Tom C wrote: > Paraphrased from a 10/29 Bloomberg article: > > Pentax Corp., said first-half profit fell 45 percent, missing its own > estimate, after writing down the value of its inventory. > > Net income declined to 600 million yen ($5.3 million) in the six months > ended Sept. 30, lagging behind its July forecast of 1.4 billion yen. Sales > at the company, which also makes medical > equipment rose 15 percent. > > "We have depreciated our inventory, including endoscopes, as we had > difficulty competing with our rivals,'' mainly in North America, Jiro > Okamura, a spokesman at the Tokyo-based company, said > by telephone. The writedown led to a one-time loss of about 900 million yen, > he said. > > The company's sales rose to 85.6 billion yen from 74.7 billion yen. > Operating profit, or sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative > expenses, more than doubled to 3.3 billion yen from > 1.56 billion yen. > > ------------------ > > Maybe those bargain basement camera prices in N.A. aren't that great after > all. Selling a lot more things that aren't worth as much. > > Tom C. > > >
That could explain the recent flood of Pentax refurbs that I've seen here in Canada. They're going cheap too. Lots of low-end MZ's, FA-J lenses, and a few DS's and DL's. If you write down inventory, you aren't talking about 'Selling a lot more things that aren't worth as much.', you're talking about excess stock. It sounds like Pentax wrote down a fair bit of older stuff they were sitting on (like the aforementioned cheap film kit) which impacted their net income. Otherwise the numbers look good, especially the operating profit increase. -Adam -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
