All Article articles – Page 102
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Safilo’s Q3 goes up, not all profit margins
Safilo's operating margin narrowed down to 2.2 percent of sales in the third quarter ended Sept. 30 from 2.8 percent a year earlier. Not only did the company miss market expectations, but the decline is being reported while the company is in the throes of reinventing itself after the French ...
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Marcolin expands in Italy and abroad
Marcolin has announced the acquisition of a new 3,500-square-meter manufacturing facility in Longarone, the heart of the Italian eyewear district. The new site is due to start operations in mid-2015, effectively doubling the volume of Marcolin's products that are made in Italy and in-house.The company describes the move as part ...
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Essilor accelerates in lenses
Essilor International has reported a 14.4 percent increase in consolidated sales to €1,415 million for the third quarter, with an organic increase of 3.9 percent excluding the currency effect, which was marginal this time, and a boost of 10.6 percentage points from acquisitions. The group's recent big investments in Coastal.com ...
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Essilor’s latest international acquisitions
Essilor International has acquired a majority stake in Company Grand Vision, a distributor of ophthalmic lenses and contact lenses in Russia with annual revenues of around €29 million. Company Grand Vision will continue to be led by its current management team. This acquisition is intended to strengthen Essilor's multi-network strategy ...
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Alcon’s operating income grows strongly
Alcon, the eye care division of Novartis, saw its net sales increase to US$2.7 billion in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, up 5 percent in dollars and 6 percent in constant currencies. A positive factor was the approval given by the European Commission to Simbrinza, Alcon's new drug for ...
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New developments in Valeant’s bid for Allergan
Valeant Pharmaceuticals, the big Canadian-based group that has owned Bausch & Lomb since last year, sent a letter to Allergan's shareholders on Oct. 27 stating that it was prepared to increase the proposed price of its takeover offer again from $72 to $200 per share. The new offer coincided with ...
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Marchon invests in Italy and Asia
Marchon Eyewear has annunced a €3 million investments in its Italian facilities in the Belluno district, which had already been expanded considerably in 2011. They will lead to a 30 percent increase in production capacity and add about 2,000 square meters of additional office space, including a new showroom ...
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Bushnell is doing well and ATK may keep it
Alliant Techsystems (ATK) is reviewing a plan to spin off Bushnell and the other parts of its Sporting Goods segment to a new publicly trade company controlled by its shareholders. Called Vista Outdoor, the new company was going to start trading in January. However, after setting Dec. 9 as the ...
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Big drop in J&J’s vision care business
Johnson & Johnson's vision care sales dropped to $704 millio in the third quarter of 2014, down 5.9 percent from a year ago. U.S. sales totaled $232 million, representing a 12.5 percent decline from the same period last year. International sales fell at an even rate of 2.3 percent to ...
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Safilo wants Smith to be a more global brand
Safilo has announced a thorough restructuring of its Smith Optics subsidiary in the U.S. with the objective of turning it into a global brand. The move will lead to further integration with the Safilo group and the closure of Smith's headquarters in Ketchum, Idaho, which has a staff of about ...
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Lens firms launch new consumer campaigns in Europe
Determined to gain further market share in the opthalmic optics market, Hoya is launching its first consumer-oriented brand campaign in Europe. Each country is implementing it differently and at different times. Some have started already in September and others will only start next January, but the general goal is to ...
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Strong support for the World Sight Day Challenge
Optometry Giving Sight's main annual campaign, the World Sight Day Challenge, has proved globally the biggest yet this year according to Donna Power, who leads the charity's fundraising efforts in Europe in its bid to prevent blindness and impaired vision due to uncorrected refractive errors around the world. This was ...
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Luxottica has two new co-CEOs
Luxottica has finalized its top management structure, after several false moves. Last month, the group's board of directors appointed with immediate effect the group's chief operating officer, Massimo Vian, as joint chief executive in charge of operations and products, and approved the appointment of its other new joint chief executive, ...
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Hoya continues to grow strongly
The Life Care segment of Hoya Corporation, which includes its vision care of operations, raised its sales by 20.5 percent to 75.49 billion yen (€529.78m-$658.54m) in the second quarter of its financial year, ended Sept. 30, and its pre-tax profit rose at a similar rate to ¥13.18 billion (€92.50m-$114.98m), or 17.5 ...
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Fielmann improves margins
Germany's biggest optical retailer has reported an increase of only 1.9 percent in volume to 1.92 million pairs of glasses for the third quarter ended Sept. 30. However, its consolidated sales grew by 5.4 percent to €318.3 million, indicating higher average selling prices, and the quarterly net profit went up ...
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A good IOFT in a recovering Japanese market
After hitting the bottom in 2010, the Japanese eyewear market started to recover in the last couple of years and, in spite of lingering challenging market conditions, there are structural factors in the country that will support this growth in the next years. In this context, the 27th edition of ...
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Mykita on a growth path
There were rumors at the Silmo show that Luxottica was going to take over Mykita, the important German brand of designer eyewear. Luxottica is evidently trying to expand the range of designer eyewear brands in its portfolio beyond the likes of Oliver Peoples and Alain Mikli, but the hottest properties ...
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Maui Jim wants to stay independent
Confirming a report in our last issue, Luxottica recently made a very generous offer to acquire Maui Jim, but its founder, owner and chief executive, Walter Hester, said no. He told us that he has received offers of well over $600 million for his company, but said that he is ...
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Silmo and Mido will work together
Attendance levels remained relatively strong at the latest Silmo fair in Paris, and business was described as intense, in spite of the generally uncertain international economic environment. However, the total number of visitors went down to 33,301 from 35,103 a year ago. Of those, 56 percent came from outside France.The ...
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Essilor eyes better margins on 3-4% higher organic sales
In presenting the relatively good results of his company for the first half of 2014, Hubert Sagnières, chairman and chief executive of Essilor International, said he had “absolutely no comment” to make on the rumors about a possible merger with Luxottica. We think that such a “marriage of the giants” ...
