Nikon's fiscal year ends each March 31st, and today Nikon reported their results for their last full fiscal year (April 2010 thru March 2011).
The good news is that both the Precision and Imaging divisions did well, though Precision didn't quite make it to Nikon's previous forecast and Imaging exceeded it in every category. Imaging (cameras and lenses) remains a huge 67% of Nikon's overall sales, so Nikon remains pretty much the sole significant Japanese company whose majority business is cameras.
Nikon sold 4.29 million DSLRs, which represents almost exactly 30% of the worldwide market for interchangeable lens cameras. Both the D3100 and D7000 were reported to be selling quite well (duh). 6.36 million lenses were sold (27% market share), as well as 14.26 million Coolpix (13% market share). All those numbers are slightly above Nikon's last forecast, made only a few months ago. Surprisingly, the Imaging division "inventory" grew significantly year-to-year (+27%), though some of that may represent product buildup in progress. Curiously, Nikon noted that they had a parts procurement problem in the Imaging division even before the quake.
Speaking of the quake, it appears that Nikon said that the lens plant in Tochigi has reached pre-quake capacity again. But the parts supply chain feeding it and the other manufacturing plants isn't expected to fully recover until fall. For the overall company, Nikon is forecasting a sales reduction of 120b yen and profit reduction of 30b yen as a result of the disaster. Despite that, Nikon is predicting a 6% increase in overall sales and a whopping 26% increase in operating income for the coming year. Almost all of that is coming from the recovery in the semiconductor market and Precision's sales. For those interested in semiconductors, Nikon sees their next generation of 16nm machines hitting production by 2018 (state of the art is basically 22nm these days).
For the first time that I can remember, Nikon is not providing estimated sales numbers for the coming year in the Imaging division. Instead, they predict a "slight increase versus previous year" in both DSLRs and lenses, with Coolpix being "even with previous year." Overall sales and income are expected to be down. Most of these changes are put off to limited production due to difficult procurement, plus fierce competition when the supply chain does recover. Even though Nikon is forecasting 80 yen to the dollar (115 yen/Euro), they appear to think the yen will appreciate further in the coming year, which also impacts Imaging greatly, and which has potential pricing implications for the next generation of products (i.e. higher prices for the US and Europe).
Meanwhile, R&D and capital expenses are back up (both dipped last year). Hidden within the main points made by Nikon was an interesting thing: Q4 for imaging (Jan-Mar 2011) was very strong, much stronger than the previous two years. That's going to make Q1 of the current year look very weak, I think. Another buried point was "[strong Coolpix sales] led to the capture of a leading share in the North American market in the second half of the fiscal year." That raises my eyebrows. It's such a specific claim, but I haven't seen any other numeric support for it.
I need to do some more reading of the Q&A session and coverage and interviews in the Japanese business press, but it appears that Nikon's message for the coming year is: "we think we'll have all operations and procurement back to normal by fall and while we think the competition will be intense at that point because everyone's going to be hungry for sales we expect to maintain market share." What's that mean to this site's readers? Perhaps some inability to meet demand for current products through the summer, perhaps some modest delays in expected new products, but by the end of the year it should be business as usual. Q3 (Oct-Dec) is historically the most important quarter for Imaging, so they're doubly motivated to get things rolling again by then.
The one worrying thing to me is the lack of specificity in Imaging for the coming year. Nikon is generally very forthcoming about forward year plans, but the fact that they aren't right now indicates that there must be a lot of unknowns for them right now. I read that as that some problems haven't actually been solved yet, but they think they will solve them. That's not quite as good as what I expected to hear, which was "we know what the problems are and both how and when we'll solve them."