*NEWS*KONICA MINOLTA PROFITS UP 17%

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Konica Minolta H1 profit up 17 pct on copiers sales
 TOKYO, Nov 06 – Japan’s Konica Minolta Holdings Inc. on Thursday posted a better-than-expected 17 percent rise in first-half profit and raised its annual forecast on strong sales of colour copiers and a weaker yen.
The office equipment maker, set up after Konica Corp. and Minolta Co. merged in August 2003, is betting on growth in toner sales and materials used in flat panels after it exited from camera and photographic film businesses earlier this year.Operating income came to 46.26 billion yen ($394.5 million) in the six months ended Sept. 30, compared with 39.4 billion yen a year earlier. Sales fell 4.6 percent to 493.95 billion yen due mainly to its withdrawal from the photo film market.The profit result beat the average estimate of 41.9 billion yen from five analysts polled by Reuters Estimates.”Our strategy to expand our colour line-ups helped sales of multifunctional models, especially in Europe,” company director Yasuo Matsumoto told a news conference.Konica Minolta also raised its operating profit forecast for the year to March by 21 percent to 96.5 billion yen, above the consensus estimate of 90 billion yen.Its domestic rivals such as Canon Inc. and Fujifilm Holdings recently reported better-than-expected earnings thanks to a weaker yen and strong sales of core products .Matsumoto said a weaker Japanese currency helped push up first half operating profit by 5.9 billion yen, although fierce price competition in copiers and printers also cropped 10 billion yen from the gains.

COLOUR COPIERS
Sales at its office equipment division gained 9.2 percent to 309.5 billion yen in the first half. Operating profit of the segment rose 21.5 percent to 34.1 billion yen.Earnings from office gear made up almost 75 percent of the company’s total operating profit.Konica Minolta is pushing sales of its colour machines, which tend to use more toner, the main source of profit as the machines themselves are usually sold at a loss.Its optics business, which makes pickup lenses and lenses used in mobile phones, had a 31.3 percent sales increase in the first half. The segment’s operating profit also jumped 34.7 percent to 10.7 billion yen.Konica Minolta said sales of its pickup lens slowed in the first half due to a delay in next-generation DVDs, but strong demand from flat-panel makers boosted sales of its film materials.The company said its fourth line for TAC, or triacetyl cellulose, film began production in September, helping to company boost output and increase its sales volume in this business by 50 percent since a year ago.Konica Minolta and Fujifilm Holdings are the only two major producers of TAC film, which protects the polarisation plate in LCD panels.Konica Minolta was the world’s third-largest maker of camera film after Eastman Kodak and Fujifilm prior to its withdrawal from the industry earlier this year, when it sold its digital single lens reflex camera assets to Sony Corp. , and ceased production of compact cameras.Shares of Tokyo-based Konica Minolta gained 5.3 percent in the six-month period, outperforming the 0.4 percent rise on Japan’s precision machinery index.Prior to the announcement, shares of Konica Minolta rose 0.1 percent to close at 1,564 yen.

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November 7, 2006 at 11:29 AM