I said alot more because the article said "Sales at the company, which also makes medical equipment rose 15 percent".
I suspect alot of those sub-$700 K10D's are in the writedown. What is says to me is that while sales are up (good) and profit is up (good), due to the writedown, net income is down (bad). Tom C. >From: Adam Maas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List <[email protected]> >To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List <[email protected]> >Subject: Re: Pentax Inventory Writedown >Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:51:00 -0400 > >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. -- 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.

