Konica Minolta 2012 Annual Report Download - page 5

FY March 2012 was the first year of G PLAN
2013, our medium-term business plan with
growth as its keyword. During the year, we aimed
to improve our business performance by focusing
management resources in growth areas.
Our operating environment remained
challenging, with marked appreciation of the yen and
the European debt crisis in addition to the impact
of natural disasters such as the Great East Japan
Earthquake and flooding in Thailand. The initiatives
we forcefully promoted to achieve the targets of G
PLAN 2013 showed results, reflected in increased
operating income despite a decrease in net sales due
to the substantial impact of the strong yen.
In the Business Technologies Business, three
new color digital printing systems led results in the
production print field, which we have positioned
as a growth driver, and sales in this field exceeded
¥100 billion as we captured the top share of the
global market. In OPS (Optimized Print Services),
which we continued to systematically enhance as
a growth sector of the office field, we substantially
expanded the number of global major accounts,
mainly in Europe and the United States, to which
we provide office equipment management
services, including Bayerische Motoren Werke AG
(BMW) and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA). These results demonstrated
the success of our strengthened sales organization,
as our sales subsidiaries in Europe and the U.S
achieved record high sales on a local currency basis.
Sales also reached record highs in China and other
emerging countries, as well as in Japan.
In the Optics Business, both plain TAC films
for LCD polarizers and VA-TAC films for increasing
viewing angle performed steadily throughout the
year as we leveraged the competitive advantage of
the thin-film technologies that are one of Konica
Minoltas strengths.
As initiatives for future growth, we signed
a global partnership agreement with Komori
Corporation, a leading manufacturer of sheet-fed
offset printers, to further expand our scale in the
commercial printing area of the production print
field. In addition, we acquired FedEx Kinkos Japan
Co., Ltd. to strengthen the in-house printing field
in Japan. We also acquired ten IT service providers
in Europe and the United States as part of our
efforts to expand our operations and capabilities in
the IT services business.
As these results show, it has been a favorable
year, in which we not only achieved organic
growth, but also enhanced our foundation for
future growth through strategic alliances and
M&A. This reaffirms my conviction that the basic
policies of our strategy are on the right track.
FY March 2013 is the middle year of G
PLAN 2013. In addition to our ongoing efforts
to make further headway in the production print
field, which is a growth driver, we will work for
further growth by prioritizing business expansion
in emerging economies, which remained
somewhat of an issue in FY March 2012, and the
expansion of our IT service business operations.
We have split the Optics Business into TAC film
and optical divisions to concentrate our human
and technological resources and will work to
expand results over the medium-to-long term by
accelerating the promotion of new businesses,
including incorporating Organic Light Emitting
Diodes (OLED) lighting and other new business
themes in the TAC film field.
To be a business group that can achieve sustained
global growth, the Konica Minolta Group will continue
to focus on a basic policy of Achieving strong growth,
expanding business scale, realized by steadily and
boldly advancing our initiatives for Changing into a
Global Company and Increasing the recognition
of the Konica Minolta brand. I would like to request
your ongoing support as our shareholders and
investors and your expectations of the Konica Minolta
Group as we aim for strong growth.
August 2012
Masatoshi Matsuzaki
President and CEO
Our initiatives during the fi scal year showed results,
refl ected in increased operating income in a challenging
business climate.
We will continue to achieve strong growth by steadily
carrying out our strategies.
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