Nikon Stock Skyrockets Amid Rumors of a Sale

Nikon lost a lot of money last fiscal year. In fact, Nikon lost a record-breaking amount of money, a whopping 86 billion yen, or more than $542 million at current exchange rates. Nikon’s largest shareholder, EssilorLuxottica, is reportedly weighing a major acquisition of the company, sending its stock soaring.

As Japanese business magazine Facta reports, as spotted by Digicame-Info, Nikon and one of its largest shareholders, EssilorLuxottica, are weighing their options.

“In the last fiscal year, the final deficit of 860 billion yen was posted, the largest in the past year, and the French company EssilorLuxottica, known for its ‘Ray Ban’ sunglasses, has been so caught up in the observation that it is on the verge of being ‘self-selling’ in the past 25 years of partner companies,” Facta writes in its machine-translated story.

It’s not clear what this means because the machine translation is spotty, so PetaPixel had the story translated by a native Japanese speaker, who says that Facta reports that Nikon is deciding whether to remain independent or sell to EssilorLuxottica.

Now, that sounds very dramatic, so an essential caveat is required here. PetaPixel also spoke to an industry insider, who shall remain anonymous, who took Facta‘s report to refer to Nikon’s glasses business, not the company overall. Nikon has sold off parts of its business before, including most recently when it sold Mark Roberts Motion Control Limited, a company it originally acquired back in 2016.

Nikon is a big name in optics beyond cameras, and the company released new single vision eyeglasses in Japan that incorporate Nikkor Z technology just a few months ago. There’s no question that Nikon’s value in optics extends far beyond its photographic lenses.

French-Italian eyewear company EssilorLuxottica has increasingly invested in Nikon, and was reportedly considering doubling its investment in Nikon just last fall. That report proved true, and Nikon approved EssilorLuxottica to raise its stake to as much as 20%, Reuters reported. EssilorLuxotica is already Nikon’s largest shareholder.

At this point, everything is still just speculation. Neither Nikon nor EssilorLuxottica has announced anything new. However, the Japanese stock market has certainly reacted to the rumors. Nikon’s stock price is up about 28% this week. Its stock price on Thursday, May 14, was the highest it has been in five years.

“It is true that Nikon’s full-year financial results were in a huge deficit, but it is a little surprising that the story of selling itself has come out. Of course, there is no official announcement, so there is a possibility of mere speculation, but it seems that some shareholders think that there is a possibility of fact because the stock price seems to have moved quite a lot,” Digicame-Info writes. “If it is true, I am concerned about the future direction of Nikon’s video business.”

The situation remains fluid, and for now, full of rumors and speculation. It is entirely possible that EssilorLuxottica simply ups its stake in Nikon, kicks the tires on acquiring specific parts of the business, or that Nikon undergoes a dramatic, seismic shift. All of these options seem on the table, including another in which nothing changes at Nikon. However, given how investors have treated Nikon this week, industry insiders clearly believe something could happen. A company doesn’t typically post record-breaking losses and have its stock price skyrocket to its highest point in five years the following week.


Image credits: Header photo by Jaron Schneider