Nikon announced their results for the first half of their fiscal year today (April to September results). The big news is that, as I predicted, Nikon overestimated the dollar/yen relationship, and this had a tangible impact on their sales and profit numbers. With nearly a quarter of their overall sales coming from cameras in the US market, missing the yen appreciation impact has immediate influence on overall corporate numbers.
That said, it still was a decent quarter for Nikon. The Precision (semiconductor equipment) division didn't rebound quite as much as expected, but it came close to meeting the forecasts, which means that the division is not dragging down overall company results anywhere near as badly as last year. The Imaging division (cameras and lenses) actually beat most of their forecasts, with only DSLRs being slightly behind what they expected. I suspect that last bit has to do with the fact that the D7000 was later than originally expected. It missed having a small impact on Q2 by a couple of weeks.
Nikon sold 1.9m DSLRs, 2.95m lenses, and 6.7m Coolpix cameras during the period. The Coolpix number is tangibly ahead of expectations (by 8%). Inventory for the Imaging division is up a bit from late last year, but still quite low compared to previous years. One thing that I didn't see mentioned by most press reports is that the Imaging division's net sales year to year is down for the second quarter (not by a lot, but it immediately stood out to me in looking at the results--this is unusual in Nikon's recent history). This is almost certainly due mostly to the missed currency guesses.
Nikon lowered their estimates for sales and profit for the full fiscal year slightly, mostly due to currency issues and lower dollars per sale in the Imaging division (declining prices). Overall, the unit volume estimates have been increased. Nikon expects to sell 4.25m DSLRs (33% of market) and 14m Coolpix (12.5% of market). They also expect to sell an astounding 6.35m lenses for the full year.
Nikon lowered their future dollar/yen expectation to 80 (today it is at 80.7) and Euro/yen expectation to 110 (today it is at 114.6). There's been speculation elsewhere on the net about whether Nikon will be pushing US prices up because of this change. I believe the D7000 price already reflects most of that change, as do most recent lens prices. So, yes, future product announcements may see "replacement" products coming in at slightly higher prices than we're used to, but it also appears that Nikon is willing to accept some exchange rate fluctuation as long as unit volume is increasing. They didn't say it specifically in the formal press conference but I noted a comment in one Japanese business press interview that there's also an expectation right now of driving some more manufacturing costs out of products.
The fiscal year includes the first calendar quarter of 2011. So the question is this: is there anything in the estimates that indicate that the "new generation camera" that the executives have been talking about will ship in that time period? No.