KDDI Overstates Sales by Up to 246 B. Yen

Tokyo, Feb. 6 (Jiji Press)–Japanese telecommunications company KDDI Corp. said Friday that it has overstated sales by up to 246 billion yen for the year ending in March due to fictitious transactions involving its internet service subsidiary Biglobe Inc. As a special investigation committee is looking into the matter, KDDI postponed the release of its earnings results for April-December 2025, originally scheduled for the same day. The company also said that it had lost track of funds totaling about 33 billion yen, paid as commission fees since the fiscal year ending March 2018, due to such fictitious transactions. At a press conference in Tokyo on Friday, KDDI President and CEO Hiromichi Matsuda said, “As top management, I am keenly aware of my responsibility for failing to prevent this from happening.” Biglobe and its subsidiary recorded sales from advertising for which they did not actually receive orders, KDDI officials said. A delay in payment from an advertising agency in December last year raised suspicions of fictitious accounting, leading to the discovery of the misconduct. Two employees of the Biglobe subsidiary as well as several ad agencies are believed to have been involved in the transactions. Excluding the impact of the fictitious transactions, KDDI posted sales and profit increases in April-December 2025 from a year before on a reference-value basis. Its core mobile and financial businesses performed well. An official announcement of the earnings will be made at the end of March based on the results of the special investigation. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]