5.7% YoY Sales Growth in Q2

Originally written and published by Joshua Allsopp at www.opi.net

Konica Minolta Q2 Sales Up

Japanese EOS vendor Konica Minolta revealed solid Q2 trading as its software business readies for launch.

For the three months ended 30 September, it reported sales of JP¥488.1 billion (US$4.28 billion), an increase of 5.7%. Pre-tax profit rose 9% on last year to JP¥19 billion(US$167 million).

By segment, sales in its Office arm rose 4% year on year to JP¥146.5 billion(US$1.29 billion). In Europe, its strategy for recovery paid off with both A3 colour models and total A3 sales volumes exceeding last year. Trading of A3 color models remained solid in the US, and A3 color sales doubled in China.

Over at the Professional Print arm, sales rose 4% to JP¥52.2 billion(US$458 million). Although this was slightly offset by constraints regarding marketing costs, the group said orders were on track for recovery.

The company has now raised its sales forecast for FY 2017/18 to JP¥1 trillion(US$8.78 billion), from previous estimates of JP¥980 billion(US$8.6 billion).

It has recently made a number of small strategic acquisitions to complement its expanded portfolio. These include a cloud services partnership in the UK and a robotics and automation purchase in Japan. Both fit well with the planned Workplace Hub software business, scheduled for a soft launch in January 2018. It said partner events in the US, Japan and Europe had confirmed ‘significant interest’.

Konica also said it was preparing to expand its software and services line up and roll out platforms using the Konica Minolta Marketplace online store. It also planned to make advances into the Internet of Things.