[Kunzite]

Yes it´s speculation, but Ricoh only continues with Pentax brand with DSLR and Q.

Are you in a position to decide that? Did you hear anyone in a position to decide that, making such a claim?

[Bophoto]

Are you in a position to decide that? Did you hear anyone in a position to decide that, making such a claim?

What, Ricoh has changed Pentax compact cameras to Ricoh cameras, theta and WG-M have the name Ricoh. I did´t decide that.
Good bye.

[Kunzite]

But you decided that an eventual large sensor mirrorless system would bear the Ricoh brand.

[Rondec]

Interesting that someone can spin this negatively. It is clear that Ricoh is trying for slow, but steady growth. They are moving into segments of the market where they weren't before and adding lenses at a rate that hasn't been seen since prior to Hoya's owning Pentax.

The K-1 doesn't have to sell a million units in order to be successful. It has to sell whatever their bench mark is (Monochrome says 7000 per month) and increase buzz for the brand as a whole. As such, I think it is a great success.

Pentax is not going to take over much market share from Canon and Nikon right now, but certainly over time, they can grow through high quality products, priced well, including features that Nikon and Canon don't (can't?) offer like astro tracer and pixel shift.

---

Last edited by Rondec; 08-08-2016 at 03:01 AM.

[lesmore49]

I'm no expert on financial reports. If there are any experts out there, can you tell me if this latest Ricoh financial reports is good, bad or indifferent for the Pentax line ?

[sbh]

I'm no expert on financial reports. If there are any experts out there, can you tell me if this latest Ricoh financial reports is good, bad or indifferent for the Pentax line ?

I'd say slightly on the good side.

There are good and not-so-good aspects that I see. It's usually not ideal if most parts of the company suffer from decreasing sales and profits. But this is a quarterly report. A full-year report should be more conclusive.

What I see here is that Pentax is a small part of the entire company. How large exactly I can't read from it but I assume it is in the "Digital Camera" business which is listed as the segment "Other", which of course also includes the Ricoh cameras. It is the smallest of all segments.

- This segment is about 6% of the company (up from 5% last year).
- It is the only segment which is growing in sales and profit. +6.7% over last year.
- The operating profit is about 13 m€ / 15 mUSD / 11 mGBP (quarter year)
- Sales are roughly 245 m€ / 270 mUSD / 207 mGBP (quarter year)
<= Can someone doublecheck the conversion? Seems a bit high. The report says 28,406 million yen Sales for the quarter. If the comma is the thousand's separator, then my converter equals that to 245,205,000 Euro. That would be a billion per year.

However. I wouldn't consider it as a goldmine, but it isn't bad either.

If the information is true that the orders of the Z and the K-1 are on the higher side, then I'd say things are going fine from a Pentax customer's perspective. Nothing to worry about.

[Kunzite]

The Other segment has other stuff, besides Ricoh Imaging. Last year they sold the unprofitable San-ai apparel business, so it become smaller (and making Ricoh Imaging a larger part of it).

Things are not all rosy, given the market conditions - the last Securities Report (April 2015 to March 2016) talked about a decrease in camera sales. But perhaps a large part of that was due to people waiting for the K-1?
OTOH, if things were so bad, why would they allocate 4,100 million yen to "increase production of digital cameras, etc."? And they're doing that for Imaging & Solutions and Industrial Products, too.
Whatever they're doing, Ricoh is not downsizing.

[sbh]

I took the info from page 8 where it says:

Each category includes the following product line:
[...]
Other –> Digital cameras

I couldn't find anything more specific.

[lesmore49]

I'd say slightly on the good side.

There are good and not-so-good aspects that I see. It's usually not ideal if most parts of the company suffer from decreasing sales and profits. But this is a quarterly report. A full-year report should be more conclusive.

What I see here is that Pentax is a small part of the entire company. How large exactly I can't read from it but I assume it is in the "Digital Camera" business which is listed as the segment "Other", which of course also includes the Ricoh cameras. It is the smallest of all segments.

- This segment is about 6% of the company (up from 5% last year).
- It is the only segment which is growing in sales and profit. +6.7% over last year.
- The operating profit is about 13 m€ / 15 mUSD / 11 mGBP (quarter year)
- Sales are roughly 245 m€ / 270 mUSD / 207 mGBP (quarter year)
<= Can someone doublecheck the conversion? Seems a bit high. The report says 28,406 million yen Sales for the quarter. If the comma is the thousand's separator, then my converter equals that to 245,205,000 Euro. That would be a billion per year.

However. I wouldn't consider it as a goldmine, but it isn't bad either.

If the information is true that the orders of the Z and the K-1 are on the higher side, then I'd say things are going fine from a Pentax customer's perspective. Nothing to worry about.

Thank you SBH for that cogent analysis. Much appreciated and pleased that the Pentax end of things seems to be doing well, right now.

Les

[Kunzite]

I took the info from page 8 where it says:

Each category includes the following product line:
[...]
Other –> Digital cameras

I couldn't find anything more specific.

Yes, I'm aware of that recurring text; but, as I said, Other means more than Ricoh Imaging. The San-ai apparel business was part of this business segment, there are some financing and leasing businesses as well and who knows what else.
If it was only Ricoh Imaging/cameras, instead of Other we'd have a more specific name.

And by the way,

Sales in the Other segment increased by 6.7% as compared to the previous corresponding period, to ¥28.4 billion due to the increase in income
and profit in the Camera business and Leasing business.

---------- Post added 08-08-16 at 01:57 AM ----------

I found it in the Annual Securities Report:

<Other>
The manufacturing and sales of digital cameras, financing business and logistics services provided
through the Company’s subsidiaries are included in this business segment.
[Main Subsidiaries and Affiliates]
Manufacturing
* Ricoh Imaging Products (Philippines) Corporation
Sales
* Ricoh Imaging Americas Corporation and Ricoh Imaging Europe S.A.S
Other
* Ricoh Leasing Co., Ltd., Ricoh Logistics System Co., Ltd., Ricoh Imaging Co., Ltd. and Ricoh Creative Service Co., Ltd.

[biz-engineer]

Bullying I do wonder how that works in your tiny little fanboy brain when you collectively harress someone, Wheater it's me or someone who made a review of Pentax gear and put it online? See I do notice these things. I see some people writing on notes I make or dumbing down remarks or analyses. But I never see them coming back when later it turns out that an analyses was right.

Realistic, smart, mostly straight to the point, yes. But is that creating value?
If people fear that Ricoh won't last long, then the right thing to do is to get some other brand of gear and move on.
The only benefit I can imagine people get out of putting forward issues if a temporary relief of personal frustration, and that's not a cure, that last only for the moment of releasing criticism.

Last but not least, there is a concentration of unhappy people in the "pentax bubble" because half of the threads are about camera failures. Considering only Pentax forum help for failures, it sounds as if 50% of Pentax cameras have a failure, that is so because happy people don't do a new thread everytime they get good working Pentax camera. There are number of happy Pentaxians who are just offline. I was offline for one full week, and I met some Pentaxians in national park, it was a good time, no one was complaining about bad camera. I only needed to connect to PF again to read about all kind of issues, Pentax AF issues, etc etc.

Whenever I'm out of the bubble, I feel just good about Pentax camera. It's only when I come here that I read all kind of problems. I read tons of arguing about sensor noise and dynamic range which are completely disconnected from reality.. people are arguing which lab test pictures, but at not point in time they post a situation where the camera noise and DR was an actual issue for them, some don't even own the camera...their photo activity is mainly to argue in forum (what's interesting is that you don't even need to own a camera to argue online about cameras, totally free of charge). It's just about them trying to get some social recognition (ego boost) by wanting to be right, and dumping criticism online to try to get rid of their bad karma.

[Uluru]

Folks in forums are whinging for no reason. I think there is such a thing as the forum bubble view, something like distorted image view from inside the soap of bubble, where everything outside looks scary and out of proportion.

Ricoh's only problem is that they can't make enough of 645Z and K-1 as the market wants them. Is there any real gripe? I don't think there is. I think they may improve their score and profits if they deliver a bit more competitive AF, and a few nice lenses, with DC motors. If they refresh some of the crop line lenses, that would be cool.

[SamuelDixon]

For now, just the "Financial highlights" - more information, including a presentation, should be added soon.

Ricoh fights with decreased sales in some segments, and unfavorable exchange rates. However, Ricoh Imaging (and consequently "Pentax") isn't doing bad:

Financial Results:FY2017/03 | Global | Ricoh

I'm confused, these financial numbers are pretty much all down and significantly so. This is not good news...

[thibs]

Ricoh numbers are down. Ricoh imaging numbers are up.

[clackers]

I'm confused, these financial numbers are pretty much all down and significantly so. This is not good news...

See Post 1.