Olympus financial report: Company doing well but Camera business in loss.

Olympus disclosed the full financial report for the year 2013. You can find plenty of documents here: http://www.olympus-global.com/en/ir/. The most important file is that pdf (download here).

While the good news is that the company as a whole is doing just fine the main problem is their Imaging Business. They failed to achieve their goals and showed a new loss in 2013. Furthermore Olympus now expects a loss for 2014 too. A great analysis has also been posted by Thom Hogan at Sansmirror. Here are a couple of key points:

– Olympus main loss is due the decreasing compact camera market. Also mirrorless system camera sales weren’t as high as expected.
– Olympus plans to reduce investment in the compact camera business (V-line is dead for example). They will focus on high-end mirrorless system cameras.
– Focus is on OMD models rather than PEN
– Olympus expects a small growth in mirrorless camera sales this year.
– Good news: Olympus didn’t make major cuts in Research and Development. It means they keep pushing MFT! Olympus also says that resources from the compact camera division will be used for the MFT system development.
– Olympus wants to streamline their sales line too (more direct sales and focus on cities).

So it’s not a surprise that we will get one new PEN “Only” (the E-Pl7). And I expect some high end MFT products at Photokina.

Here is the full report: