Epson revenues drop – as KitGuru predicted

While Epson might be doing relatively well in projectors, the market itself is not that large. At the same time, it has taken a beating from HP. KitGuru has a quick look at the financial print outs to see where Epson might have smudged.

KitGuru loves making solid predictions, in writing, for the world to see. We're not always right. But we're right much of the time. So our earlier analysis of the problems facing Epson, seemed to be accurate. We predicted the revenue drop and it happened.

Epson executives must be running scared that they are about to face a series of job cuts, already executed on a huge scale in companies like Panasonic. While it is sad when people lose their jobs, shareholders are very keen for their investments to yield a solid return. So how well/badly is Epson doing?

This first chart is a KitGuru reworking of the numbers presented. Note the cool/professional finish. Artistic stuff (Epson's own charts will make you smile later in comparison).

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While Epson is quick to point to the Tohoku earthquake disaster as a negative factor, our earlier analysis already showed that in a booming printer market throughout 2010, HP managed growth that was 500% ahead of Epson. That's something that happened over a long period of time – not a ‘small dip, late in the cycle'.

Let's put this another way. If the market had collapsed, then Epson should be patting themselves on the back that they only dropped revenue by 3 Billion Yen. But the print sector boomed. In a boom market, you would expect ALL of the top brands to grow.

Epson's lack of growth seems to point to something ‘wrong' under the bonnet. We can't say for sure what that is (because we are not experts in this field), but in a world where Canon grows its printer market by 250% more than Epson and HP beats them by 500% – you can be sure that things are not photo-print-perfect.

In Epson's long and rather amateur looking presentation, page 32 shows a bunch of what the company calls ‘Main Management Indicators'.  Ignoring the ‘Wow, isn't the future amazing' parts that the company has added, focusing only on what has actually been delivered, you don't need to be an expert to see that the chart seems ‘to be an unusual shape' at best and ‘depressing' at worst.

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KitGuru says: Epson might be good at projecting HD films, but the financial projections being made by Epson's management team are amazing. They are promising to grow the company faster than anyone would assume is possible. Let's all meet back here in a few years and see if Epson really has managed to increase sales like an F-15 taking off for combat.

Comment below or in the KitGuru forum.

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