07.20.23
Rank: #30 (Last year: #29)
¥474.6B ($3.57 Billion; Life Care)
Prior Fiscal: ¥407.5B
Percentage Change: +16.5%
Best FY22 Quarter: Q4 ¥185.7B (total)
Latest Quarter: Q4 ¥124.9B (Life Care)
No. of Employees: 36,571 (total)
Global Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan
KEY EXECUTIVES:
Eiichiro Ikeda, President and CEO
Ryo Hirooka, Chief Financial Officer
Tomoko Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer
Hiroaki Yoshihara, Lead Independent Director, Board of Directors
The sakuras are blooming earlier than usual.
The pale pink flowers that traditionally herald the start of spring have begun spreading their small rounded petals in winter’s final weeks.
This year, sakuras—a.k.a., cherry blossoms—adorned Tokyo’s parks and suburbs 10 days ahead of schedule, tying record earliest start dates set in 2020 and 2021, the country’s weather agency confirmed. Cherry blossoms peaked in Kyoto (once Japan’s capital) on March 26 in 2021, the earliest date in more than 1,200 years.
The trees couldn’t wait as long this year to spread their beauty—the blossoms were spotted in Osaka in mid-March. The average flowering date is now April 4, about two weeks earlier than it was in 1850.
The early-blooming sakuras are the latest victims of a hotter planet: Weather data show that greenhouse gas emissions and urban warming have pushed up the cherry blossoms’ full-flowering dates by 11 days.
By 2100, peak blooms in March could be a regular occurrence, the data suggest.
“We find a significant anthropogenic shift in the mean flowering season of over a week, about half of which is due to urban warming,” scientists from the United Kingdom’s national weather service and Osaka Metropolitan University concluded in their study. “By the end of the century and under medium emissions, the early shift is estimated to further increase by almost a week. Extremely early flowering dates, as in 2021, would be rare without human influence, but are now estimated to be 15 times more likely, and are expected to occur at least once a century. Such events are projected to occur every few years by 2100, when they would no longer be considered extreme.”
The early-blooming sakura is just one consequence of a rapidly-warming Earth. The other well-documented repercussions include droughts, more severe storms, coastal flooding, acidic oceans crop damage, potential food shortages, and geopolitical shocks. Such impacts have prompted governments worldwide to initiate strategies for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Three years ago, former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga promised his country would be carbon neutral by 2050, saying the goal was a sound economic growth strategy.
“Responding to climate change is no longer a constraint on economic growth,” he said in his first parliament address. “We need to change our thinking to the view that taking assertive measures against climate change will lead to changes in industrial structure and the economy that will bring about great growth.”
The potential for such growth likely motivated more than 700 companies, local governments, and non-governmental organizations to join the Japan Climate Initiative, an effort to foster action on the world’s warming temperatures. Among its members is HOYA, which joined the alliance last fall in its bid to improve its environmental and social accountability.
“In the midst of dramatic changes in the global society,” CEO Eiichiro Ikeda said in an online post, “we believe that responding flexibly and swiftly to the changes of the times, taking on the challenge of creating the value that society needs, and meeting those expectations are HOYA’s strengths and the vision that we aspire to.”
In keeping with that vision, HOYA joined the United Nations Global Compact and the RE100 international environmental initiative in February. The latter encourages companies to procure all electricity consumed in business activities from renewable sources. HOYA has committed to sourcing all renewable electricity in its global operations by 2040, with a 60% interim target by 2030. In addition to updating to high-efficiency equipment and energy-saving activities at its production sites, the company has begun installing solar panels and switching to electricity derived from renewable energy globally.
Part of HOYA’s vision—at least to shareholders, anyway—also involves fiscal stability, which the company soundly achieved in fiscal 2022 (year ended March 31, 2023) despite a small loss in one of its business units. Total revenue jumped 9.4% to ¥723.5 billion, while Life Care sales surged 16.5% to ¥474.6 billion. Both increases were slightly offset by a 1.6% decrease in IT proceeds to ¥244.3 billion.
HOYA fortified its future growth prospects through a pair of partnerships and a product launch. The first alliance occurred last summer with Chinese eyeglass lens manufacturer Jiangsu Sigo Optical. The partnership provides HOYA with access to a wider range of plastic and polycarbonate finished single vision lenses, enhancing its existing lens portfolio and providing a more sustainable supply chain for customers.
Under the terms of the transaction, HOYA will receive a near 61% equity stake (Jiangsu Sigo’s founder retains more than 39% ownership interest). Jiangsu Sigo continues to operate and manage its manufacturing and distribution facilities in Danyang, China, as a separate entity.
HOYA’s second partnership is with NIDEK Co. Ltd., a designer, manufacturer, and distributer of ophthalmic and optometric equipment. The global agreement creates a partnership between HOYA Vision Care and NIDEK, providing eye care professionals (ECPs) with a complete portfolio of optical instruments and products to provide a full-service approach to patient care. The union enhances eye care practitioners’ ability to offer the latest in eye and vision examination equipment, visual comfort, and performance to their patients.
“The strategic partnership with NIDEK aligns with HOYA Vision Care’s core mission to provide innovative solutions and products to our ECPs, enhancing their business and offerings to patients,” HOYA Vision Care CEO Alexandre Montague said in announcing the partnership in February 2023. “By bringing together our organizations’ optical expertise, technologies, and solutions, we are creating a seamless approach for our ECP business partners to expand their service offerings to their patients and focus on quality eye care for all.”
“Our collaboration with HOYA Vision Care is a great opportunity for us to provide more ECPs with seamless eyecare solutions and to support them in achieving greater patient satisfaction and enhancing patients’ quality of life,” NIDEK President/CEO Motoki Ozawa, said. “This collaboration allows us to deliver our products with their lenses, which offer complete patient care and directly lead to patients’ joy of vision.”
The NIDEK matchup occurred just one month after HOYA’s PENTAX Medical division gained CE Mark approval for a video processor and the i20c video endoscope series. Developed with a focus on healthcare providers’ needs, the new PENTAX Medical INSPIRA video processor maintains compatibility with PENTAX Medical’s recent endoscope models and sets new standards in combination with the new i20c video endoscope generation.
The INSPIRA video processor delivers striking image quality with any PENTAX Medical endoscope. Compatible with two connection types, it allows for upgrading the legacy endoscopy portfolio [to the latest imaging standards. Consequently, the image quality of current endoscope generations meets clinical needs for an extended time period. This smart feature thus extends the lifecycle of each endoscope for greater sustainability.
The INSPIRA video processor combines cutting-edge functionalities in one plug-and-play solution with intuitive usability. The video processor is controlled via a customizable touch panel equipped with innovative image enhancement functionalities and 4K image processing.
The i20c endoscopes are designed with superior ergonomics for healthcare professionals and exceptional imaging for the highest procedure quality. Physicians instantly benefit from improved maneuverability, angulation and handling, combined with further enhanced vision. The control body and light-weight connector of the i20c video endoscopes are designed to further optimize the endoscopic workflow.
“PENTAX Medical INSPIRA video processor not only upgrades legacy instruments’ imaging capabilities, in combination with our new i20c endoscope generation, it is a milestone for endoscopy,” PENTAX MEDICAL Global President Rainer Burkard said. “In line with our commitment to continually innovate products, this solution provides a future-proof platform and we are proud of the image quality it brings.”
HOYA made one personnel move during its most recent fiscal year, appointing Klaus Mergener, M.D., Ph.D., as chief medical officer of PENTAX Lifecare Division (PENTAX Medical). Mergener is a clinical gastroenterologist with special interest and expertise in interventional endoscopy and cancer prevention. He currently serves as an affiliate professor of Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle and maintains a busy endoscopic practice.
Mergener attended medical school in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, Germany, and at Duke University and Harvard University in the United States. He completed his medical/doctorate thesis summa cum laude with 2008 Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Harald zur Hausen at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. He then returned to Duke University for his residency in internal medicine and his fellowship training in gastroenterology and interventional endoscopy. He earned an MBA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Mergener is a member of several professional organizations including the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, where he served as president from 2020 to 2021 and as vice chair of its Foundation from 2014 to 2018.
“We are pleased to have Dr. Klaus Mergener support PENTAX Medical in driving our mission to become the preferred choice in flexible endoscopy from screening to therapeutics providing for integrated solutions to optimize patient care,” PENTAX Medical Global President Rainer Burkard said upon Mergener’s appointment.
¥474.6B ($3.57 Billion; Life Care)
Prior Fiscal: ¥407.5B
Percentage Change: +16.5%
Best FY22 Quarter: Q4 ¥185.7B (total)
Latest Quarter: Q4 ¥124.9B (Life Care)
No. of Employees: 36,571 (total)
Global Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan
KEY EXECUTIVES:
Eiichiro Ikeda, President and CEO
Ryo Hirooka, Chief Financial Officer
Tomoko Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer
Hiroaki Yoshihara, Lead Independent Director, Board of Directors
The sakuras are blooming earlier than usual.
The pale pink flowers that traditionally herald the start of spring have begun spreading their small rounded petals in winter’s final weeks.
This year, sakuras—a.k.a., cherry blossoms—adorned Tokyo’s parks and suburbs 10 days ahead of schedule, tying record earliest start dates set in 2020 and 2021, the country’s weather agency confirmed. Cherry blossoms peaked in Kyoto (once Japan’s capital) on March 26 in 2021, the earliest date in more than 1,200 years.
The trees couldn’t wait as long this year to spread their beauty—the blossoms were spotted in Osaka in mid-March. The average flowering date is now April 4, about two weeks earlier than it was in 1850.
The early-blooming sakuras are the latest victims of a hotter planet: Weather data show that greenhouse gas emissions and urban warming have pushed up the cherry blossoms’ full-flowering dates by 11 days.
By 2100, peak blooms in March could be a regular occurrence, the data suggest.
“We find a significant anthropogenic shift in the mean flowering season of over a week, about half of which is due to urban warming,” scientists from the United Kingdom’s national weather service and Osaka Metropolitan University concluded in their study. “By the end of the century and under medium emissions, the early shift is estimated to further increase by almost a week. Extremely early flowering dates, as in 2021, would be rare without human influence, but are now estimated to be 15 times more likely, and are expected to occur at least once a century. Such events are projected to occur every few years by 2100, when they would no longer be considered extreme.”
The early-blooming sakura is just one consequence of a rapidly-warming Earth. The other well-documented repercussions include droughts, more severe storms, coastal flooding, acidic oceans crop damage, potential food shortages, and geopolitical shocks. Such impacts have prompted governments worldwide to initiate strategies for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Three years ago, former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga promised his country would be carbon neutral by 2050, saying the goal was a sound economic growth strategy.
“Responding to climate change is no longer a constraint on economic growth,” he said in his first parliament address. “We need to change our thinking to the view that taking assertive measures against climate change will lead to changes in industrial structure and the economy that will bring about great growth.”
The potential for such growth likely motivated more than 700 companies, local governments, and non-governmental organizations to join the Japan Climate Initiative, an effort to foster action on the world’s warming temperatures. Among its members is HOYA, which joined the alliance last fall in its bid to improve its environmental and social accountability.
“In the midst of dramatic changes in the global society,” CEO Eiichiro Ikeda said in an online post, “we believe that responding flexibly and swiftly to the changes of the times, taking on the challenge of creating the value that society needs, and meeting those expectations are HOYA’s strengths and the vision that we aspire to.”
In keeping with that vision, HOYA joined the United Nations Global Compact and the RE100 international environmental initiative in February. The latter encourages companies to procure all electricity consumed in business activities from renewable sources. HOYA has committed to sourcing all renewable electricity in its global operations by 2040, with a 60% interim target by 2030. In addition to updating to high-efficiency equipment and energy-saving activities at its production sites, the company has begun installing solar panels and switching to electricity derived from renewable energy globally.
Part of HOYA’s vision—at least to shareholders, anyway—also involves fiscal stability, which the company soundly achieved in fiscal 2022 (year ended March 31, 2023) despite a small loss in one of its business units. Total revenue jumped 9.4% to ¥723.5 billion, while Life Care sales surged 16.5% to ¥474.6 billion. Both increases were slightly offset by a 1.6% decrease in IT proceeds to ¥244.3 billion.
HOYA fortified its future growth prospects through a pair of partnerships and a product launch. The first alliance occurred last summer with Chinese eyeglass lens manufacturer Jiangsu Sigo Optical. The partnership provides HOYA with access to a wider range of plastic and polycarbonate finished single vision lenses, enhancing its existing lens portfolio and providing a more sustainable supply chain for customers.
Under the terms of the transaction, HOYA will receive a near 61% equity stake (Jiangsu Sigo’s founder retains more than 39% ownership interest). Jiangsu Sigo continues to operate and manage its manufacturing and distribution facilities in Danyang, China, as a separate entity.
HOYA’s second partnership is with NIDEK Co. Ltd., a designer, manufacturer, and distributer of ophthalmic and optometric equipment. The global agreement creates a partnership between HOYA Vision Care and NIDEK, providing eye care professionals (ECPs) with a complete portfolio of optical instruments and products to provide a full-service approach to patient care. The union enhances eye care practitioners’ ability to offer the latest in eye and vision examination equipment, visual comfort, and performance to their patients.
“The strategic partnership with NIDEK aligns with HOYA Vision Care’s core mission to provide innovative solutions and products to our ECPs, enhancing their business and offerings to patients,” HOYA Vision Care CEO Alexandre Montague said in announcing the partnership in February 2023. “By bringing together our organizations’ optical expertise, technologies, and solutions, we are creating a seamless approach for our ECP business partners to expand their service offerings to their patients and focus on quality eye care for all.”
“Our collaboration with HOYA Vision Care is a great opportunity for us to provide more ECPs with seamless eyecare solutions and to support them in achieving greater patient satisfaction and enhancing patients’ quality of life,” NIDEK President/CEO Motoki Ozawa, said. “This collaboration allows us to deliver our products with their lenses, which offer complete patient care and directly lead to patients’ joy of vision.”
The NIDEK matchup occurred just one month after HOYA’s PENTAX Medical division gained CE Mark approval for a video processor and the i20c video endoscope series. Developed with a focus on healthcare providers’ needs, the new PENTAX Medical INSPIRA video processor maintains compatibility with PENTAX Medical’s recent endoscope models and sets new standards in combination with the new i20c video endoscope generation.
The INSPIRA video processor delivers striking image quality with any PENTAX Medical endoscope. Compatible with two connection types, it allows for upgrading the legacy endoscopy portfolio [to the latest imaging standards. Consequently, the image quality of current endoscope generations meets clinical needs for an extended time period. This smart feature thus extends the lifecycle of each endoscope for greater sustainability.
The INSPIRA video processor combines cutting-edge functionalities in one plug-and-play solution with intuitive usability. The video processor is controlled via a customizable touch panel equipped with innovative image enhancement functionalities and 4K image processing.
The i20c endoscopes are designed with superior ergonomics for healthcare professionals and exceptional imaging for the highest procedure quality. Physicians instantly benefit from improved maneuverability, angulation and handling, combined with further enhanced vision. The control body and light-weight connector of the i20c video endoscopes are designed to further optimize the endoscopic workflow.
“PENTAX Medical INSPIRA video processor not only upgrades legacy instruments’ imaging capabilities, in combination with our new i20c endoscope generation, it is a milestone for endoscopy,” PENTAX MEDICAL Global President Rainer Burkard said. “In line with our commitment to continually innovate products, this solution provides a future-proof platform and we are proud of the image quality it brings.”
HOYA made one personnel move during its most recent fiscal year, appointing Klaus Mergener, M.D., Ph.D., as chief medical officer of PENTAX Lifecare Division (PENTAX Medical). Mergener is a clinical gastroenterologist with special interest and expertise in interventional endoscopy and cancer prevention. He currently serves as an affiliate professor of Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle and maintains a busy endoscopic practice.
Mergener attended medical school in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, Germany, and at Duke University and Harvard University in the United States. He completed his medical/doctorate thesis summa cum laude with 2008 Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Harald zur Hausen at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. He then returned to Duke University for his residency in internal medicine and his fellowship training in gastroenterology and interventional endoscopy. He earned an MBA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Mergener is a member of several professional organizations including the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, where he served as president from 2020 to 2021 and as vice chair of its Foundation from 2014 to 2018.
“We are pleased to have Dr. Klaus Mergener support PENTAX Medical in driving our mission to become the preferred choice in flexible endoscopy from screening to therapeutics providing for integrated solutions to optimize patient care,” PENTAX Medical Global President Rainer Burkard said upon Mergener’s appointment.