No. 19: Olympus Corp.
Tokyo
www.olympusamerica.com
2016 RANK: 23
Revenue: $5,294,358,550*
Fiscal year ending: March 31, 2017
Key Personnel:
Hiroyuki Sasa, CEO & president; Yasuo Takeuchi, VP & CFO; Akihiro Taguchi, senior executive managing officer & head, sales, medical; Shigeo Hayashi, senior executive managing officer & head, manufacturing; Haruo Ogawa, senior executive managing officer & head, R&D; Yasushi Sakai, executive managing officer & chief improvement officer; Akira Kubota, executive managing officer & head, medical affairs & CSR; Nobuhiro Abe, executive managing officer & chief regional representative officer, Asia Pacific; Kiichi Hirata, executive managing officer & CAO
Description:
Olympus dominates the endoscopic camera market. It is a global company with about 70% of its medical technology production in Japan and 30% elsewhere. The company has chosen to focus on China as the world’s largest market, which appears to be paying off.
Olympus seems to have recovered from a media storm in late 2015 and early 2016, when one of its reusable duodenoscopes was linked to superbug outbreaks in several markets and the company faced accusations of failing to quickly alert the U.S. public to the danger.
The results of this issue, however, seem minor since the company reported a 3% increase in its medical business revenue. Even the reported operating profit decline of 9% is due to changes in the product mix, as mainstay systems reach the later stage of their product cycles, and higher SG&A (selling, general and administrative) expenses.
Meanwhile, in May, Olympus acquired Image Stream Medical, which develops video equipment and system integration used in operating rooms, for $87 million. It also completed a new building at the Aomori medical manufacturing plant. It also launched several new products including a single-use aspiration needle, a single-use electrosurgical knife with fluid injection function, and an ultra-high definition surgical endoscope, among others.
* Revenues from Olympus’s medical business.
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Apologies. We had to fix a technical glitch with the Big 100 spreadsheet download. If you fill out the sign-up form now, you should get an email with a link to download the spreadsheet, instead of last year’s Big 100 edition.
Chris, Thank you for the update. I just downloaded the Big 100.
Glad this helped, Mark.