Year-on-year office printing sales down 5.4 percent but MPS unit sales and revenues up.
The OEM has published its consolidated results for six months ended 30 September 2019. Sales were ¥994.7 billion ($141.3 billion/ €126.73 billion), up 0.7 percent year-on-year for the first half of fiscal year 2019. Operating profit fell overall 6.5 percent year-on-year for the period.
In the office printing segment operating profit fell 1.8 percent in the first half with Ricoh stating it “continued to review sales and contracts based on profitability” and had “increased bulk deals in Q2” which emphasised profitability. Although revenues for the office printing segment were up in the second quarter of fiscal year 2019, earnings were down year-on-year. First half year sales for the segment were ¥509.4 billion ($72.3 billion/ €64.9 billion), down 5.4 percent year-on-year.
In its second quarter review of the office printing segment Ricoh stated that MFP unit sales and hardware sales up two percent through accelerating sales of advanced colour MFPs and increasing prices by price management. Sales of MFPs were expanded in Japan and abroad, the OEM said.
In its forecast for the full year 2019 results, Ricoh predicts sales to be ¥2,010 billion ($285.5 billion/ €256.1 billion) overall a year-on-year fall of 0.2 percent. Despite ongoing uncertainties from such external factors as Brexit, US-China trade friction, forex, Ricoh progressed as planned in H1, and has retained its full-year forecast.
