Nikon Says “Sayonora” to 1000 Contract/Temp Workers

Nikon says "Sayonora" to 1000 workers
Nikon Corp is not doing too well right now- in addition to cameras, they make really expensive precision steppers that make your computer chips. Well no one has any money, no one’s buying computer equipment, no one’s upgrading their steppers.
Nikon Will Cut 1000 Workers to Save $84 Million Annually
Nikon (OTC:NINOY) said Tuesday that it will terminate 800 non-regular employees from its domestic manufacturing unit by March 2010 and another 200 from marketing and servicing departments in Japan as well as overseas. It said the cuts will likely save the company 8 billion yen, or $84 million dollars annually. Nikon is expecting an FY 2010 net loss of 17 billion yen, or $179 million. In a statement, the company said, “Nikon has decided to implement drastic measures for fixed cost reduction in every business step of production, marketing and servicing.”
Here’s a sampling of the latest headlines:
Nikon Corporation To Reorganize Japan Precision Equipment …
Nikon Corporation Expects Extraordinary Loss
Nikon Corporation to Apply for Delisting from OSE, SSE and FSE
I was worried about that last one- you either delist because it’s too expensive to continue paying the fees and associated costs, or because you’re not going to be able to maintain the listing requirements (stock price, volume, etc) until I saw this:
Nikon separately said it will delist its shares from the Osaka, Sapporo and Fukuoka stock exchanges due to low trading volume on these bourses.
Oh- and we’ve got yet another advertising firm. I believe this makes 2 new advertising agencies in the last year or so. And they’re still coming up with idiot ideas like:
LIVE FROM THE RED CARPET…NIKON, THE OFFICIAL CAMERA SPONSOR OF 2009 MTV MOVIE AWARDS
Nikon, the Official Camera Sponsor of the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, will reveal all the fun, stylish moments of this year’s award show from the red carpet. This includes a 30-minute televised special, “MTV Movie Awards Confidential presented by Nikon,”…
The kids are coming to want something more stylish and interesting than the blah CoolPix’s…
Tags: economy
LIVE FROM THE RED CARPET…NIKON, THE OFFICIAL CAMERA SPONSOR OF 2009 MTV MOVIE AWARDS
May 29th, 2009 at 19:00
Yes..Nikon is having financial problems, but it is mainly businesses other than the photo business that are having problems. Considering the economy, Nikon Imaging actually did pretty well for the fiscal year ending March 09:
In terms of units, they beat the previous fiscal year by 6.8% in DSLR bodies, 17% in the Coolpix line and 3.4% in DSLR lenses. From a unit standpoint, it was a record year for all three categories. In Yen, revenue was up 1.8%, but profits were down 52.3%, but this beat their last projection, which was down 2.8% in revenue and 58.3% in profit.
Some of the profit decline was due to declining margin associated with currency conversion. That’s why we saw the price increases. As recently as 2007, the dollar was over 120 yen, but it was 114 for fiscal 2008 and only 101 for fiscal 2009. Nikon is projecting fiscal 2010 to come in at only 95 yen to the dollar.
But that certainly doesn’t account for all of the profit decline and that’s why Nikon needs to cut costs. In fiscal 2008, Nikon netted almost $84 billion yen. For fiscal 2009, it was down to 40 billion yen. For fiscal 2010, they’re projecting 25 billion yen net income for the imaging group, but Nikon always beats their estimates by a fairly wide margin.
May 29th, 2009 at 19:20
At least they didn’t say ‘Auf wiedersehen’ — that would have confused the workers too much.
May 31st, 2009 at 17:02
>‘Auf wiedersehen’
Good one!
Zoetmb: yes, agree