2018_4q_omron_e

45/45 Questioner(4)

My first question is about how to think about growth investments. I am aware that you typically do not make disclosures on a quarterly basis. However, last fiscal year, I remember a comment to the effect that investments would increase in a stepwise function on a quarterly basis; it appears that the actual spending was in line with this comment. As it stands today, is it the case that investments will follow the pattern of last fiscal year, rising on a quarterly basis toward Q4? Or will there be significant investments from Q1? Any hint you might be able to provide would be very helpful. Actually, we are not overly focused on profitability on a quarterly basis in managing our business. We invest when necessary, as necessary. As noted previously, with products, improvements to manufacturing capacity, or the launch of new products, the earlier they are rolled out, the larger the scale of contribution to period earnings. From that perspective, we intend to put the pedal to the metal from the outset. This is reflected in how we have allocated investments. I recognize that it may be challenging to track this since we do not disclose to this level of detail on a quarterly basis, but we hope that you will trust that we will manage our business appropriately. Thank you. I have one more question. When I look at IAB in Japan and industry shipment statistics for control equipment by type, it looks like PLCs have been clearly slowing down over the last few months. However, servo motor shipments remain strong. Have you seen the momentum for PLCs at OMRON slow down? Also, although servo motor sales are probably quite small for you, are you seeing strong growth that is offsetting weakness in PLCs? Any color you can provide on the major product categories would be helpful. I apologize but we do not disclose information for individual product categories, so I cannot answer your question directly. However, I will say that IAB hit a new record high for monthly sales in March. Obviously, there is variance amongst the individual product types but I can say that the strong momentum has been maintained into FY2018. As well, we are focused on providing total solutions, as I mentioned earlier, which means we are selling products from across our broad product lineup as packages in combination with software. An increasing number of customers are buying total solutions from OMRON. Thank you. Are there any more questions? Since there does not appear to be any more questions we will close the Q&A session. We would be grateful if you can take the time to complete our feedback sheet. This concludes the FY2017 results briefing for Omron. Thank you for your participation today. (Yamada) Thank you for your participation. (Itagaki) Thank you.