Nikon Corp., a leading maker of cameras and high-tech precision instruments, said Monday its group net profit in fiscal 2000 rocketed 169.1 percent to 20.91 billion yen, due chiefly to good sales of semiconductor-manufacturing equipment and digital cameras.
Nikon said its consolidated pretax profit surged 282.8 percent to 43.32 billion yen on a 30.2 percent rise in sales to 483.96 billion yen.
Group net profit per share more than doubled to 56.53 yen from the previous period's 21.01 yen. Nikon will pay a per-share dividend of 8 yen, including a 4 yen interim dividend. The dividend compares with 5 yen the previous year.
Nikon traced the high profitability to spirited sales of a range of equipment for manufacturing microprocessors, dynamic random access memory and flash memory chips, as well as strong sales of digital cameras.
Nikon forecasts group pretax profits to amount to 30 billion yen, with net profits reaching 10 billion yen for the current year to March 2002, on sales of 510 billion yen.