As you know, the situation surrounding the novel coronavirus continues to evolve rapidly.

At Sony, our foremost priority is securing the safety of all Sony Group employees and their families, while preventing the further spread of the virus. On January 30th we established an Integrated Response Center at HQ to help us quickly assess everyone's health and well-being, together with the potential impact on our business, and on a daily basis the management team and I are focused on acquiring the latest facts and information.

As Sony operates a global business with employees around the world, I know that in many countries the impact of the virus has affected not only our business supply chain, but many aspects of your daily lives as well.

I personally cancelled all of my scheduled business trips from the middle of February through March, and called for plans for a number of internal and external events across the Sony Group to be reviewed. I am also very appreciative of the heads of each of our business groups and organizations quickly and clearly communicating directly with their respective teams.

Something we can all learn from the current situation is the importance of creating a robust infrastructure that enables everyone to perform their duties flexibly, at any time and from any place. As many Sony employees have started to work from home, I understand some of you have experienced difficulties connecting to the VPN, as well as other issues including the video and audio quality of teleconferences.

In China, where Alibaba and Tencent provide cloud services for telecommuting, the sudden influx of approximately 200 million people starting to telework in late January destabilized these services. In response, Alibaba and Tencent increased the capacity of their servers very quickly, and maintained the infrastructure required for telecommuting.

At Sony, we are also taking urgent measures such as exploring ways to expand the bandwidth, volume of concurrent users, and the overall number of eligible users for our VPN, so that as many of you as possible can continue to work effectively and efficiently. We intend to enact further measures moving forward to deliver a strong global infrastructure and stable remote work environment.

I believe that encouraging flexible work styles is important not only from the conventional "work-life balance" point of view, but also as it directly relates to Sony's purpose-driven management strategy that we are pursuing from a long-term perspective. The aim of Sony's Purpose-driven management is to create societal value by bringing together diverse, talented individuals who identify with our Purpose and Values, enabling them to excel and work with passion. To make this a reality, I believe it is vital that we create an environment that allows everyone to contribute to their fullest.

As we continue to address the challenges presented by the novel coronavirus, it is not just our swift response as a company that will be vital, but also the day-to-day actions that each of you take to protect your own health and safety. I truly hope for a quick resolution to the current situation, and assure you that the management team will devote all our efforts to ensuring your safety and the stabilization of our business activities. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all of you who are working to address issues prompted by the outbreak.