we believe drives recurring consolidated revenue and EPS growth. We are progressively deploying AI that directly supports clinic management. Our AI chatbot for round-the-clock inquiries and our AI interpreter, Talk Bridge, which gives on-the-spot English and Chinese interpretation to capture inbound demand are already released. Our marketing AI is rolling out in phases and a call center AI to raise answer rates and prevent missed calls is scheduled for release during 2026. Together, these enhance the customer experience and our marketing, contributing to higher clinic revenue. We are also deploying AI that supports network expansion itself, a site candidate recommendation AI that gathers population, foot traffic and competitor data to speed up site selection. And a knowledge sharing AI that turns 26 years of on-the-ground know-how into a company-wide asset, improving the repeatability of new openings and helping staff ramp up quickly. This lets us expand the network with both precision and speed while maintaining high quality and strengthens our appeal as a franchise. More sophisticated support functions, AI foremost among them, translate directly into greater value for clinics, and we are raising service fee levels in stages accordingly. Enhanced call center functions are expected to add roughly $11 million per year and stronger support for the Gorilla and Rize Clinic is expected to add roughly $4 million, together, about $15 million per year on a full year basis. On a win-win basis with the medical corporations, we aim to sustainably raise our average fee per clinic, or AFPC, at limited additional cost, which further supports profitability. Since our NASDAQ listing, we have reinforced our core platform and laid strategic groundwork overseas and in new domains. From here, we enter a phase of multifaceted acceleration, expanding and rebranding domestic aesthetic dermatology, launching new formats, strengthening non-aesthetic health care, moving the United States into Phase 2, expanding B2B and joint ventures in Southeast Asia, applying AI and planning a longevity center for 2027. Through disciplined investment, we will pursue differentiated earnings and sustained EPS growth. Finally, our capital and IR strategy. Our basic policy is to pursue EPS growth and a normalization of our valuation in parallel, enhancing shareholder value over the medium to long term. Backed by ample cash, we are investing in both organic growth and disciplined M&A. At the same time, we recognize that SBC's recognition in the capital markets, particularly in the United States, is still limited. That said, our investor base is broadening rapidly. Our shareholder base has grown roughly 4.7x year-on-year as of July 2026. Building on this momentum, in 2026, we have and will continue to actively participate in IR conferences in New York, Hong Kong and elsewhere and step up our year-round investor engagement, including NDRs, one-on-ones and outreach to retail investors. We will also keep working to expand analyst coverage. Through all of this, with continuous EPS growth and the pursuit of an appropriate valuation in the capital markets as our 2 wheels, we expect to deliver even greater value to all our stakeholders, beginning with you, our shareholders. We hope you will look forward to what lies ahead for SBC. That concludes my remarks. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you for watching. I will now turn the call over to Dr. Aikawa, CEO, to deliver a short speech.

Good evening. I am Aikawa, CEO of SBC Medical Group Holdings. Just as you have seen in the presentation, the second quarter numbers were very strong numbers. In 2024 and in 2025, in these 2 years, we saw a dramatic change in aesthetic medicine environment in Japan, where competition became very fierce. It is now the 26th year after we started our business. And the growth was somewhat stagnant. But in the last 2 years, in the much changed environment, how to reaccelerate our growth was what we put our focus on and put our efforts on. Marketing methods and fees, the treatment, these were all renewed. And in such an environment, we were able to demonstrate that we can achieve strong growth. We are determined to continue this strong growth. Continuing from this second quarter, amongst Japanese medical institutions, we are going to be the organization that makes the most use of AI. Our COO is taking a leadership on that. AI-based chat to respond to patients automatically is one example, or AI telephone response appointment system, recommendation functions, we are able to use AI for various functions to improve convenience for our customers and improve customer experience. And at the same time, we will be able to improve the efficiency of our management. We will have more efficient management, and I'm sure that, that will contribute to profitability. That is how we foresee. We aim to be longevity company. That is the company-wide objective. The growth was primarily driven in aesthetic health care, but including orthopedic and ophthalmology, fertility treatment. In these categories, we expect to see growth, and we intend to achieve growth in these categories. Right now, the majority of our business is aesthetic health care. But in 10 years' time, the proportion of aesthetic health care is expected to be smaller, while other categories will be much larger in proportion in terms of financial performance and profitability. That is the future that we are envisioning and targeting. As for the number of clinics, it is now close to 300. And in 2035, our target is to have 1,000 clinics. And we would like to be able to achieve that target as soon as possible. And therefore, we would like to achieve growth in categories other than aesthetic health care. And as for international business, we have clinics in Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam. And gradually, business is expanding. And when we have one winning pattern, we will be able to roll that out in the all of the ASEAN region. This second quarter was a very strong quarter, and I believe that we were able to meet the expectations of the investors and we will work to improve upon the results in the third and the fourth quarters to meet your expectations. Thank you.

That was CEO, Aikawa. Thank you very much. Now we would like to open the floor for Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Now the first question, reaccelerating the growth that was presented. Domestic, the aesthetic clinics performance is improving compared to the first half of 2024 and '25, what structural changes have been brought about? Can we expect to see further improvement going forward?

I would like to respond to that question. Competitive landscape has become more fiercely competitive. And what I have done is to look at the results of customer satisfaction survey and to see where we have competitive edge or where we are weaker competitively, we have conducted such analysis. And we are sending out information from our website using various media, including photographs, fee structure and expressions, all of these were reviewed and renewed. The first CMO, the Chief of Marketing, was newly appointed. That was also a major change. And in marketing, social media marketing, TV commercials, we have reviewed all of these thoroughly so that we are able to win in this very competitive environment. And now we are seeing good results. And I believe this momentum will continue, and I expect strong growth to continue.

I would like to add to that. As Dr. Aikawa explained, we are seeing results in terms of number of customers and unit price, both are growing. And that is the difference between the past 2 years. And in aesthetic dermatology, our growth is outpacing the market growth. So it is not merely because the market itself is growing, but our SBC platform is stronger as a result of revamping, including of marketing. And as a result, we have become stronger, and we are becoming more confident.

Moving on to the next question. A question on Japan. What is the competitive environment in Japanese aesthetic health care market?

Well, in terms of the competitive landscape, at maximum, last year or in the first half of this year, right now, has probably seen the peak of competition. And recently, or earlier, there were a lot of new aesthetic clinics being opened increasing their numbers. But recently, we have seen slowing down of the increase. So the players -- the number of players is going to be reduced going forward. But in the Japan's aesthetic medicine market, I believe that the market itself is going to expand going forward with the expansion of the market, but slightly reduced number of players in the market, that is what we are expecting to see. And going forward, we believe that the environment will come where we will be able to exhibit our strength.

If I may add, as Dr. Aikawa mentioned, regarding the competitive landscape, I believe that there has been a complete change of the current, where SBC's position has been further strengthened. That means that we are currently in a favorable position for SBC in terms of the number of locations and the customer volume, and we are positioned as #1 overwhelmingly with a very overwhelmingly stronger brand power and also business base and the scale of the business. In each of our brands, we are able to provide value as well as the balanced pricing and values. Therefore, that will prevent us from being falling into the competition in pricing. While we are able to maintain our competitiveness, we will be able to maintain profitability. And it is something that cannot be done by any other peers who are running single brand. And given the current environment where the environment for business running for other peers are getting difficult and considering the current longevity trend, we are going to grow further. In that landscape, we believe that SBC will be able to increase our share of market. If I may be more specific, for example, aesthetic dermatology area, utilizing our financial capability, we are able to buy the cutting-edge medical equipment at scale faster than any other players. And also furthermore, we are going to optimize our operation utilizing our AI capability. CapEx or whatever which will require investment can be done. Including these strategies, we believe that this is something that cannot be reproduced by any other peers. And when it comes to the data foundation being improved, as Dr. Aikawa mentioned, the management reform is based upon the data-driven model. Based upon the specific analysis of the data, we are trying to enhance our business base. And I believe that we have been able to strengthen our business base further. We are increasingly confident. Thank you very much.

Next question is about financials. The second quarter was a very great quarter. However, SG&A was higher than expected. Will you please detail?

I would like to respond to that question. Thank you very much for commending us for having a great quarter. As for SG&A, it increased slightly. But what is important first is that it was only a slight increase. There are some reasons. One of the reasons is one-time cost as a result of the secondary offering that accounted for much of the increase. It is not that overall trend is that of increasing SG&A.

Thank you. We have another question on finance. About $15 million of upside in fee was highlighted. What is the timing of those increases? And how much of this is already reflected in Q2? And what is the incremental margin contributions?

Let me respond to this question again. Regarding the time line, it will depend on each item, but there are specifically 2 items, Gorilla Clinic starting from July and call center revision starting from June -- sorry, call center starting from July, Gorilla, Rize Clinic starting from June. So regarding the results under review for the second quarter, which did not include this impact, some of which may have been included in the results for June. Part of the impact has been included slightly in the results under review. So full contribution will be seen starting from next fiscal year. But in Q3 and Q4 for this fiscal year, about half of the unrealized gains will be included. These 2 items that we are explaining have been already determined. But other than this, high value-added services will contribute to the further increase in the unit price. Revenue per clinic will be further enhanced by other factors than what is described here. Regarding the contribution to the profitability, in principle, these are the services which are provided based upon the fixed cost. Therefore, most of the gains can be directly contributing to the profits. So what has been determined is the basis for the upside in the amount of $15 million. We are increasingly confident in achieving this. Thank you very much.

Next is about global strategy. OrangeTwist, what is the current status of the OrangeTwist? Could you please give us your update? Since you made investment, what learnings did you get? Or in the coming 12 months, what kind of important milestone are you planning to have?

Since I'm responsible for international business, I would like to respond to this question. As for major learning in the past 6 months or so, the management structure was reviewed and one of the co-founder became the CEO. He is Clint Carnell, and we have learned much from him. MedSpa business in the U.S., how it will be expanded in the United States, we are learning that under his leadership. For example, SBCs procurement can be utilized to reduce cost of purchase, comprehensive marketing strategy is also being revisited. In actual clinics, customer proposition, protocol is being reviewed and events to attract customers will be organized. This is related to branding. We have not done these before. But in a very short period of time, these are implemented one after another. The speed of implementation is much quicker after Clint joined. In the growth area, longevity, longevity products will be enhanced in conjunction with SBC. In the next 12 months, what we can expect over the next 12 months? Well, SBC is working together with OrangeTwist. And under SBC brand, we would also like to do business in the United States under our own brand. And we believe that there is a synergy between OrangeTwist and SBC.

I would also like to add to that. I agree fully with what Yoshida-san said. After the leadership change, there has been a rapid reform of OrangeTwist, which is reflected in the performance. And we have much to learn from his leadership, and he visited Japan, Clint visited Japan, and he also observed our clinics here in Japan. We were able to provide information from our side, and we had a lot to learn from the U.S. It may take time, but we would like to make sure that we make the full use of these opportunities and learn and to build a strong business model in the United States.

Thank you. We have another question on the United States. In expanding U.S. business, what are you thinking of doing? Will you explain OrangeTwist locations or buy other companies or increase your ownership of OrangeTwist?

Well, expanding OrangeTwist itself, yes, this is something that we are sure will be done and increasing our stake in the OrangeTwist is also being considered. And members of the OrangeTwist will be cooperating with us so that our unique model, winning model in the United States market, together with them, we would like to scale across regions or increasing the number of locations.

If I may add, as he mentioned, in principle, there will be a mixture of different measures. As SBC, we may be deploying our locations as well. In principle, OrangeTwist's roll-up strategy, M&A being utilized in order to increase the clinics. And last year, we did one and increasing the number of locations reaching 24 now. Other than this, there may be opportunities for M&A. There has been approach to OrangeTwist. Therefore, we are currently considering all of these as the opportunities for growth. Thank you very much for your question.

Thank you. Next question is about Southeast Asia. Your strategy in this region, what is the traction of the strategy being implemented? What are going to be the future steps?

In Vietnam, in Thailand and in Singapore, we have clinics. In Singapore, last year, we acquired AHH. We would like to expand AHH Clinics in Singapore. As for Vietnam, it has been already 10 years after we have started operating clinics. And for the first time, we are seeing increase in the number of Vietnese patients, customers, and it has started to grow rapidly. Once we have a strong model here, then in Vietnam alone, population is 100 million. So I'm sure we will be able to open other locations. In Thailand, in Hong Kong, these are countries where there are people who like Japanese culture, and I believe it will be easier to open clinics in these countries. In relation to international business, as for inbound on a single month basis, in the past few months, we have seen growth by several folds. And in particular, we have seen increase in customers from Taiwan. The measures that we have implemented in the past 1 or 2 years are leading to the actual results in our business in Asia and also our business with inbound customers.

Thank you very much. We have a related question. Outside of Japan, in the second half of 2026 and in 2027, in that time span, what territories represent the greatest growth opportunity?

Well, as we mentioned earlier, Vietnam may have the opportunities and also inbound market, foreign visitors coming to Japan. This market is growing for sure. And business in the U.S. with the leadership change, it is showing a speedy growth. So these 3 areas are those opportunities that we will be growing for sure.

Thank you very much. Next question is about AI strategy. Service fee is going to be enhanced due to the development of AI technologies. And other than this, what kind of impacts can be seen from the implementation of AI technologies? If you have any time scale for that, could you please share it with us?

I'm happy to address that question. We are releasing various AI products one after another. As Dr. Aikawa explained, chatbot has been released in August. And before the end of the year, we expect to open AI call center and AI preceptor to support the training of nurse concierge will also be launched. So in the next 6 months to 12 months, we will be introducing more AI products and core system will be revamped using AI. What we are basically aiming to achieve is that in 2035, we would like to have 1,000 clinics, at least in the indirect department, we would like to maintain the scale at the current scale in terms of headcount, and we would like to achieve 1,000 clinics without increasing fixed cost. To improve operational efficiency, we are using AI and that effort is moving ahead of other areas, but we would like to improve customer experience. For example, AI chatbot released on the web sites may be converted to apps so that treatment history and simulation using customers' own photographs may be used in more personalized fashion to improve UX. Through such efforts, we would like to improve customers' convenience and improve our sales. We not only aim to improve efficiency, but increase sales through the use of AI. That is what we are hoping to achieve, and we expect to achieve.

Thank you. We have a question on longevity about longevity efforts. How does SBC see longevity as an opportunity? And how does SBC plan to make it a business?

Yes, longevity in Japan. Japan is actually the country where people live longest with the aging population in this country. And the number of elderly people is very large. So compared to other countries, in this sense, we are more advanced. We would like to turn this into a major pillar for profitability and revenue for health care. Logically speaking, and simply put, for people to live healthy and vibrant lives for long so that they are able to enjoy their lives, we would like to help that through implementation of our medical technologies. So in that sense, aesthetic medicine or health care is helpful for -- even for those elderly people in order to better their appearance. By doing so, they will be able to stay vibrant and they will be able to continue working. So that we really -- we believe that we will be able to help people living that way. And for example, regenerative medicine and orthopedics that we are engaged in, in these areas, if you have a painful knee or joint, you are not able to enjoy playing sports or you're not able to travel. So in these senses, in order to prevent such restriction of activities for such people, we would like to help them. And in dentistry, chewing, utilizing your own teeth to eat, is very important for human activity. So we'd like to grow that area as well. And the gene screening that is conducted in the United States in order to see the ages of organs can be investigated, for which peptides or hormone endocrinology and supplements, any kinds of therapies can be proposed to address such aging of organs, kind of subscription recurring services based upon the investigation of the cell age on a regular basis and also providing the health checkup and whatever necessary for that particular person through supplemental provision, that kind of business model is being considered by us.

If I may add, there are 2 major points, SBC's positioning related to what he mentioned earlier. In medical areas, we are able to provide layers of intervention. We are not just showing the numbers. We are able to provide improvement through therapies. We are able to provide such medical things or services. That is the differentiator from others. And the second point is the healthy longevity for people to live lively and vibrant lives, which will lead to the expansion of the aesthetic market. And in this area, which is the area where SBC is able to grow further. So for longevity trend to continue for medium to longer term, will provide the tailwind for us strongly. And next year, we are going to establish the longevity center and online platform will be built next year. So we'd like to make the branding where people will associate longevity always with SBC in Japan. Thank you very much.

Regarding the next question about the capital, net cash is almost 45% of market cap. Net cash is increasing as such. So with such ample cash on hand, what plans do you have in order to enhance shareholder values? For investors, why do we need to pay attention to SBC now?

First of all, before we became public under our group, we have Rize Clinics and Gorilla Clinics. In the beginning, when we acquired these clinics, total turnover was about JPY 25 billion. But in the last 3 to 4 years, it has increased to JPY 33 billion or to over JPY 30 billion level. So growth was achieved. Going forward, orthopedics, ophthalmology and also aesthetic health care in these categories, we would like to implement M&A so that we can achieve 1,000 clinics in 2035. We want to realize this and not end up just having a pie in the sky. We aim to achieve this number by 2035.

Thank you very much. Are there any other questions? Then with this, we would like to conclude the Q&A session. Lastly, we would like to invite CFO, Yoshida, to say a few words to close. CFO, Yoshida, please have the floor.

Thank you very much for participating in our conference call -- earnings call out of your busy schedule. As you have seen today, we are glad as, CFO AI, to be able to deliver and report this strong results for the quarter under review. We are confident in accelerating our growth. And as we have been making over the past several years, we have been able to strengthen further this positioning of SBC. As a result of this, the service unit price or fee has been enhanced for clinics. And by developing the new business format, we'll be able to increase the clinic network. And for the further growth in the medium to longer term, we'll be able to implement AI and longevity trend, which will all further strengthen positioning of SBC. Please stay tuned in what we are able to bring. Thank you very much for your gathering.