Originally posted by Aristophanes
Pentax cannot just "get in". They would need to pre-purchase a supply of FF sensors from Sony at staggering cost, maybe more than the entire cost of Pentax to Ricoh.
Is there an ROI on that?
You're asking where is the ROI in a
parts purchase? Each sensor bought by Ricoh is going to show a slight markup when delivered with camera, so I'm not sure how that becomes a difficult ROI schedule, or really how it even applies - ROI usually gets applied to things like factory construction, or R&D. If you're implying that Sony would require advance payment on say a year's worth of sensors, which would be delivered in monthly batches, it's not going to be anywhere near "the entire cost of Pentax to Ricoh."
It's extremely unlikely Sony would have to spin up an entirely new fab for Pentax's volume. So let's say Sony charges Ricoh $600 per sensor - probably 30 to 40% more than they're charging Nikon, and probably more than twice what the sensors cost Sony to manufacture. Ricoh figures that they may sell up to 10,000 FF cameras the first month, maybe 6000 the second month, and maybe between 2500 and 3000 each month after that... So they agree to pay up front for 46,000 sensors. At $600 a pop, that's a $27,600,000 outlay - which will be paid for in 12 months, when the last of the cameras go out the door. (Ricoh paid $124 Million for Pentax - $27mil != $124 Mil.) And that's assuming Sony would require advance payment for 12 months, and not payment on delivery.
Where Ricoh would need to worry about ROI is in things like the AF R&D, maybe the SR R&D, The body-sensor integration and testing, lens design R&D, and the relatively large cost of procuring raw materials and starting up additional assembly lines (in existing factories) for the new lenses.
Even if Pentax only made $500 profit on each $2500 FF body (probably low,) that's about $22 Million profit on the bodies alone in the first year, which would go toward the FF spin-up costs on an ROI schedule (not the 'sensor ROI' - that's already covered.) The lenses would have their own ROI schedule, and would pay for themselves handsomely.