Macromill Group

Tokyo, May 15, 2023 - Macromill, Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, Representative Executive Officer and Global CEO: Toru Sasaki; hereinafter “Macromill”) hereby announces that its Board of Directors resolved in its meeting on May 15, 2023, to sign an agreement regarding a transaction (hereinafter the “Transaction”) in which Macromill will transfer shares of the MetrixLab Group, a group of companies composing of Macromill’s Overseas (ex-Korea) Business segment, to Toluna Holdings Limited (Headquarters: UK, CEO：Frédéric-Charles Petit; hereinafter “Toluna”), the leading global insights technology and panel provider. In return, Macromill will acquire a 17.4% stake in Toluna. At the same time Macromill will dispatch one director to Toluna, and Toluna will newly become an equity-method affiliate of Macromill from June 1, 2023. The agreement was executed today.

Macromill Group has been driving forward transformation of its business model from a “Marketing Research Company” to a “Professional Marketing Services Company”. While the group so far has been implementing the transformation primarily in Japan, Korea, and other Asian businesses, we also believed a similar transformation was indispensable at the fundamental level with faster and larger scale at MetrixLab, which engages in the global market consisting primarily of Europe and the US, where the market scale is larger and technologies such as platform and solutions change faster.

In response to this situation, Macromill and Toluna determined that combining Toluna’s strength in technology and panel with MetrixLab’s strength of research solutions and client portfolio through a business integration would enable the combined company to better service its clients and respond to fast changing market dynamics. Moreover, this Transaction is expected to generate synergy effects including improvement of competitiveness through mutual complementation of solutions and products, cross selling to each other's client base, and increasing efficiency of its resources through the integration of personnel, business bases, and IT systems as well as strengthening of the business foundation and improvement in speed of business development.

After the Transition, Macromill will concentrate its management resources in Japan, Korea, and other Asian markets, where it is more competitive, and accelerate its growth. Further, Macromill and Toluna will consider and discuss opportunities for global collaboration and generation of synergies and will pursue to realize this.

Macromill Group aims to maximize its enterprise value through a series of these initiatives and it plans to include the specific impact on its performance from the next term onwards in its forecast of financial results for the fiscal year ending June 2024 to be disclosed along with the financial results for the year ending June 2023.

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