Tracking market shares for printing equipment has always been a bit of a guessing game as any of the industry's marketing experts can attest to.  Only the listed companies (and their number is shrinking...) provide some level of visibility and it still requires some understanding of the industry to make sense out of the provided information.

Now Ryobi and Mitsubishi announced the combination of their respective sheetfed businesses into a 60/40 JV with Ryobi controlling the 60%.  Interesting...

The new company with 450 employees has a sales target of 30 billion Yen (about $300 million) and a 2% profit target.  That revenue would be less than double Ryobi's recent stand alone number, perhaps an explanation of the 60/40 split. 

While the new company would become #4 with a market share of about 8%, I am afraid it will become another member of the "our numbers are private" club.

At least for now we still have some visibility for Ryobi and here is the latest tally, with the usual adjustments by yours truly.  With the objective being a reasonable estimate for sheetfed equipment, the latest HD quarter has additionally been adjusted to reflect the latest reporting change that includes some Gallus and Prinect business in the Equipment segment.

As noted in a previous post, Komori has seen strong orders in the most recent quarter and - at least for now - is catching up with KBA.

Getting back to the recent Ryobi/Mitsubishi news, the next obvious question is what Mitsubishi will do with its web press business. 

Earlier this year I wrote about the Euro/Yen development and its effect on Komori's fortunes vs. its primarily German competitors.  Komori's market position is already benefiting from the new FX trend and the continued Yen weakening through at least the end of June leads one to expect further positive development in a generally uninspiring market.   

The next graph attempts to compare the order development for sheetfed equipment of the three mayor sheetfed players, with 2012-Q1 orders being 100%. The second bar shows the 2012-Q2 when all companies booked most of their DRUPA orders. 

Afterwards new business was actually shrinking for the next three quarters for the two German suppliers while Komori's order trend developed positively.

Looking at 2013-Q2 on the above FX chart I would expect to see more positive news from Komori.