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Under our strategic management plan, FUSION 10, the Daikin Group is striving for both business expansion and active contribution to solving global environmental problems as we aim to realize our goal of becoming the global No.1 air conditioning manufacturer.
For fiscal year 2009, Daikin foresaw within the harsh business climate and belated economic recovery occurring in developed countries that the global recession, which originated from the financial crisis, would be prolonged. We subsequently shifted our management focus to undertake all conceivable measures to securing short-term profit and then continued to meticulously sustain these efforts with priority measures that included increasing market share of existing products, expanding sales of environmental products, and initiating cost-cutting measures. We also took urgent measures for shrinking expenditures and vigorously promoted reductions in fixed costs.
Even as we began implementing these measures, we did not avert our gaze from mid- to long-term development and concentrated management resources on capital expenditures and R&D activities concerning essential themes such as a volume zone strategy through development of inverter volume zone models, heat pump heating/hot water supply business, Applied Systems (large-sized air conditioners for commercial applications), development of environmental products, and construction of a business foundation in emerging markets such as India and Brazil.
Although prospects for the global economy continue to have an element of instability from fear of turmoil in financial markets resulting from the financial crisis in Greece, there are also emerging regions with rapid growth such as China. When we compare the current situation to the same period last year, we gain a sense that the world economy may have bottomed out. For the last 18 months, Daikin has been laying a solid foundation with reforms of our management structure and strengthening of our environmental business. Seizing this timing when the global economy appears to have bottomed, we now intend to shift to sales expansion and make this the year of a "V-shaped recovery."
In this term, our plan aims for sales matching the past highest when seen on a quantitative basis that excludes the impact of the exchange rate. On the basis of changes in the demand structure, such as a slow recovery in the economies of developed countries and rapid growth of emerging regions that include China, India, and Latin America, sales quantities are expected to expand globally in all areas of our business.
Within our striving to reform management structure until now, we have established themes that stand out as essential management themes. These themes are to be tied to concrete results and include substantially expanding sales in China for not only the air conditioning business but also for our chemicals and oil hydraulics businesses, strengthening competitiveness in commercial air conditioners which serve as a cornerstone of our business, achieving further growth in the environment-related businesses (heating/hot water supply, Applied Systems, inverter volume zone models), elevating our total cost-cutting measures to the next level, and capturing business in emerging markets.
By striving to accomplish these essential management themes, we hope to realize a "V-shaped recovery" in performance and be able to link this performance to a great leap in our next mid-term management plan that we start from the next fiscal year.
As we work to confront the tasks before us, we respectively ask for your continued understanding and support of Daikin in the future. |
May, 12
Noriyuki Inoue
Chairman & CEO |
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