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Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 35th Tokyo Motor Show and thank you for joining us at the Mazda stand.
This year's Tokyo Motor Show is of a huge significance for Mazda. That's because we are showing the first of our next-generation products and new technologies that are the key to the future success of Mazda.
It's been almost a year since we announced the Millennium Plan - our comprehensive five-year strategy designed to drive the business back to sustained profitability.
The plan is based on 4 pillars:
Growth
Restructuring and reform,
Synergies with our partner Ford,
and People.
 And we can already report on significant progress against the commitments we made in the plan.
For example, just last week, we revised up our financial forecast for the first half of this fiscal year, announcing an expected return to profitability. We have achieved this despite a particularly tough competitive environment and it represents a significant turnaround from our 1st half results from a year ago.
Other progress includes accelerating the development of our next generation of new products, which fully incorporate Mazda's brand DNA. We are also developing various new technologies relating to the environment and safety.
Our new family of 4 cylinder gasoline engines, which will be used in these new products, will go into production soon in our highly efficient, state-of-the-art Hiroshima plant.
Turning to sales and marketing, we are reinforcing our activities on a global scale. For example, in Europe, we are ahead of our own target of controlling more than 70% of our distribution volume by year-end. In fact, we have already achieved this objective.
Our plan to produce our next generation small car at Ford's plant in Valencia, Spain is also well on track, a move that will strengthen our business structure on a number of levels and deliver significant benefits from synergy with our partner Ford.
In terms of "Reform and Restructuring," we took a number of tough but necessary actions as it pertains to capacity and stuffing levels.
In the "People" area, we are transforming personnel development and changing our corporate culture, through measures such as "Mazda Business Leadership Development," an education program involving every one of our indirect employees - over 8,000 people in total this year.
These are just the highlights. But they are the foundation of our belief that we are on the right track, and the reason we are quietly confident of achieving our objectives.
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