Shareholder Return PolicyYamaha Motor views increasing shareholder returns as an important management issue and strives to raise corporate value. With regard to the dividend payment, we seek to maintain as well as strengthen our financial foundations and increase new growth investments and returns to our share-holders. We have set a benchmark of 30% for the dividend payout ratio of net income attributable to owners of parent.For fiscal 2019, we paid a full-year dividend of ¥90 per share, consisting of a ¥45 interim dividend and a ¥45 year-end dividend, surpassing this benchmark. In regard to fiscal 2020 dividend payments, as we anticipate challenging conditions in the first half of the fiscal year, we have decided not to pay an interim dividend with the goal of securing liquidity on hand. We will promptly make an announcement regarding a year-end dividend when we are able to make a forecast.Further Improving Brand ValueThe corporate mission of Yamaha Motor is to be a Kando Creating Company and we aspire to always be a company offering new value that inspires customers to look to us for new Kando. With our origins in Yamaha Corporation, a leader in musical instruments and audio products, we have engaged in Monozukuri that appeals to human sensibilities through our consumer-oriented development ideal. With the Yamaha brand, the Kando that we offer entails an emphasis on appealing to human sensibilities, and we operate a joint Brand Committee together with Yamaha Corporation to share the brand’s direction and alternative indicators of value as well as our respective targets to that end. We have made raising our brand value an important management task at Yamaha Motor. With the electrification of mobility I mentioned earlier and other technological advances, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate ourselves with product specifications and hardware perfor-mance, so I believe that customers will choose products based on their trust in and connection with a brand. As such, I expect the role and importance of the brand to grow going forward. Historically, nearly 130 years have passed since the Yamaha brand was born and over 65 years since we turned our hand to motorcycles. The brand value we have today was won through the quality that earned customers’ trust in the brand and their recognition of our commitment to the value we create. I believe that this is a strength of the Company.Yamaha Motor clearly defines the fundamental elements of the “unique style of Yamaha” with the following key words expressing its shared values: Innovation, Excitement, Confidence, Emotion, and Ties. I firmly believe that exhaus-tively refining these five elements and incorporating the unique style of Yamaha into all processes and levels of our corporate and business activities is the way to meet cus-tomer expectations and the fuel to further improve our competitiveness. One top internal undertaking that aims to improve brand value is the Brand Strength Score (BSS),*1 a qualitative indicator for measuring understanding and pen-etration of the brand. Four internal indicators and six social- and customer-related external indicators are used to gauge brand strength. Through an interview format, we constantly research our positioning in relation to our competitors and clarify our strengths and weaknesses in each country and by product category. Based on these efforts, we revise our action plans annually and engage in the plan–do–check–act (PDCA) cycle while monitoring score trends. Furthermore, under the goal of augmenting our organizational structure to strengthen quality assurance and ensure safety and compliance with laws and regulations, we established the Quality Assurance Center in 2020 to minimize risks that directly impact our brand image and to continuously lift our corporate value.Moving forward, I want the Company to express its 15Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. Integrated Report 2020
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