JVC CE Segment Sales Off 2%
By Jeff Malester -- TWICE, 11/8/2004
Yokohama, Japan — Expanded sales of LCD televisions and DVD recorders helped sustain overall growth in the consumer electronics division at Victor Company of Japan (JVC), at the same time domestic sales of digital video cameras declined.
Thus, CE division sales were off slightly in JVC's fiscal first half, down 2 percent to $2.82 billion from a year-on-year $2.88 billion.
Conditions in the U.S. market remained challenging, said JVC, although there were signs that the launch of the company's HD-ILA rear-projection TVs in the second half of the fiscal year would generate a recovery.
A decline in the sale of camcorders in the United States helped to lower total overseas sales by 8.3 percent in the first half, down to $2.7 billion from $2.9 billion.
JVC's software and media products division — which includes music and video software such as CDs, videodiscs, prerecorded music and videotapes, and blank media — struggled in the first half. The division was hurt by the cancellation and postponement of CD releases as well as a decrease in music CD sales. Total sales in the division in the first half, ended Sept. 30, decreased 41.9 percent to $448.7 million, down from a year-on-year $772.5 million.
Even though JVC sales in Asia were solid in the first six months, a European and U.S. camcorder decline resulted in an 11.4 percent decrease in consolidated first half JVC sales, down to $3.9 billion from $4.3 billion.
Lower purchasing costs and cuts in fixed costs were not sufficient to offset the lower profit resulting from the decline in both sales prices and volume of camcorders, PDP TVs, A/V systems and blank media — as well as harsh conditions in the music business. These factors, along with certain extraordinary losses, resulted in a net consolidated loss of $41.1 million in the first six months, compared with net income of $33 million in the same period last year.
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