Investors: Canon Profit Expectations Plummeting, To Improve in 2021

Three months ago, analysts thought Canon earnings were going to suffer a great deal. Even as the firm has been rapidly fleshing out its new full frame mirrorless line, the same analysts are realizing now that they vastly overestimated the camera giant’s earnings. New estimates from a month ago and from a week ago show the shrinking expectations, with earnings for the quarter just ended estimated to be essentially $0.01 per share versus the $0.25 estimated as recently as August. The figures shown are an average of those from JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

The less bad news: they expect next year to be quite a bit better, with earnings popping back up into the same order of magnitude as a year ago, although still lower than they previously predicted for this year.

Of course, the camera business is now a smaller part of the Canon portfolio, with medical imaging, printers and copiers and other hardware making the lion’s share of profits. The Imaging Systems division accounts for about a third of anticipated profits and only about a fifth of the firm’s revenue.

Interestingly, the pandemic period has further shifted the share of sales from Asia to Europe, which is now the largest Imaging Systems division revenue generating region, according to Canon’s own filings for the first half of 2019 versus the first half of 2020.