The OEM reported falls in sales and profit, but printer sales continued at previous levels.
The third quarter results saw demand for MFPs and laser printers “maintain steady growth”, while inkjet printers “decreased slightly” compared to 2013’s results. Third-quarter net sales fell by 4.5 percent year-on-year to ¥872 billion ($8 billion/€6.3 billion), while net sales for the first three quarters in total came to ¥2.6 trillion ($24 billion/€18 billion), a one percent decline over the same results last year.
In turn, “group-wide efforts to thoroughly reduce spending” at Canon saw operating expenses increase by only 0.9 percent, to ¥359 billion ($3.2 billion/€2.6 billion), and so operating profit for the quarter fell by 20.7 percent year-on-year to ¥71.8 billion ($659 million/€519 million). Additionally, net income fell by one percent to ¥58.2 billion ($534 million/€421 million).
The Office Business Unit, which contains Canon’s MFP, laser and inkjet businesses, saw total sales volume remain “at the same level as the previous year”, mostly due to “sluggish demand for monochrome models”, and despite “sales of colour office [MFPs] increase[ing] significantly” and “healthy growth” for the imageRUNNER ADVANCE C5200 series.
The OEM’s high-speed continuous feed printers, in particular the Océ ColorStream 3000 series, “enjoyed solid sales”, but laser printer sales volumes decreased “slightly” due to the aforementioned decline in monochrome sales, and consumables sales declined as well. Inkjet sales volumes “remained at the same level”, whilst consumables sales increased, with the unit’s sales in total falling 2.4 percent to ¥482 billion ($4.4 billion/€3.4 billion), and its operating profit falling 13.7 percent to ¥57.9 billion ($531 million/€418 million).
Canon stated that in future, it believes “demand for [MFPs] is projected to continue to expand moderately”, specifically in colour models, and laser printer demand “is expected to remain at the same level as the previous year”, whilst inkjet demand is “expected to contract from last year’s level due to the delayed recovery of the global economy”.