Sluggish demand puts a big dent in sales of Sharp's Thai subsidiary
SHARP'S THAI subsidiary has revised its 2015 sales target down from a range of 10-15 per cent set earlier this year to just 3 per cent, due to sluggish domestic demand. Some of the Japanese maker's conventional product categories, such as television set
The company plans to launch new models of electrical appliances – especially TV sets, refrigerators, air-conditioners and air purifiers – to stimulate the market during the peak selling season in the current quarter.
Masami Oue, managing director of Sharp Thai, yesterday said that negative economic factors, which had hit Thailand since the beginning of the year, had affected the company’s overall performance in its 2015 fiscal year, which ends next March, by sharply slowing down sales.
Sales in the first six months of its fiscal year came in at about Bt2.6 billion, which was stagnant compared to the same period last year.
“We believe that the tendency will be prolonged to the whole period of this fiscal year, resulting in our sales performance increasing by only 3 per cent to reach about Bt5.2 billion, which is much lower than the previous growth target of between 10 per cent and 15 per cent, set earlier this year,” said Oue.
With TV sets contributing about 34 per cent of sales at Sharp Thai, another 54 per cent comes from other home appliances, such as air-conditioners, refrigerators, microwave ovens, washing machines and air purifiers, with office-automation products such as printers and faxes accounting for the remainder, he said.
“In addition to being impacted by negative economic factors in Thailand, resulting in declining consumer purchasing power, we have been also affected by the baht’s depreciation, leaving us with higher business costs, which have surged by more than 6 per cent so far this year,” he explained. The managing director stressed, however, that Thailand still maintained its status as one of the major manufacturing locations for Sharp’s home-appliance products in Asean.
While the company’s manufacturing plant in Bang Pakong district, Chachoengsao, will be capable of handling any future expansion for the next several years, Sharp currently has no urgent plan to expand the facility, he added.
