>>>>>>>>>>> >Nikon said it expects an unconsolidated pretax loss of 10 billion yen on >sales of 250 billion yen against its earlier projections of a pretax loss >of 5 billion yen and sales of 270 billion yen. > Scary, isn't it? Any comments? ><<<<<<<<<< > >While this certainly isn't good news, don't forget that Nikon is a part of >Matsushita, a huge corporation which can indeed absorb such a loss. > >Also, it would be interesting to know how Nikon's camera division fared; >this report doesn't break out those results. > Larry, Nikoneers, was Nikon sold recently to Matsushita? As far as I know Nikon belongs to the Mitsubishi Group. That is also what it says on Mitsubishi's web page. www.mitsubishi.or.jp/e/ Mitsubishi is a big 'corporation', too (among the 10 biggest in the world), but I wouldn't be sure that they would like to absorb losses of their subsidaries. As far as I know this groups try to keep their subsidaries as almost independent companies. On the other hand, I don't ecpect that they toss a good company just because it had one year of bad performance. By the way Nikon's main buisness today is to build machines for the semiconductor industry (~ 50% of sales). So Nikon depends much on the strongly fluctuating semiconductor market. Photography yields about one quarter of Nikons total sales (1997 numbers). Canon sold in the same year about three times as much in the photographic sector (best performer are the APS camers). Canon in total is about 10 times as big as Nikon (sales and number of employees). Canon's main buisness is of course buisness machines and home computing (~80%). Greetings, Markus --------------------------------------------------------------------- Markus Berheide Phone: (203) 431-5318 Schlumberger-Doll Research Fax: (203) 438-3819 Old Quarry Road Ridgefield, CT 06877-4108 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------------
