Paraphrased from a 10/29 Bloomberg article: Pentax Corp., said first-half profit fell 45 percent, missing its own estimate, after writing down the value of its inventory.
Net income declined to 600 million yen ($5.3 million) in the six months ended Sept. 30, lagging behind its July forecast of 1.4 billion yen. Sales at the company, which also makes medical equipment rose 15 percent. "We have depreciated our inventory, including endoscopes, as we had difficulty competing with our rivals,'' mainly in North America, Jiro Okamura, a spokesman at the Tokyo-based company, said by telephone. The writedown led to a one-time loss of about 900 million yen, he said. The company's sales rose to 85.6 billion yen from 74.7 billion yen. Operating profit, or sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative expenses, more than doubled to 3.3 billion yen from 1.56 billion yen. ------------------ Maybe those bargain basement camera prices in N.A. aren't that great after all. Selling a lot more things that aren't worth as much. Tom C. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.

