Pioneer Electronics Q3 Sales Climb 6%
By Jeff Malester -- TWICE, 2/26/2001
TOKYO -Led by sales in its Car Electronics Product Group, overall electronics sales at Pioneer Corp. increased 6 percent in the fiscal third quarter ending Dec. 31, reaching $1.4 billion, compared with $1.3 billion in the same three months last year.
Sales in the Car Electronics Product Group climbed 5.2 percent in the third quarter to $537.7 million, compared with $510.4 million in the year-ago three months. This was due to a large increase in sales of car audio products to automobile manufacturers in Japan and North America, said Pioneer. The car electronics group is Pioneer's largest, accounting for nearly 37 percent of total company net sales in the third quarter.
Sales in the Audio/Video Product Group, however, dropped 3 percent to $489.1 million in the third quarter, compared with $503.4 million in the third quarter of last year. This was due to a decrease in sales of compact stereo systems in both Japan and North America, and the yen's appreciation against the euro, said Pioneer, and occurred despite strong plasma display sales worldwide, in addition to increased sales of DVD-Video players in Japan and Europe.
The audio/video group, Pioneer's second largest, accounted for 33.4 percent of total company net sales in the third quarter, down from 35.4 percent in the same period last year. Audio/video sales in Japan increased to a 14.9 percent share of total company net sales, up from 13.4 percent in third-quarter 1999.
A/V sales overseas, however, remained flat at about $320 million. This is a 21.8 percent share of total company net sales, compared with 22.5 percent in the year-ago period.
For the nine months, sales in car electronics dropped to $1.58 billion from $1.60 billion, while share of total company net sales dropped from 42.2 percent to 39.9 percent.
In audio/video for the nine months, sales climbed from $1.19 billion to $1.20 billion, with share of total company net sales dropping, however, from 31.4 percent to 30.4 percent.
Pioneer's third-quarter A/V software sales were down 31.1 percent to $79.1 million, due to substantially decreased sales of animation videocassettes in North America, mainly resulting from the absence of hit titles such as Pokemon, said Pioneer.
Overall operating revenue at Pioneer, which totals net sales and royalty revenue, climbed 3.5 percent in the third quarter to $1.50 billion, compared with $1.45 billion in the same three months last year. Net income for the three months was about $55 million, compared with about $13 million in the same quarter a year ago.
For the nine months, overall operating revenue reached $4.1 billion, a 3.8 percent jump from the $3.9 billion reported in the year-ago nine months. Net income for the nine months increased to $109 million, up from about $7 million in the same nine months a year ago.
