| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
advertisement | ||
Thursday October 26, 4:33 PMCanon Q3 profit rises; expects printer price squeezeTOKYO, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Canon Inc. , the world's top maker of copiers and digital cameras, on Thursday posted a 20 percent rise in quarterly profit, and also raised slightly its annual forecast on expectations currency gains will make up for a price slump of inkjet printers.Canon expects operating profit of 691 billion yen ($5.82 billion) in 2006, up just 1 billion yen from its previous target. "Inkjet prices are expected to fall further than our initial expectations," Canon's senior managing director Toshizo Tanaka said at a news conference in Tokyo. "Sales of consumables haven't really come through either." But still, Canon expects a 18.5 percent jump in operating profit this year, a seventh year of record profit, on strong demand for its wide line-up of office gear and digital cameras, luring both professionals and consumers. Canon also revised its currency estimates for the full-year. It expects the yen to trade against the dollar at 115.61, and 145.35 versus the euro. That compares with its earlier forecast rates of 114.76 and 142.70, respectively. Third-quarter profit rose to 172.69 billion yen in from 143.6 billion yen a year earlier, again helped by a weaker yen, and strong sales of printers and digital cameras, Canon said. That was broadly in line with the average analyst estimate of 175 billion yen polled by Reuters Estimates. "We expect aggressive laser printer orders and strong sales of compact digital cameras in the quarter, offsetting sluggish demand for inkjet printers and soft prices of monochrome printers," Satomi Ushioda, a Nikko Citigroup analyst, said before the announcement. Before the earnings announcement, shares in Canon closed up 1.7 percent to 6,650 yen in Tokyo, compared with a 0.67 percent rise in the Nikkei index. The stock rallied 9.8 percent in the July-September quarter, outperforming the 4 percent gain on the Nikkei. |
|||
|
Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of Reuters Limited
|