“Under the Fifth Medium-Term Management Plan, we have made steady progress toward fostering an organizational culture supporting medium- to long-term growth through the plan’s three key initiatives, namely, ‘transforming the business structure, achieving business model innovation in sales activities and transforming the profit structure.’
Nevertheless, I believe that there is more to be done to secure a robust foundation for the next 100 years.” – chairman Yosiharu Komori, president, and CEO Satoshi Mochida.
On 28 January 2020, Komori Corporation announced its revised operating results forecasts for the current financial year ending on 31 March 2020 based on the performance forecasts revealed on 28 October 2019. The reasons for the revision of projections were, in Q3, a growing number of businesses in Japan took a cautious stance towards investment due to a sense of anxiety over the economic downturn. Reflecting this, Komori’s domestic sales and orders fell significantly short of its estimates for facility upgrades associated with offset printing presses.
The North American market also took a cautious stance toward investment due to an uncertain outlook for government trade policies. In Europe, demand was less than robust, reflecting such issues as Brexit and an economic downturn in Germany.
Furthermore, markets in Greater China were negatively affected by U.S.-China trade tension and the resulting depreciation of the Chinese yuan, which, in turn, caused some businesses to postpone investment. Komori also saw the postponement of some prospective projects in other regions and failed to secure the expected volume of orders. Overall, Komori’s sales in overseas markets were sluggish.
Taking these factors into account, Komori expects that consolidated net sales for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2020, will fall short of its previous forecast. On the earnings front, Komori forecasts that operating income, ordinary income, and profit attributable to owners of the parent will fall short of its previous forecasts, reflecting the impact of the decrease in net sales. Dividend forecasts, however, remain unchanged from the figures disclosed on 28 October 2019, although all estimates are based on management assumptions.
Komori in India
Since setting up its own subsidiary in India in a joint venture with its distribution partner several years ago, Komori has expanded its service operations, including customer training. Its very significant market share of multicolor sheetfed press installations has been eroded in the past year with fewer press installs and by the much-improved performance of Heidelberg India.
Nevertheless, Komori India has sold a heatset web offset press to Thomson Press in Faridabad which is owned by the Living Media group. Thomson prints India Today and several other group magazines apart from being a major commercial and book printer and exporter. The heatset press will, however, be installed in the next financial year and will be the first new Komori heatset press at a printer that, in the past, purchased several heatset webs from Harris-Heidelberg-Goss and Mitsubishi.
