Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket
Look Out Amazon, Here Comes...Rakuten?
Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten announced on Tuesday it is acquiring Ebates for $1 billion.
The acquisition, which Rakuten hinted at last week, is part of the Japanese company’s push to grow its base beyond its domestic market and hopefully, become a global player. Having made some $1.2 billion acquisitions to date along these lines, this is Rakuten’s most ambitious move to date.
However, investors are dubious that the company can absorb yet another foreign acquisition, much less one the size of Ebates, despite Rakuten’s strong cash position.
Then there is the ever-present Amazon, which dominates the e-commerce market in the U.S. Few believe it will falter in the face of Chinese giant Alibaba, much less a Rakuten-Ebates combo.
Rakuten Goes Forth
Not surprisingly, Rakuten says it is undaunted. For starters, it has assembled a very interesting mix of acquisitions. There is messaging app Viber, which it purchased for $900 million in February, the Canadian ebook offering Kobo, Spanish video service Wuaki.tv, Viki, a digital content platform and Buy.com.
Now it has picked up Ebates.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2014/09/...ere-comes-rakuten/
Tokyo, November 27, 2024 - Rakuten Mobile, Japan’s newest and most modern mobile network, today announced that it has expanded its 5G (Sub6) network coverage area in the Kanto region, which includes the Greater Tokyo Area, by 110% compared to January 2024, as part of the company’s efforts to improve network quality for customers.
The expansion in 5G coverage comes as the result of software upgrades that have increased traffic capacity for Rakuten Mobile’s 5G (Sub6) base stations. Additionally, radio transmission output has been increased following the easing of measures preventing interference between mobile wireless networks and satellite communications in shared bandwidth frequencies, further expanding the 5G (Sub6) coverage area. Combined, these efforts have increased the 5G network coverage area in the Kanto region by 110%, significantly surpassing the company’s plan to increase coverage by 60% by the end of 2024.
Outside of the Kanto region, Rakuten Mobile has implemented similar measures to expand its 5G (Sub6) network coverage area in the Nagoya and Osaka regions, where the company has improved 5G traffic per cell and increased the capacity of its 5G (Sub6) base stations.
Since launching 5G services in September 2020, Rakuten Mobile has deployed 17,494 5G outdoor base stations across all 47 prefectures in Japan as of the end of September 2024, with Massive MIMO utilized in more than 80% of its 5G network. One of the benefits of its fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network based on Open RAN standards is the ability to quickly extend beamforming functions in Massive MIMO by upgrading base station software running on the virtualized platform.
Going forward, Rakuten Mobile plans to gradually expand base station capacity and 5G coverage in Kyushu, Okinawa and other areas through similar measures starting in January 2025.
Rakuten Mobile is committed to further enhancing its nationwide mobile network quality so that customers can enjoy best-in-class mobile services anywhere in Japan.
https://corp.mobile.rakuten.co.jp/english/news/...20241127_01_lang_en
November 27, 2024 by
Ben Ives, Robert Wyrzykowski
Rakuten Mobile is a great example of a mobile operator that improved the consistency of its services while also reaching the milestone of 8 million subscribers on its network — winning from both MNOs, their sub-brands, and standalone MVNOs in the Japanese market.
Key Findings:
Rakuten Mobile’s Consistent Quality improved significantly in 2023. Due to its network investments and enhancements, its Consistent Quality score is now above standalone MVNOs and MNOs sub-brands (also known as flanker brands).
Rakuten Mobile is winning more subscribers. Compared to 2022 and 2023, Rakuten Mobile’s win share has grown from 10.6% to 18% in 2024 compared to 2023.
In 2024, a larger share of Rakuten Mobile switching wins is coming from MVNOs and MNO sub-brands than in prior years. On a year-on-year basis, Rakuten Mobile is increasing its ratio of the number of new subscribers on its network compared to the number of previous customers who moved to other operators.
Since its launch in 2020, Rakuten Mobile has made significant progress in delivering a competitive network experience. When we analyzed its performance in December 2020, Rakuten Mobile users spent just 48.3% of their time on the operator’s own Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN). In a follow-up report, we showed that this percentage increased to 94.1% in Q2 2023. Network enhancements have been a priority for Rakuten Mobile and these have improved our users’ 5G experience.
https://www.opensignal.com/2024/11/27/...ng-of-2024-due-to-5g-network
Nov. 15, 2024
Summary
Rakuten achieved positive quarterly operating profit for the first time in 17 quarters, with an operating income of JPY 537 million for Q3 2024.
RKUNY suffered from operating losses for four straight years running in the 2020-2023 time frame, and I expect a turnaround with expectations of positive operating profit for Rakuten in 2025.
I stick to my existing Buy rating for Rakuten, as it has reached a profitability inflection point and is deserving of higher valuations.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/...ty-inflection-point-reiterate-buy
October 7, 2024
For Rakuten Mobile’s SVP of Next Generation Advanced Research, the key is to decouple 6G workloads from the cloud-native platform
In a recent article, RCR Wireless News laid out the definition of AI-native as it pertains to 6G; however, in an even more recent conversation with Rakuten Mobile’s Senior Vice President of Next Generation Advanced Research David Soldani, that definition was challenged, or at least, expanded upon.
Soldani’s main critique of current ideations around AI-native is that it’s been mostly focused on enhancing network infrastructure with AI capabilities to improve performance. “But I don’t care about performance,” he told RCR. “We already have excellent speed and latency… It’s very difficult to find new use cases enabled by the current view of how AI should be used within next gen systems.”
Instead, he offered: “AI-native will mean that the workload has the ability to be integrated seamlessly through APIs to my AI capabilities.” He added that the conversation must shift towards evolving our 5G/5G-A workloads in the direction of achieving three key goal indicators: improve revenues; reduce costs; and reduce risks. Anything else, he said, isn’t really of any concern to him.
https://www.rcrwireless.com/20241007/fundamentals/...tems-that-matter
The boost in Consistent Quality scores happened just before Rakuten Mobile’s jump in Win Share performance at the beginning of 2024. In 2023, Rakuten Mobile accounted for just 10.6% of total mobile switching wins, while in 2024 so far, that share jumped to 18% of total switching wins. Win share reflects the percentage of competitive switching gross adds in the market won by the operator — i.e., how many switchers on the market have been attracted by the operator.
https://www.opensignal.com/2024/11/27/...ng-of-2024-due-to-5g-network
https://www.opensignal.com/2024/11/27/...ng-of-2024-due-to-5g-network
November 14, 2024
Data is the new gold – and in telecom, data is rapidly transforming how operators enhance customer experiences, increase revenue, and improve retention. Asif Muhammad Iqbal, Head of Data and AI CoE, Maxis, and Faiq Khan, SVP of Global Sales OSS BU, Rakuten Symphony, highlight the potential of data and AI in telecom’s evolution, in an interview conducted by Abe Nejad, Publisher of The Network Media Group.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQNHMOyoEcg
Viber Media S.à r.l provides the messaging app Rakuten Viber, which has over 1.55 billion total registered users as of the end of September 2024. The service has established a global user base, primarily in Eastern Europe; however, recently, strategic initiatives have accelerated its expansion in Asian markets. Rakuten Asia Pte. Ltd. serves as the regional headquarters for the Asia-Pacific, managing operations in e-Commerce, FinTech, advertising, and sports businesses. This Share Transfer aims to further expand Rakuten Viber in the Asian market.
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2024/1129_11.html
Rakuten bought Viber for $ 1.0 billion some years ago. The booking of a gain of 100 billion yen (about $700 million) increase the book value from $ 1.0 billion to $1.7 bilion
“By transferring all shares of its consolidated subsidiary, Viber Media S.à r.l., to another consolidated subsidiary, Rakuten Asia Pte. Ltd. the Company expects to record approximately 100 billion yen as a gain on the sale of affiliated company shares as extraordinary gain in its non-consolidated financial results (prepared in accordance with J-GAAP) for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024. As this is an intra-group transfer, the impact on the consolidated financial results is expected to be minimal.”
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2024/1129_11.html
Unpopular decisions today breed the success of tomorrow
All in all, while it is still unprofitable today, we believe Rakuten’s bold and unpopular telecom investment can drive a period of profitable growth for the company. Evidencing that this part of the business can breakeven is important but what is even more important is what it can become over the next five to ten years. Taking this view enables us to see a company at an inflection point and not one compromised by poor decision-making. The investment case is further underpinned by its strong reputation and reinforcing ecosystem despite the market’s fathomable scepticism.
Just as one well-intentioned law had calamitous consequences for the Dog Shogun’s legacy, missing the broadly positive consequences of his actions, Rakuten’s telecoms investment poses similar risks for the company’s reputation. The market’s concerns are clear in its current valuation. This has created an attractive entry point just at the time that the company can prove its competitive edge. We believe the company has the potential to deliver its own form of prosperity to its shareholders.
https://www.bailliegifford.com/en/uk/...-and-the-dog-shogun-10051560/
November 29, 2024
NATIONS is a Rakuten Ichiba lecture-based consulting service available to merchants. In this video, we followed two participants in the "NATIONS Super Advance" program aimed at helping merchants overcome operational issues and achieve 100 million yen in monthly sales within a couple years. Through this year-long documentary, witness the Rakuten spirit of empowerment support the participants as they learn, challenge themselves, and grow as business owners. A surprising conclusion awaits in the end!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOUHvJBrRzc
November 11, 2024
Rakuten Bank, Ltd. reported a significant year-on-year increase in profits for the six months ending September 30, 2024, with ordinary profit rising by 37.8% and profit attributable to owners of the parent up by 37.5%. This financial performance reflects the bank’s robust growth and operational efficiency.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/...ank-sees-strong-profit-growth-2024
By Stephen Pepper
November 29, 2024
Rakuten is offering increased rates for many retailers today. The headline rate is 12x which is available at ~900 different retailers, although some are at 15x such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Dell, potentially making this a great time to use up your Amex Platinum and Business Platinum credits respectively. With Cyber Monday on the horizon though, some might prefer to wait a few more days to make a purchase.
https://frequentmiler.com/...t-many-retailers-dell-saks-walmart-more/
Norbert Gehrke
Nov 17, 2024
Rakuten Bank’s first-half 2024 results are in, and they have blown past expectations. Profits are up significantly, and the bank has raised its full-year net profit guidance by a whopping 22%, from ¥37.8 billion to ¥46.2 billion. This performance beat stems from a combination of factors, including lower restructuring costs than anticipated and the positive impact of the July interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). While the dividend policy remains unchanged, the overall picture is overwhelmingly positive.
Guidance Upgrade and Future Outlook
The impressive first-half results prompted Rakuten Bank to raise its guidance for the full fiscal year 3/25:
Ordinary Revenue: ¥178.5 billion (+29.4% year-over-year, up 9.8% from initial guidance)
Ordinary Profit: ¥65.0 billion (+34.5% year-over-year, up 22.1% from initial guidance)
Net Profit: ¥46.2 billion (+34.2% year-over-year, up 22.3% from initial guidance)
https://medium.com/tokyo-fintech/...520to%2520%C2%A546.2%2520billion.
Buenos Aires, November 20, 2024.- Cabify, a mobility company that develops technology to transform cities, announces a milestone in its alliance with Autonomy, a “Rent to own” vehicle rental company, which will accelerate the path towards the electrification of its fleet in Argentina.
Thanks to this alliance, which will have several stages, Cabify will incorporate electric vehicles into its fleet, allowing its users to enjoy more sustainable trips and reduce their carbon footprint.
About Cabify
Cabify is an Ibero-American mobility company that develops technology to transform cities into better spaces to live in and make them more sustainable, accessible and humane.
With operations in 6 countries (Spain, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Uruguay) and more than 40 cities, Cabify seeks to improve the way users, companies and drivers connect in a safe, flexible and quality manner.
Founded in Madrid (Spain) in 2011, Cabify has been a pioneer in the creation of a new mobility in Latin America. It has more than 50 million registered users, 1.5 million collaborating driver partners and more than 1,000 employees worldwide. In addition, it has always been committed to talent and integration with local communities, declaring 100% of its activity in each of the countries in which it operates.
https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/...te-electromobility-in-argentina
Nov. 28, 2024
LIFULL Co., Ltd. has announced its acquisition of villa-type accommodations managed by Rakuten STAY, expected to generate stable revenue. This move aligns with LIFULL’s strategy to enhance Japan’s real estate market and repurpose abandoned properties. The transaction is anticipated to benefit both LIFULL and Rakuten Group by leveraging their combined expertise and user networks.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/...sitions-1034075762
By James Dartnell
Corporate Communications Director - Europe, Middle East and Africa Rakuten Symphony
November 26, 2024
The in-built “anti-fragility” of the human body’s immune system represents an aspirational model for how cloud systems can be improved with the use of AI to not only be resilient to failures, but to become even stronger and more robust by learning from those failures, the president of Rakuten Symphony’s Cloud BU has said.
As part of a wide-reaching conversation on Inside Track, Rakuten Symphony's employee-facing live webinar series, Partha Seetala also underlined the reasons why he started a lecture series that teaches the fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence. Seetala is now committed to passing on expertise from a career that has seen him lead the development of the world’s most advanced telecom edge cloud – also soon to be enhanced with AI.
Across telecom and in the broader enterprise sector, Rakuten Symphony’s Cloud BU has developed a reputation for solving challenges in automating the deployment, scaling and lifecycle management of applications and5G rollouts using Kubernetes and cloud-native services. The next phase of the business, Seetala says, is to use AI and techniques like reinforcement learning to enhance its cloud-native platform so that it learns directly from production environments and automatically takes the best corrective action to ensure that applications always run - even in the event of failures.
“Can we build a system that can extract optimized placement policies, learning automatically and directly from the production clusters and then write out better placement algorithms dynamically? Can we essentially implement a storage stack that is designed dynamically optimize the IO path to deliver the best possible performance even when multiple applications and users are contending for the same storage disks? Can we use LLMs to make our UI more intent-oriented? We have a lot of smart people with deep domain and systems expertise. They are now expanding their knowledge by gaining expertise in AI. By intersecting their existing domain expertise with AI skills they can create highly innovative products.”
Seetala expanded on these suggestions, using the analogy of the human body to explain the concept of “anti-fragility”- the idea that systems should be able to create an automatic, self-learned response when faced with issues or threats. “The human body is not merely resilient to failures -our immune system is designed to make the body better when it's attacked from the outside,” he said. “We have anti-fragility built into our own immune system. How can we extend this to software? For systems running in the field, if there is an issue, instead of just raising an escalation, could you, hypothetically speaking, also generate new code dynamically that gets compiled with a compiler that is shipped with the software? If it can compile and link to your running process, you now have anti-fragility in your system - a softwaresystem which is not just resilient to failures, but it is getting better all the time. Instead of building out code that makes a system resilient to a problem, the software makes itself more stable for future issues by learning from failures that happen in production environments.
“This was not possible before because you could not generate code dynamically based on certain inputs in the past. Now it is possible because if you can actually generate code and attach it as a loaded library into your existing running software. This is very futuristic.”
A major shift in the Cloud BU’s approach will be training AI models to support with decisions that deliver the most efficient use of cloud resources. “What will a cloud-native stack look like in this new AI world today? As things stand, we have written sophisticated algorithms that do scheduling of certain parts,” Seetala said. “They basically look at a bunch of resources, how they have been utilized, and follow rules that basically say -following all these rules, all these constraints - I'm going to place certain applications here, and these other applications there. Maybe in two years, the machine could basically do that by learning about the optimal placement. Our engineers won’t build out these rules and policies manually anymore - they will essentially train a model that can create these policies dynamically by learning from production environments.”
In order to build truly unique and outstanding products, the use of AI alone is not enough, Seetala said. This can only be achieved if paired with “domain depth”.
“There’s an interesting paradox that exists with AI,” he said. “Large language models, the transformer architecture – they are incredibly complex pieces of technology. With something so complicated, people are still able to produce something rather quickly. How is it that when something is that complicated, people can still put out a chatbot in a matter of hours? That’s because there is a library that abstracts all this complexity, effectively lowering the barrier to enter and play in this space. The challenge here is that because the abstractions provided by the libraries are so simple everybody and his brother will be putting out LLM based chatbots. But you will not be able to create a differentiated product by doing that alone. To be able to create truly differentiated and useful products one needs to actually know and apply the behind the scenes technologies such as Deep Neural Networks, Reinforcement Learning, Proximal Policy Optimization etc that drive LLMs to their own products in a highly contextualized and domain sensitive manner”.
https://symphony.rakuten.com/blog/...-inspire-our-product-development
A legal grey area over who can own a US bank may get resolved, and Big Tech could be a big beneficiary.
https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/summary?s=4755:TYO
Dec. 1, 2024
Rakuten Group has completed the transfer of 14.99% of its shares in Rakuten Card Co., Ltd. to Mizuho Financial Group, marking a significant step in their strategic alliance. Additionally, Rakuten Insurance Holdings Co., Ltd. has changed its parent company to Rakuten Group through an in-kind dividend transaction.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/...ransfer-1034083830
Japan's Mizuho Financial Group will take a 15% stake in Rakuten Group subsidiary Rakuten Card for 165 billion yen ($1.06 billion).
https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/...kuten-card-1-bln-2024-11-13/
December 02, 2024
In 2024, Rakuten Group embraced the keyword "Walk Together" as Rakutenians worked hand-in-hand with one another, business partners, and customers around the world to take meaningful action. The year was marked by notable achievements such as the further spread of Rakuten Mobile and increased AI utilization, as well as efforts to empower society and the environment including support for recovery from the Noto Peninsula earthquake. Let's take a look back at Rakuten Group's 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYjXGY3TIng
Awarded top ranking in the Pricing Plans category for four years running
Tokyo, December 2, 2024 - Rakuten Mobile, Japan’s newest and most modern mobile network, today announced it has been awarded first place overall in the 2024 Oricon Customer Satisfaction Survey of Mobile Carriers conducted by oricon ME inc.
Rakuten Mobile secured the top spot in seven out of nine categories, earning the overall first-place ranking for the third time following 2021 and 2023, and the top ranking in the Pricing Plans category for the fourth year in a row.
Rakuten Mobile ranked first in the following seven categories: Subscription Procedure, Campaigns, Ease of Initial Setup, Pricing Plans, Usage Fees, Support Services and Additional Services. The Pricing Plans, Usage Fees and Campaigns categories received particularly high ratings, with the ratings for Willingness to Recommend and Willingness to Continue improving on the 2023 survey results.
Overall Ranking
Ranking Carrier Name Score
1 §Rakuten Mobile 69.5
2 au § 66.8
3 docomo § 66.5
4 SoftBank § 66.2
https://corp.mobile.rakuten.co.jp/english/news/press/2024/1202_01/
Oct 24, 2024
Tarifica has named Rakuten Mobile's "Saikyo Plan" as the Consumer Value Plan of the Month for October 2024, recognizing its simplicity, automatic pricing based on usage, and highly competitive rates as key factors in delivering exceptional value to mobile users in Japan.
NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Tarifica, a global leader in telecom pricing intelligence, is pleased to announce Rakuten Mobile's "Saikyo Plan" as the Consumer Value Plan of the Month for October. Identified using Tarifica's proprietary Telecom Pricing Intelligence Platform (TPIP), the "Saikyo Plan" offers unmatched simplicity and value for mobile users in Japan, combining automatic pricing adjustments with highly competitive rates.
Unlike other mobile plans that require consumers to choose between numerous options, Rakuten Mobile offers a single, streamlined plan with three usage tiers – 3GB, 20GB, and Unlimited. The monthly fee is automatically calculated based on actual usage, providing an effortless experience for users.
The pricing tiers are as follows:
Less than 3GB: 1,078 JPY
3GB to 20GB: 2,178 JPY
Over 20GB (unlimited): 3,278 JPY (approximately $22 USD based on the current exchange rate)
Consumers can also save an additional 110 JPY with a family subscription.
https://www.prweb.com/releases/...nth-for-october-2024-302285591.html
Grace Reed
Digital Marketing Manager, Chemist Warehouse
https://rakutenadvertising.com/en-au/affiliate/