Canon posts dramatic gains for the 3rd quarter 2017

Canon today posted their 3rd quarter results, and the numbers are pretty good. It is Canon's 3rd consecutive quarter of YoY sales and profit growth starting from Q1, first time in 7 years.

Canon showed sales growth overall gaining 27% from 3rd quarter 2016, and Op Profit gaining 101% since the 3rd quarter 2016.

On the imaging front, both sales and operating profit gained from YoY 3rd quarter 2016, however, the total number of units sold dropped by 5%.  Which is most likely low considering that last year, for the 3rd quarter they had limited competition because of the Sony Kumamoto earthquake that affected sensors over the vast majority of the industry.

For interchangeable-lens cameras, the rate of market contraction, primarily in developed countries, continue to slow down. Against this backdrop, our sales, which were relatively high in the same period last year due to the earthquake, were down 5% to 1.31 million units, which was better than we expected.

In our lineup, we increased sales of the EOS 6D Mark II, a new competitively priced model within our range of interchangeable-lens cameras featuring full-frame sensors. This camera has been highly rated not only for significant improvement in such basic features as AF, but also for being able to offer this in a camera that is both compact and lightweight. As for the compact camera market, which continues to recover from the earthquake, we posted strong sales of such premium models as the G9X Mark II, which offers excellent portability. Additionally, as our sales were at a low level due to the earthquake in the same quarter last year, our unit sales in the third quarter of this year showed an increase of 13% to 850 thousand.

For the more longer term outlook, Canon expects more of the same, a slight increase in unit sales from the prior projection and still slightly under what they sold last year, as a result of the Kumamoto earthquake.

For the full-year, we raised our projection for interchangeable-lens cameras by 200 thousand units, as we posted better than expected results in the third quarter. We now expect sales to be down 3% to 5.5 million units.

One of the reasons for the revision was due to an increase in demand for high-quality images, particularly from smartphone users who use social media. Interchangeable-lens cameras, which are user-friendly and offer enhanced network capabilities that meet this demand, are leading to the acquisition of new users. As a result, our entry-class models have performed beyond our expectations. On top of this, sales of our new models that mainly target advanced-amateurs were also better than expected. 

We also reflected this situation into our market projection, which is now projected it to be down 1% to 11.4 million units.

Interestingly according to Canon, they expect to see the ILC market overall essentially stabilize at around 11.4 million units with Canon having a 48% market share in total ILC units.