In terms of consolidated performance for fiscal 2011, net sales increased 9% year on year to 3,004.6 billion yen, topping 3 trillion yen for the first time. EBITDA*1 rose 18% year on year to 930.7 billion yen, operating income increased 35% year on year to 629.1 billion yen, and net income jumped 96% to 189.7 billion yen. On every measure, the SOFTBANK Group achieved all-time high*2 performance figures. EBITDA and operating income reached record highs*2 for the sixth consecutive fiscal year. The operating margin was 21%, exceeding that of NTT DOCOMO, INC., Japan's largest mobile phone operator, for the first time.
Growth was mainly driven by the mobile communications business. The cumulative number of subscribers rose 3.53 million, or 16%, from the previous fiscal year-end, owing to strong iPhone sales atop growth in the smartphone market. Furthermore, data ARPU*3 rose 14% year on year, reflecting more frequent data telecommunications services use by smartphone customers than traditional mobile phone users. The sum of the basic monthly charge and voice ARPU declined 8% year on year. However, total ARPU was 4,210yen, up 140yen year on year.
The SOFTBANK Group has set its sights on the mobile Internet field, and has focused business development in this area as one of its strategies. More and more people today are using smartphones and tablets as their preferred means of accessing the Internet, rather than a PC. This has led to rapid, ongoing expansion in the mobile Internet field, which has made our focused strategy a successful one.
In April 2006, the SOFTBANK Group borrowed over 1 trillion yen to fund its acquisition of Vodafone K.K. (currently SOFTBANK MOBILE). While repayment of this debt had been proceeding smoothly, its size caused some investors to harbor doubts following the financial crisis in 2008. In order to dispel concerns, the SOFTBANK Group set some progressive targets for repaying net interest-bearing debt,*6 namely, to reduce the outstanding debt of 1.9 trillion yen as of March 31, 2009 by half over the three years to March 31, 2012 and to zero over the six years to March 31, 2015. At March 31, 2011, our net interest-bearing debt was 38% lower at 1.2 trillion yen than on March 31, 2009. What's more, reducing our debt and achieving strong earnings results is steadily improving our creditworthiness, lowering fund procurement costs. We believe these efforts will have a positive impact on our enterprise value.
SOFTBANK strives to increase returns to shareholders by raising enterprise value, and has a fundamental policy of returning appropriate amounts of profit to shareholders and other stakeholders. Our policy regarding dividends to shareholders is to balance the strengthening of the balance sheet by reducing net interestbearing debt and maintaining a stable dividend over the medium to long term.
In line with this policy, we proposed a year-end dividend of 5yen per share for fiscal 2011, the same as last year, and this was approved by the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. Looking ahead, we plan to increase the annual dividend for fiscal 2012 and again for fiscal 2015. We will promptly announce the specific amounts of dividends as soon as they are determined.
Five years have passed since we acquired Vodafone K.K. and entered the mobile communications business. In that time we have increased the number of mobile phone base stations around six-fold to 122,000 as of March 31, 2011. We will not stop there, however, as there are many places that still encounter connection difficulties. We have a slight handicap in that we have not been allocated the 800 MHz frequency band that is optimal for mobile communications services, but we will continue to enhance our network nonetheless to realize a service area on par with that currently provided by NTT DOCOMO and KDDI CORPORATION. I don't want SOFTBANK to be criticized for having poor connectivity —we have the means to meet our customers' expectations, and we will. We will invest 500 billion yen (acceptance basis) in fiscal 2012, and again in fiscal 2013, for a total of 1 trillion yen. We plan to allocate around 80% of this to the mobile communications business.
The SOFTBANK Group's net sales and operating income for fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2013 are projected to maintain year-on-year increases, but the growth rate should be lower than in fiscal 2011 when it was 35%. The main reason for this is that to prepare for medium-term growth, we plan to spend the next two fiscal years concentrating our efforts more than ever before on network enhancement and customer acquisition in our mainstay mobile communications business.
I believe that bringing these efforts to fruition will place the SOFTBANK Group on a path to new earnings growth. From there, we will accelerate our growth with the goal of achieving operating income of 1 trillion yen.
I'd like to ask all our stakeholders for your continued support.
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