Konica Minolta — Company History

Financial history 2002–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded
2003
Head office
Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
Listed
2003 · TYO: 4902
Founder
None — formed by the 2003 merger of Konica and Minolta
Former names
Konica (until 2003) · Konica Minolta Holdings (2003–2013)
Revenue · FYE Mar 2026
$6.9B (¥1.09tn)
Net profit · FYE Mar 2026
$191.6M (¥30bn)
Konica Minolta: long-term performance & turning pointsSales (revenue) and profit-margin ratio
Sales (¥ bn)Net margin (%)

2003A holding company built first, and two founding trades closed at once

Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY2003 · consolidated
Revenue$4.8B
Net income$141M
Net margin2.9%
FY2007 · consolidated
Revenue$8.7B
Net income$616M
Net margin7.1%
  1. 2003Konica merges with Minolta by share exchange, renamed Konica Minolta Holdings
  2. 2003Head office moves to Marunouchi, Tokyo
  3. 2003All businesses regrouped into six operating and two shared-function companies
  4. 2004Photo-imaging subsidiary merged into the camera subsidiary
  5. 2004Konica Minolta Business Technologies (WUXI) established in China
  6. 2005Konica Minolta IJ founded to start the inkjet-head business
  7. 2005Personnel system for general employees unified; headcount down 3,000-plus
  8. 2005Konica Minolta Graphic Imaging USA acquires American Litho Inc.
  9. 2006Withdrawal from the camera and photo businesses announced in January
  10. 2006Camera business ends; α series assets sold to Sony
  11. 2006FY05 closes with a net loss of ¥54.3bn
  12. 2007Photo business ends in September

Konica Minolta was created in August 2003, when Konica took Minolta in by share exchange after three years of alliance in office equipment, and on the measure the merger was built for it worked immediately: consolidated revenue went from $4.8B (¥559bn) in the year to March 2003 to $9.7B (¥1.07tn) two years later. What the merger did not settle was the two founding trades, and within three years both Minolta’s cameras and Konica’s photographic film had been closed at a cost of 2,243 jobs and $906.4M (¥105bn) in extraordinary losses.

Merger by share exchange, and a regroup into six operating companies

In August 2003 Konica combined with Minolta by share exchange and changed its name to Konica Minolta Holdings, Inc. The two had begun a business alliance in office equipment in April 2000, and with the markets for photographic film and for cameras both contracting, the merger was intended to gather management resources into the office-equipment business. In October 2003 all of the businesses the two companies held were regrouped into six operating companies and two shared-function companies; the sales subsidiaries for office equipment and photo imaging in Japan, the United States and Germany were brought together one after another, and the Chinese production subsidiaries for office equipment were merged as well. The old Konica held high-speed digital copiers and the old Minolta held colour laser printers, and the work of pushing overlapping sales channels and product lines onto one side or the other sat at the centre of the merger’s first year.

The effect of the merger showed first in scale. Consolidated revenue expanded from $4.8B (¥559bn) in the year to March 2003 to $9.7B (¥1.07tn) in the year to March 2005, the first year in which the merger contributed in full. In a ranking of revenue growth that Shukan Toyo Keizai compiled by setting 2002 results against forecasts for the year to March 2005, Konica Minolta Holdings came top among Japan’s major companies at 122.4 per cent. In September 2003 the head office moved to Marunouchi in Tokyo, and in April 2004 the photo-imaging subsidiary was merged into the camera subsidiary. In December 2004 the company established Konica Minolta Business Technologies (WUXI), an office-equipment production subsidiary in Wuxi, China, concentrating its manufacturing as well.

Governance after the merger, and a personnel system rebuilt from scratch

Ahead of the merger, Konica had already completed the move to a holding-company structure and to a committee-based board. The new company inherited that machinery, running its three committees — audit, nomination and remuneration — with outside directors in the majority on each and an outside director chairing each. The board after the merger was made up of four directors from the old Konica, four from the old Minolta and four from outside, and the outside seats were filled with people who had run companies in other industries: Fujiwara Kikuo (藤原菊男), adviser to Shimadzu; Katada Tetsuya (片田哲也), special adviser to Komatsu; Inoue Noriyuki (井上礼之), chairman of Daikin Industries; and Nakayama Yu (中山悠), chairman of Meiji Milk Products. President Iwai Fumio (岩居文雄) said that because every outside director came from a company unconnected with Konica Minolta and each had a strong sense of responsibility, a tension entered the running of the company, and that this worked well in carrying the merger through (Shukan Toyo Keizai, 5 March 2005).

Iwai said of this machinery, I have no authority over personnel and no authority to set pay. The nomination committee, on the other hand, can replace me at any time (Shukan Toyo Keizai, 5 March 2005). The personnel system was not spliced together from the two companies’ existing systems but rebuilt from scratch, and pay levels were not simply raised to match the higher of the two. The stated principle was to discard past success entirely and to respect people who keep changing — an explicit refusal to take the best of both companies. The system for managers was followed in April 2005 by one for general employees, and by that point headcount had fallen by more than 3,000 against two years earlier.

Exit from cameras and photo, and an extraordinary loss of ¥105.4bn

In January 2006 Konica Minolta Holdings announced its withdrawal from the camera business and from the photo business. Cameras were the founding trade of the old Minolta and photo was the main business of the old Konica, so the decision closed both companies’ founding trades at the same time. The single-lens reflex assets — the α series — were sold to Sony, while operations such as minilabs were simply wound up. The camera business ended in March 2006 and the photo business in September 2007. Iwai gave as his reason for the exit that the CCD, the core component accounting for a large share of manufacturing cost, could not be made in-house because the company had no semiconductor technology. The two businesses together had posted an operating loss of $81.7M (¥9bn) in the year to March 2005, and the market for photographic film had been shrinking at about 20 per cent a year since the late 1990s.

The exits carried 2,243 job cuts, and the company booked $906.4M (¥105bn) of extraordinary losses in total, including $246M (¥29bn) of impairment on production equipment, $513.4M (¥60bn) of costs for winding up sales bases and related items, and $147.1M (¥17bn) of workforce-rationalisation costs. As a result the year to March 2006 fell to a net loss of $467M (¥54bn). Over the same period, in January 2005, the company set up Konica Minolta IJ, Inc. to start an inkjet-head business, and in October 2005 Konica Minolta Graphic Imaging USA acquired American Litho Inc., a maker of printing plates; the retreat from the founding trades and the strengthening of areas outside office equipment ran side by side.

Read the full history in Japanese →

2007Converging on office equipment alone, and rebuilding after Lehman

Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY2007 · consolidated
Revenue$8.7B
Net income$616M
Net margin7.1%
FY2013 · consolidated
Revenue$8.3B
Net income$155M
Net margin1.9%
  1. 2007Operating profit reaches ¥104.0bn, meeting the plan a year early
  2. 2007Konica Minolta Healthcare launched from the medical sales and service arms
  3. 2008Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. acquires Danka Office Imaging
  4. 2008Operating profit of ¥119.6bn, the highest since the merger
  5. 2009Revenue falls to ¥947.8bn and operating profit to ¥56.2bn
  6. 2009Ota Yoshikatsu hands the presidency to Matsuzaki Masatoshi
  7. 2010Printing business moved to Business Technologies; domestic sales merged
  8. 2012Group reorganisation re-sorts functional materials, optics and sensing
  9. 2013Seven group companies absorbed; renamed Konica Minolta, Inc.

With both founding trades gone, what remained was a company running on office equipment, and it ran well at first: operating profit of $883.1M (¥104bn) in the year to March 2007 met the medium-term plan a year early, and $1.2B (¥120bn) the following year was the best result since the merger. The financial crisis then halved it, and by April 2013 the holding company built to make the merger possible had been folded back into a single operating company.

Operating profit of ¥104.0bn in the year after the founding trades closed

In the year after the founding trades were closed, the year to March 2007, consolidated operating profit came to $883.1M (¥104bn), reaching the target figure of the medium-term management plan a year early. In April 2006 Ota Yoshikatsu (太田義勝), Minolta’s last president, became president of Konica Minolta Holdings. Ota said the point of the merger had lain in office equipment from the beginning, explaining that at Minolta too office equipment had accounted for more than 70 per cent of revenue before the merger (Shukan Toyo Keizai, 22 September 2007). In April 2007 the domestic sales company and the technical-service subsidiary of the medical business were combined to launch Konica Minolta Healthcare, and the company was rebuilt on two legs: office equipment centred on multifunction printers, and optical components and functional materials.

The overseas sales network for office equipment was widened further. In June 2008 Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. acquired Danka Office Imaging Company of the United States, thickening the North American sales network. Consolidated operating profit for the year to March 2008 was $1.2B (¥120bn), the highest since the merger. The practical work of the merger itself had been finished in about eighteen months with March 2005 as the target date: in each country the sales companies and the dealers were kept or dropped, and brand, sales channels, design philosophy and information systems were each brought onto one. Looking back on the period, Ota said that a good deal had been forced through.

The post-Lehman slowdown, and the dissolution of the holding company

The financial crisis of autumn 2008 turned demand around. Consolidated revenue for the year to March 2009 was $10.1B (¥948bn) and operating profit $600.9M (¥56bn), close to half the previous year, and by the year to March 2010 they had fallen to $9.2B (¥804bn) and $500.2M (¥44bn). Net profit likewise dropped to $161.4M (¥15bn) in the year to March 2009 and $192.5M (¥17bn) in the year to March 2010, less than a quarter of the $665.8M (¥69bn) of the year to March 2008. Demand for office copiers fell worldwide, while the fixed costs of the sales network the merger had widened stayed where they were. In April 2009 the presidency passed from Ota to Matsuzaki Masatoshi (松﨑正年), and the executive line-up was replaced.

What followed was a steady undoing of the functions that had been divided beneath the holding company. In October 2010 the printing-related business was transferred from Konica Minolta MG to Konica Minolta Business Technologies, and the domestic sales companies were combined. In April 2012 a reorganisation within the group re-sorted responsibility for the new functional materials, optics and sensing businesses. In April 2013 seven group companies were absorbed, the pure holding company became an operating company, and the name was changed to Konica Minolta, Inc. The holding company set up for the sake of the merger had served out its purpose in ten years. In the year to March 2013, the year of the shift to an operating company, consolidated revenue was $8.3B (¥813bn) and operating profit $416M (¥41bn) — short of the $11.2B (¥1.3tn) of revenue and $1.3B (¥150bn) of operating profit that had been set out as targets for the 2005 financial year when the merger was announced.

Read the full history in Japanese →

2014A diversification strategy that failed, and a ¥103.1bn impairment

Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY2014 · consolidated
Revenue$8.9B
Net income$206M
Net margin2.3%
FY2025 · consolidated
Revenue$7.5B
Net income-$317M
Net margin-4.2%
  1. 2014Matsuzaki Masatoshi hands the presidency to Yamana Shoei
  2. 2016Healthcare sales arm absorbs the office-equipment arm to form Konica Minolta Japan
  3. 2016Yamana becomes president and CEO; the post of CEO is newly created
  4. 2017Ambry Genetics Corporation of the United States acquired in October
  5. 2019Operating profit peaks in FY18, then falls to ¥8.2bn in FY19
  6. 2021FY20 posts an operating loss of ¥16.3bn and a net loss of ¥15.2bn
  7. 2022Yamana hands the presidency to Daiko Toshimitsu; TSE Prime listing
  8. 2023FY22 revenue recovers to ¥1,130.4bn but the net loss reaches ¥103.1bn
  9. 2023FY23–FY25 medium-term plan sets out selection and concentration
  10. 2024Invicro, LLC transferred; toner alliance signed with Fujifilm Business Innovation
  11. 2025Transfer of all Ambry Genetics shares to Tempus AI completed in February
  12. 2025Global structural reform completed; headcount down about 5,200 since March 2024

From 2014 Konica Minolta tried to buy its way out of depending on office equipment, and the emblem of that attempt was Ambry Genetics, the American gene-diagnostics company acquired in October 2017 for about $802.4M (¥90bn). It never earned what had been assumed of it: the goodwill came due in the year to March 2023 as part of a net loss of $733.8M (¥103bn), and by February 2025 the company had sold Ambry on and cut about 5,200 people, the largest workforce reduction in its history.

Diversifying beyond office equipment with the Ambry Genetics acquisition

After the presidency passed from Matsuzaki Masatoshi to Yamana Shoei (山名昌衛) in April 2014, Konica Minolta set out to escape an earnings structure that depended on office equipment, making diversifying acquisitions in areas outside it. In April 2016 Konica Minolta Healthcare, the domestic sales company for healthcare, absorbed Konica Minolta Business Solutions Japan, the domestic sales company for office equipment, to launch Konica Minolta Japan, pushing forward the consolidation of the domestic sales network; at the same time the domestic sales arm for measuring instruments in Konica Minolta’s industrial materials and equipment business was transferred to it. In June 2016 Yamana became president and CEO, the post of CEO having been newly created. The emblematic move was the acquisition in October 2017 of Ambry Genetics Corporation, the American gene-diagnostics company. It was a decision to enter the gene-diagnostics market as a precision-medicine business and to place the possession of American medical data at the centre of the growth strategy.

Ambry and the other businesses outside office equipment, however, went on without delivering the earnings contribution assumed at the time of purchase. Operating profit peaked at $572.4M (¥62bn) in FY18, the year to March 2019, then fell to $76.8M (¥8bn) in FY19, the year to March 2020, and in that same year the company fell to a net loss of $28.1M (¥3bn) (¥3,073m), its first loss in about twenty years. Even before the pandemic began, the structure of Konica Minolta’s businesses was showing signs of decay. The acquisitions outside office equipment became the emblem of impairment and of post-merger integration problems; with integration work that would not go smoothly and a worsening market coinciding, they were carried forward as a management problem without ever producing the diversification effect expected of them. Difficulty in adapting to the regulatory environment and the insurance-reimbursement processes particular to the gene-diagnostics business coincided with structural change in demand for office equipment, and a review of the whole business portfolio became the central management task of the early 2020s.

The pandemic, and a net loss of ¥103.1bn

In the year to March 2021 (FY20), Konica Minolta posted losses in earnest: an operating loss of $148.5M (¥16bn) (¥16,266m) and a net loss of $138.5M (¥15bn). Behind them lay the fall in office demand under the pandemic, which cut unit sales of copier hardware and broke the assumptions behind non-hardware revenue — consumables and service. In FY21, the year to March 2022, an operating loss of $169.7M (¥22bn) (¥22,297m) and a net loss of $198.7M (¥26bn) followed; growing impairment risk and damage to the financial base were laid bare, and the heaviness of the dependence on an earnings structure resting on office equipment alone was thrown into relief. In April 2022 the presidency passed from Yamana to Daiko Toshimitsu (大幸利充) as representative executive officer, president and CEO, in an executive line-up charged with drawing up a management plan for the turnaround.

The decisive blow came in FY22, the year to March 2023. Revenue recovered to $8.0B (¥1.13tn), but the company booked goodwill impairment on Ambry Genetics and other businesses, and the net loss swelled to $733.8M (¥103bn) (¥103,153m). The diversifying acquisitions outside office equipment had surfaced as an impairment of $733.8M (¥103bn). In April 2022 the company moved from the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange to the Prime Market under the exchange’s revision of its market segments, but in performance terms the damage the impairment did to the financial base struck the capital market’s assessment directly, and drawing up the next management plan for a turnaround became urgent. Only five years after the Ambry purchase the company had no choice but to sketch a path towards treating it as a discontinued operation; a rethink of the diversification strategy was demanded of senior management, and scrutiny of the acquisition strategy itself was added to the list of management problems.

Completing the medium-term plan’s selection and concentration

In May 2023, during Daiko’s tenure, the FY23–FY25 medium-term management plan was drawn up. Under a policy of completing the selection and concentration of businesses in FY23 and FY24 and positioning FY25 as the year for establishing a base for growth, the commitment was to carve out and clear away the non-priority business (precision medicine) and the businesses being redirected (DW-DX and imaging-IoT solutions). It was a turnaround plan in earnest, aimed at getting out of the red, and it set concrete numerical targets before investors as well. In May 2024 the company signed a toner alliance agreement with Fujifilm Business Innovation, seeking to stabilise supply in the light of the toner-plant explosion of FY21, and in September of the same year the two drew up an agreement to establish a joint procurement company for the office-equipment supply chain — 75 per cent Fujifilm BI, 25 per cent Konica Minolta, with a staff of about 220 — to complement one another.

In April 2024 the company transferred its entire interest in Invicro, LLC, part of the precision-medicine business, for a cash inflow of about $61.4M (¥9bn), the first withdrawal from a non-priority business. In November 2024 it signed a contract to transfer all shares in Ambry Genetics to Tempus AI of the United States for US$600m (US$375m in cash plus US$225m in Tempus shares, with a gain on transfer expected at $274M (¥41bn)), completing the transfer in February 2025. At the same time it booked about $133.6M (¥20bn) of one-off costs for the full year as a global structural reform, and between the end of March 2024 and the first quarter of FY25 it reduced headcount by about 5,200 — the largest workforce reduction in the company’s history. FY24 closed with full-year revenue of $7.5B (¥1.13tn), a full-year operating loss of $427.7M (¥64bn) and a net loss for the period of $317.4M (¥48bn), concentrating one-off costs from the structural reform and the elimination of unrealised intra-group profits in order to settle the acquisition strategy of 2017.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Key decisions — the author’s view

The turning points, read in full: what was at stake, what was chosen and what the revenue did around it. The Japanese edition is the edition of record and carries the sourced dossier behind each decision — background, options weighed, outcome — linked under every decision.

Revenue (¥ bn) · net margin % · around FY2003

Key decision · 2003

The share-exchange merger with Minolta and the founding of Konica Minolta Holdings (2003)

What was settled first was not the businesses but the governance

What had been settled before the exchange ratio was who would decide what after the merger. Konica moved to a pure holding company four months before the merger and to a committee-based board two months before it, putting outside directors in the majority on all three committees. President Iwai Fumio said later, I have no authority over personnel and no authority to set pay. The nomination committee, on the other hand, can replace me at any time. A board divided four ways to the old Konica, four to the old Minolta and four to the outside appears to have been designed to place the question of which side had swallowed the other outside the discussion. Rebuilding the personnel system from scratch, rather than taking the best of both companies, followed from the same thinking.

Because the shape of governance was settled first, though, the choosing between businesses was left for later. Film and cameras survived the merger as operating companies, and Toyo Keizai called them sanctuaries. The two businesses were closed three years afterwards, at a price of 2,243 job cuts and $906.4M (¥105bn) in extraordinary losses. What could not be cut at the time of the merger was cut later, at a higher price. Then again, it is not clear whether the two companies could have reached agreement at all had each not kept its founding trade. The possibility remains that putting off the decision to close them was the condition on which the merger itself became possible.

This decision in Japanese — the full sourced dossier →

Revenue (¥ bn) · net margin % · around FY2017

Key decision · 2017

The large acquisition of Ambry Genetics of the United States and a full entry into cancer gene diagnostics (2017)

The dependence on office equipment remained

At the core of this acquisition lay the question of how the main business could be moved elsewhere, out of a structure that leaned for its earnings on mature office equipment. Extending the chemical technology built up in film, the founding trade, into diagnostics, and grafting gene diagnostics of world standard onto it, can be seen as coherent as a lineage of technology. But about $802.4M (¥90bn) was also a bet that could not be allowed to fail, for a company hurrying towards its next pillar while still carrying a mature business. In the name given to it at the time — an all-out stroke — expectation was mixed with the narrowness of the line of retreat.

In the event, gene diagnostics did not become the main earner within a few years, and was released to a third party by way of being classified as a non-priority business. A gain was made on the sale, but the original aim of growing a pillar to replace office equipment by the company’s own hand went unfulfilled, and the problem was carried over to the next stage. The decision to sell an acquired business at a high price and withdraw can be credited as a discipline that avoided a widening of losses, while it also reflects how difficult diversification itself is. How far a business can be extended around the technology of the founding trade — Konica Minolta’s capital allocation appears to be still in the middle of looking for the answer.

This decision in Japanese — the full sourced dossier →

Written & translated by Yutaka Sugiura

References & sources

This English edition follows the Japanese one chapter by chapter. The Japanese edition remains the edition of record: it carries the source-by-source citations, the financial tables and the shareholder and executive records. 日本語版（詳細）— Konica Minolta full history in Japanese →

  1. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968), the Minolta Camera entry.
  2. Shukan Toyo Keizai — 週刊東洋経済 (Toyo Keizai Inc.): 5 March 2005, on the governance and personnel system of the merged company, including president Iwai Fumio; 22 September 2007, including president Ota Yoshikatsu on the office-equipment logic of the merger.

Yen amounts are converted at the average rate of each figure’s own year — not today’s rate; revenue charts are shown in yen. Exchange rates & sources — the full ¥/US$ table →

Data API

Konica Minolta’s history, financials, executives and shareholders are published as static JSON — no key, plain GET. Full specification →

/api/4902/manifest.json ·/api/4902/history.json ·/api/4902/timeline.json ·/api/4902/decisions.json ·/api/4902/executives.json ·/api/4902/shareholders.json ·/api/4902/financials.json ·/api/4902/financials-longterm.json ·/api/4902/segments.json ·/api/4902/regions.json ·/api/4902/workforce.json · /api/4902/decisions/{slug}.json

/api/companies.json ·/api/decisions.json