Olympus may face delisting from exchange

[Rocky78]

Olympus is in DEEP TROUBLE now as it involves billions of dollars !
They purposely covered up their losses by fraudulent transactions and cooking their books.

Definitely the major shareholders and stock exchange will be going after them. Many will resign or be sacked definitely.

I just hope it will not affect their camera division.

Most likely Olympus will be bought over by someone else.

 

[eow]

Olympus is in DEEP TROUBLE now as it involves billions of dollars !
They purposely covered up their losses by fraudulent transactions and cooking their books.

Definitely the major shareholders and stock exchange will be going after them. Many will resign or be sacked definitely.

I just hope it will not affect their camera division.


Most likely Olympus will be bought over by someone else.

they were once leaders in their respective field...
bye bye minolta,
sayonara pentax
goodbye olympus

 

[theITguy]

Whether they have this scandal or not, their sales are down for the last 2-3 years in the camera division. This scandal is just one of the nails in the coffin revealed.

 

[pinholecam]

I'm surprised the cameras not selling well enough from what I see on the streets and the advertisement presence here.

I'd think likely it gets broken up and someone buys the divisions piecemeal.

 

[tsammyc]

I think its inevitable that they get bought by Panasonic and its likely to be driven by Nippon Life, their largest shareholder. Panasonic is probably just waiting until the whole Olympus board resigns and the price is driven down sufficiently. There will definitely be criminal charges as the fraud extends for more than 20 years. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to be about stealing money as much as "face".

This forum could then be merged with Panasonic.

 

[cannedpineapples]

There are few things worse in business than lying to investors about your company's financial health. Athough they admit about it, the damage had been done. Investors' confidence are badly shaken now.

I agree, but there are two ways of lying. One is, like Groupon, pretending that you earned more money than you actually did on your core operations. This raises real issues on the fundamental strength of a company.

The other is to hide non-core losses as expenses. This doesn't affect the performance of core operations. It is a HUGE ethical breach, and the management probably has to go- and insofar as that affects Olympus, that's huge. But it doesn't affect the expected future cash flows of the company from its core operations. It doesn't even affect current cash/ incomes, because the losses have already been recorded. Investment losses were marked as 'advisory expenses' and 'writedowns of investments' instead of investment losses, but they're there, in the books.

I guess if Olympus does not react accordingly (eg. whole board resigns, Woodford returns), then they may be forced to break up the company. But let's be clear, the individual pieces of the company (medical, camera), etc. are exactly as attractive today, to an investor, as they were a month ago, before the whole scandal broke.

As for whether Olympus is doing well... no idea. After all, Singapore camera-related sales is probably ~1% of the Olympus camera division's income.

 

[cannedpineapples]

Don't take my word for it- read about what investors themselves think

"When asked whether he thought Olympus could survive the scandal, he said: “Keep in mind before all of this happened, the stock was 2,500 yen a share. We still thought it was cheap.” The only thing that needs to be changed, he said, is the people running it and an accounting of where the money went."

 

[NazgulKing]

The real decision making will be done between the Japanese overlords of Olympus.

The real danger is what happens to the MFT standard. If they get taken over by Panasonic, the standard ought to stay around. If they get taken over by any other company other than Panasonic, all bets are off.

 

[Atarandas]

Don't take my word for it- read about what investors themselves think

"When asked whether he thought Olympus could survive the scandal, he said: “Keep in mind before all of this happened, the stock was 2,500 yen a share. We still thought it was cheap.” The only thing that needs to be changed, he said, is the people running it and an accounting of where the money went."

Not forgetting that the 2,500 yen a share was based on market assumed valuations of the Company. We dont know for sure that they only deferred and masked investment losses. For 20 years, they could have done alot of fraudulent reporting so immensed and complicated to inflate Company earnings. If they are performing so well financially, why would the board be motivated to commit fraud ? There has to be more skepticism thrown into the management and operations of the Company.

On the performance of the camera division, the imaging business accounted for approximately 20% of Olympus revenue in 2010 ( 2009: 22%) and 5.5% in 2010 ( 2009: -14.8%) in terms of operating income.

 

[snowc]

Don't take my word for it- read about what investors themselves think

"When asked whether he thought Olympus could survive the scandal, he said: “Keep in mind before all of this happened, the stock was 2,500 yen a share. We still thought it was cheap.” The only thing that needs to be changed, he said, is the people running it and an accounting of where the money went."

Frankly speaking, i don't give much credit to this article. Yes, the stock is cheap but a share price plunge of 29 percent is no joke. It speaks the truth of many abandoning the ship in fear of it sinking. As Atarandas mentioned earlier, if the company is performing so well financially, why would the board be motivated to commit fraud? There must be a reason. Also, the company faced the risk of delisting which is the worst possible scenario for shareholders.

There is much uncertainty and speculation going on now but I do hope the company will get over this crisis.

 

[gongong]

Please support our CPF money. Buy more olympus cameras. As of the oly's last financial year, our dear GIC holds a 2% stake in The company.

 

[hydroburn249]

really? we own 2% stake. wow didnt know that.

Please support our CPF money. Buy more olympus cameras. As of the oly's last financial year, our dear GIC holds a 2% stake in The company.

 

[gongong]

really? we own 2% stake. wow didnt know that.

http://www.olympus-global.com/en/corc/ir/annualreport/2011/pdf/11.pdf

We are actually one of the top 10 shareholders. Perhaps we should all write in as "shareholder" to ....

 

[theITguy]

Frankly speaking, i don't give much credit to this article. Yes, the stock is cheap but a share price plunge of 29 percent is no joke.

Think the company lost about 80% of the market capitalisation since the news of the fraud scandal.

 

[cannedpineapples]

Everything Temasek touches these days turns to lead, eh?

But we'll see. I personally think there will be big changes in the management and the company will be back on its feet again soon. It may yet get delisted for fraudulent statements, but I doubt that. The issue now is not just Olympus; it's whether foreign investors can trust Japanese companies, and so wider forces in Japanese society may force radical changes through.

 

[cichlid]

There goes the development for PEN Pro??

 

[elgkh]

I was thinking at first that they will wheel out a scapegoat, apologise, and then get on with business as usual. Now it looks like the whole board has to go.

 

[elgkh]

There goes the development for PEN Pro??

This scandal is about what happened in the past, so current operations should not be affected. Although I will not rule out even more massive losses being covered up at the moment...

Edited to add : The real danger here is that customers of both the medical and camera divisions will stop buying Olympus stuff. I understand this is especially true in Japan.

 

[Atarandas]

The current development can affect current operations , but in what manner, one can only speculate . Olympus is large enough for some of its sub divisions to continue on its own . Can the imaging division survive on its own without corporate support and funding is a big question mark itself .

 

[NazgulKing]

The thermonuclear warhead has been primed: BBC News - Olympus warned of possible share delisting