Presentation Transcripts

As far as our business plan for fiscal year ending March 31, 2017 is concerned, I must say there is a great deal of uncertainty, which in part is related to currency fluctuations. I cannot tell what will happen in the currency markets, but we temporarily assume for planning purposes that the yen/dollar rate will be 105 yen per US dollar, and that the yen will become more than 10% stronger against the Thai Baht. The other uncertainty in our business plan is related to LED backlights, for which we assume a drop in both sales and profits this year, given the recent surge in the value of the Japanese yen and the sluggish sales performance expected in the first quarter. During the same period of last year, we had a considerable level of inventory to build, which consisted of LED backlights for the previous smartphone models. Unlike a year ago, we do not have extra stock to build of the current lines in LED backlights for our customers to make a smooth transition to the next smartphone model, given the weak performance in sales for the existing models.
Our customer indicated to us their intention to produce former LED backlight models in the fourth quarter of last year, but that did not turn out to be the case. I think we will be the beneficiaries if our customer chooses to produce extra amounts of former LED backlight models in the first quarter this year. It seems, though, that they find it pretty hard to do so because of some issues related to supply chains. All things considered, we came up with conservative business result estimates for the current fiscal year.
Aside from LED backlights, we expect steady growth in volume for ball bearings, motors, aircraft parts, and sensing devices.