NTN - Company History

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Financial history 1957–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1918
Founder Nishizono Jiro 西園二郎 · Niwa Noboru 丹羽昇
Founding location 三重県桑名
Core business at founding Manufacture and sale of ball bearings
Listed 1949
President Ukai Eiichi President since 2021 (age 69, as of 2026)
Current priority Integration with NSK · Site consolidation Integrating with NSK and consolidating the loss-making sites
Founding
In March 1918 research and trial manufacture of ball bearings began at the Nishizono ironworks in Kuwana-cho, Kuwana district, Mie prefecture. A small works that could not carry the precision heat-treatment and grinding equipment on its own tied up in May 1923 with Tomoe Shokai, a trading house that had the distribution network, and began making and selling domestic bearings under the NTN mark. A division of labour in which one company made and another sold stood at the starting point. It became the limited partnership NTN Seisakusho in March 1927 and Toyo Bearing Manufacturing in January 1937, and opened the Kuwana plant in October 1939. In May 1949 it listed on both the Osaka and the Tokyo stock exchange. The NTN mark did not become the corporate name itself until October 1989, sixty-six years after it was first raised.
The Decision
The company kept moving the place where it made things closer to the place where they were bought, and the weight of that investment became the thing that bound it. After putting a sales company into New York in January 1963, it began local manufacture near Chicago in 1971 and lined up plants across the Americas, Europe and Asia. In March 1979 it turned nimbly from retrenchment to higher output and recovered from three straight years of losses after the oil shock. From May 2002 it broke up its siloed organisation under the NP21 plan and returned to a record profit in the year to March 2004. In July 2006 it took a capital stake in S.N.R. Roulements of France and made it a consolidated subsidiary in April 2008, gaining a base for development and production in Europe. The equipment built in expectation of future automotive demand proved excessive, however, and impairments piled up. The policy of making things where the demand is has not been changed; what is being consolidated is only the sites it put down in excess.
Today
Europe, the region built around S.N.R., is the only one still in the red, and has been for five years running. Revenue of $5.2B (¥826bn) in the year to March 2026 breaks down into $1.4B (¥216bn) in Japan, $1.7B (¥263bn) in the Americas, $1.2B (¥194bn) in Europe and $973.1M (¥154bn) in Asia and elsewhere. Against segment profits of $111.3M (¥18bn) in Asia and elsewhere, $58.2M (¥9bn) in Japan and $34.8M (¥6bn) in the Americas, Europe made a loss of $7M (¥1bn). Operating profit was $196M (¥31bn), an operating margin of 3.8 per cent, and net profit was $81.6M (¥13bn), a recovery from the net loss of $159M (¥24bn) of the year before. The European loss has narrowed from its widest point, $32.7M (¥4bn) in the year to March 2022, but it has not turned positive. The European development base obtained by acquisition has still not reached break-even eighteen years after it was consolidated.
Competition
Against the partner it is to merge with on stated equal terms, NTN falls short on both scale and margin. World share of the bearing market in 2024 was 17.7 per cent for SKF of Sweden, 13.3 per cent for NSK and 10.7 per cent for NTN, which ranks second in Japan. On 12 May 2026 the two companies announced a management integration through the establishment of a joint holding company. If it goes through, their combined share of about 24 per cent would pass SKF, on revenue of some $10.7B (¥1.7tn). The president and chief executive of the new holding company, however, is to be nominated by NSK and the chairman by NTN. NTN's operating margin of 3.7 per cent for the 2025 financial year and its market capitalisation of about $1.6B (¥250bn) before the announcement were both below its partner's. The business tie-up of 1999 and the large-bearing joint venture of 2002 both came apart with the price-cartel penalties of 2012, and what drew the two separated companies back together was the fall in part counts brought by electric vehicles and the rise of the Chinese makers.

Timeline

1918–1971From Kuwana to the world — the birth of the NTN mark and the postwar rebuild

  1. 1918Research and trial manufacture of ball bearings begins at the Nishizono ironworks, Kuwana, Mie
  2. 1923Tomoe Shokai and the Nishizono ironworks tie up; domestic bearings sold under the NTN mark
  3. 1927NTN Seisakusho established as a separate company
  4. 1934The limited partnership NTN Seisakusho is reorganised as a joint-stock company
  5. 1937Renamed Toyo Bearing Manufacturing
  6. 1939Showa Bearing Manufacturing absorbed; the Kuwana plant opens in October
  7. 1949Listed on the first sections of the Osaka and Tokyo stock exchanges
  8. 1960Toyo Bearing Iwata works established in Shizuoka prefecture
  9. 1961Kongo Bearing (now the Wakayama works) made a subsidiary
  10. 1962NTN Wälzlager (Europa) established at Erkrath, Germany
  11. 1963NTN Bearing Corp. of America established in New York
  12. 1968NTN Bearing Corp. of Canada established at Mississauga
  13. 1971First US plant, American NTN Bearing Mfg., at Schiller Park; German production follows in December

1972–2012The tilt into automotive CVJs, and Europe bought through S.N.R.

  1. 1972Renamed NTN Toyo Bearing
  2. 1975NTN Elgin Corp. established at Elgin in the United States
  3. 1979Back in profit after three straight years of recurring losses, turning from retrenchment to higher output
  4. 1983The Toyo Bearing Iwata and Okayama works are merged in
  5. 1984Toyo Bearing Nagano works established
  6. 1985NTN-Bower Corp. established at Macomb in the United States
  7. 1989NTN Driveshaft established at Columbus, Ohio; company renamed NTN in October
  8. 1998NTN Manufacturing (Thailand) at Pluakdaeng; NTN Transmissions Europe at Allonnes
  9. 2002Recurring profit sinks to ¥2.7bn as the IT bubble bursts; the NP21 plan cuts 700 jobs
  10. 2006Capital participation in S.N.R. Roulements, later NTN-SNR
  11. 2008S.N.R. Roulements becomes a consolidated subsidiary
  12. 2009The Lehman crisis pushes the company to a net loss of ¥8.9bn
  13. 2010A second consecutive net loss, of ¥2.0bn

2013–2023Two years of losses, and the run-up to DRIVE NTN100 Final

  1. 2013Extraordinary losses of ¥19.9bn on the European cartel case; a net loss of ¥14.2bn
  2. 2014A second year of losses, ¥14.6bn; Okubo Hiroshi becomes president in June
  3. 2015Revenue of ¥701.9bn and a 6.2 per cent operating margin as results recover
  4. 2019Extraordinary losses of ¥19.3bn and a net loss of ¥7.0bn; a nominating-committee board from June
  5. 2020A net loss of ¥44.0bn, among the largest in the company history, on ¥34.2bn of impairments
  6. 2021A second consecutive loss under the pandemic; Ukai Eiichi becomes president in April
  7. 2022Moves to the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  8. 2023DRIVE NTN100 Phase 2 ends short of its operating-margin, inventory-turnover and ROE targets

Founding Story

1918–1971From Kuwana to the world — the birth of the NTN mark and the postwar rebuild

A provincial ironworks in Mie prefecture and a trading house in Osaka split the work of making and selling between them, and out of that division of labour came a three-letter mark that outlived both. Over the half-century that followed, the company listed early, absorbed rival bearing makers into a national plant network, and put sales companies into Germany and the United States before most of its peers — carrying revenue from $12.2M (¥4bn) in the year to August 1957 to $159.7M (¥58bn) in the year to March 1971.

NTN begins in a research room at the Nishizono ironworks

In March 1918, research and trial manufacture of ball bearings began at the Nishizono ironworks in Kuwana-cho, Kuwana district, Mie prefecture[1]. Japan at that time imported most of its bearings from Europe, and the attempt to make them at home began from the trial and error of a provincial workshop. In May 1923 the trading house Tomoe Shokai tied up with the Nishizono ironworks and began manufacturing and selling domestically made bearings under a three-letter mark, NTN[2]. This is the origin of the NTN brand. The mark combined the initials of Niwa Noboru (丹羽昇), the proprietor of Tomoe Shokai who became the first president of Toyo Bearing[3], with those of Tomoe Shokai and the Nishizono ironworks[4]. Combining a trading house's distribution network with an ironworks' manufacturing skill[5] was the only realistic route by which a small works that could not carry the capital investment alone could break into an industry that earned foreign currency. The template of NTN as a latecomer challenging a market held by the Europeans was formed inside this arrangement that separated selling from making.

In 1927 the bearing division of Tomoe Shokai was separated out and incorporated as NTN Seisakusho, a limited partnership with capital of ¥50,000[6][7]. It was reorganised as a joint-stock company in 1934[8], and in 1937 renamed Toyo Bearing Manufacturing Co.[9] Through the prewar and wartime years it built capacity in step with the expansion of military demand, growing during the war into one of Japan's largest bearing makers with a workforce of more than 1,500[10]. In October 1939 it opened a new plant at Kuwana, Mie prefecture[11], and that Kuwana works became the core production site of the postwar NTN — then still Toyo Bearing — and has remained for more than eighty years the floor on which its main products are made. It was also the site chosen, in a 2025 announcement, to consolidate production of the several-metre-diameter bearings built for wind turbines[12]: the manufacturing function at the founding site survived even the years of restructuring as the physical centre of gravity of the company.

The 1949 listing in Tokyo and Osaka, and the postwar spread of sites

In May 1949, as the postwar disorder began to settle, Toyo Bearing Manufacturing listed simultaneously on the first sections of the Osaka Stock Exchange and the Tokyo Stock Exchange[13]. The starting point had been harsh: the Kuwana plant was destroyed by bombing shortly before the surrender[14], and both the Kuwana and Takarazuka works remained under reparations designation until April 1952[15]. Bearings are indispensable to railways, machine tools and motor vehicles, and choosing to raise money from the capital markets on the back of reconstruction-era demand for plant and equipment was an early move for a Japanese bearing maker. The proceeds of the listing went into expanding the capacity of existing plants, and became the base of a production system built to catch the vigorous demand of the reconstruction years. Expansion of the Kuwana works and the absorption of production subsidiaries in the Kansai region continued from immediately after the listing, establishing a pattern in which the rapid growth of domestic demand was absorbed with money raised outside the company.

In the 1960s the company widened its network of domestic production sites. In March 1960 it established the Iwata works at Iwata, Shizuoka prefecture[16]; in May of the same year it brought Nishibayashi Seiko (later the Hirano works) under its wing[17]; and in April 1961 it took control of Kongo Bearing (now the Wakayama works)[18]. While building capacity by absorbing existing bearing makers, it also raised its share of a concentrating domestic market, consolidating a position as one of Japan's principal bearing makers alongside SKF, the world leader, and NSK, the domestic leader. As the supplier base of the motor industry broadened during the high-growth years, NTN grew its market share as a parts supplier — and in doing so laid, in this period, the ground for a business that would depend on automotive demand. Trade with the Japanese car makers settled in as the pillar of earnings, and that same structure is still carried forward as a problem in the medium-term plans of the 2020s.

Into Europe and America from 1962, and the groundwork for constant velocity joints

In January 1962 Toyo Bearing Manufacturing established NTN Wälzlager (Europa) GmbH at Erkrath, Germany[19]. As a European venture by a Japanese bearing maker this was early, and placing a sales base in Germany — the home ground of SKF, the world's largest bearing maker — was in itself a bold judgement. In January 1963 it set up NTN Bearing Corp. of America in New York[20] and moved into the American market as well. By putting a sales organisation across Europe and America within the first half of the 1960s, the company created the skeleton of a network of sites that led directly to local manufacturing from the 1970s onward. The web of business with European car makers that would later be the stage of the cartel case also began with these sales companies, and European selling remained a principal axis of the company for more than fifty years.

In January 1971 it established American NTN Bearing Mfg. Corp. at Schiller Park in the United States[21], bringing NTN's first American production site on stream. Advancing by stages from selling to local manufacture, it began to build a supply system of bearings for the North American car market. In December of the same year it also established NTN Kugellagerfabrik (Deutschland) GmbH at Mettmann, Germany[22], taking the same step from selling to making in Europe. In a capital-goods industry that carries both standard and special products, making them close to the point of demand is a precondition of competitiveness, because there is almost no other way to absorb the logistics cost of long-distance transport and the effect of currency swings. The NTN of the 1970s was in the period of fixing that precondition in place across Europe and America, while bringing new domestic sites such as the Okayama works and the Nagano works on stream in parallel[23].

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  2. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  3. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 — Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  4. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 — Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  5. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  6. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 — Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  7. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  8. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  9. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  10. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 — Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  11. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  12. NTN, results briefing, 2 May 2025↩
  13. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  14. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 — Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  15. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 — Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  16. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  17. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  18. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  19. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  20. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  21. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  22. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩
  23. NTN, securities report for the 126th term, FYE March 2025, corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha (1968), the NTN entry.
  2. NTN Corporation (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section, and the consolidated results for the years ended March 2009 to March 2024.
  3. NTN Corporation — results briefings and medium-term management plans, including the FY23 results briefing remarks of president Ukai Eiichi and the DRIVE NTN100 Phase 2 and DRIVE NTN100 Final plans.

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