November 4, 2005 - Earlier this year, Konica Minolta announced a restructuring plan that would take a 34 billion yen ($291 million) special loss and require until 2009 to fully execute. But in light of its profit forecast changing from a 23 billion yen profit to a 47 billion yen loss, the company today stated that it would dramatically speed up the restructuring process.
Though Fumio Iwai, Konica Minolta’s president, declined to give a specific time frame in which the changes would occur, he did say that 4,000 jobs or roughly 12 percent of Konica Minolta’s group workforce would be cut. The company now plans on a special loss of 90 billion yen.
“Let's just say we are not talking about it taking three or four years,” Iwai said.
Konica Minolta experienced a photo imaging division net loss of 3.5 billion yen, thanks largely to restructuring costs, compared with last year’s 8.2 billion yen net profit. The company expects lackluster sales of traditional film equipment and digital cameras in the coming year, although their DSLRS have sold well recently. Digital camera operations will be downsized as well, though Konica Minolta still intends to jointly design DSLRs with Sony.
