By Graham K. Rogers

As many other corporations around the world do at this time, such as Apple and Microsoft, Epson Corporation is reported quarterly financial results: for Q3 2012. With a number of markets shrinking, the figures reveal some negatives.

With negative market growth in the US, Europe and Japan, unit shipments were below expectations, although operating income was in line with expectations. The visual products group reported increased growth year over year, although projector sales were lower, mainly due to "decline in tenders in the US and falling demand in education market in Asia."

There was "slack demand" for products like digital home electronics, cell phones and smartphones. While the watches business was good at the high end, factory automation systems missed targets with lower expenditure by chip manufacturers.

Income for Q3 was down slightly by 3.2% at ¥235.8 billion with net sales for the first 9 months falling by 6.1% to ¥624.1 billion. Year over year, Net income after taxes for Q3 has risen from ¥4.7 billion to ¥22.8 billion although over the year so far, there is a loss of some ¥12.6 billion, down from ¥0.3 billion in the same 9 months last year. Earnings per share (EPS) for the same 9 month period is reported as -¥70.50 (compared with ¥2.04).

The outlook suggests sales for the full year will be down to ¥850 billion (from ¥877.9 billion) with an EPS predicted to be -¥83.85, as opposed to ¥26.22 for the 2011 financial year. Precision products and quartz devices are expected to see some small increases in sales, while information equipment areas will contract

Source: Epson Newsroom.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.