海角社区

While hybrid work took hold, there were also moves to have people return to regular offices. Evolving needs boosted demand for Office Services that support anytime, anywhere work styles. We have invested in Process Automation and Workplace Experience as growth areas. The former builds customer value by automating and optimizing business processes to trim tasks. The latter helps create environments that foster creativity. We also enhanced our value proposition by tapping in-house AI expertise. This includes driving full-scale development of a multimodal LLM that the Japanese government鈥檚 GENIAC project also adopted, capable of handling text and diagrams, tables, and graphs. Fiscal 2024 Office Printing hardware revenues and operating profit declined. At the same time, Office Services continued to develop as an earnings base, with recurring revenues rising 14%. We also pushed forward with structural reforms to enhance profitability.

We must accelerate growth in Process Automation and Workplace Experience to cater to increasingly diverse customer needs. By expanding business strengths through acquisitions and strengthening partnerships, we will provide globally integrated, high-value-added services. We will also further leverage the advanced technologies of natif.ai, which we acquired in April 2024, to help customers automate and enhance wide-ranging workflows. In addition to LLM, we will deploy digital clones and AI agents that use multimodal LLM that can handle diagrams, tables, and graphs. This will broaden AI-driven value creation from improving back-office efficiency to boosting sales productivity. While maintaining Office Printing鈥檚 customer base and non-hardware revenue, we will accelerate recurring revenue expansion in Office Services. To drive ROIC growth, we will manage key performance indicator initiatives and continuously update our measures.

Demand for greater efficiency and automation is increasing as companies tackle such social issues as labor shortages and an aging population. We expanded Office Services revenues by 14% during the year by strengthening value propositions for such customers. The Scrum series delivered 30% growth by creating industry and functional solutions with small and medium-sized enterprises to efficiently deliver high-value-added services. A strategic focus on key products drove higher recurring revenues.

We will fortify our recurring revenue base by leveraging PC replacement demand to generate new opportunities, increasing services and support attachment rates, and expanding service solutions with partners. We will also strengthen the rollout of RICOH Smart Huddle, which offers high-productive work styles through digital services and workplace design. We will refine our proprietary AI technologies to address diverse customer issues and firmly establish our brand as an AI leader.

Ongoing uncertainty over tariff policies has fueled concerns about market stability and business outlooks. We improved Business Process Services profitability by streamlining operations and optimizing pricing strategies. We expanded Application Services by harnessing Office Printing hardware sales growth and offering solutions centered on our proprietary document management software. Major structural reforms also raised efficiency and profitability.

We will drive revenue growth and improve profitability in the Office Services business by reviewing its portfolio. For the Workplace Experience business, we aim to expand growth by strengthening synergies with Cenero and enhancing proposals to existing customers.

We will uphold Office Printing profitability by employing optimal product and sales strategies and extensively targeting customers while expanding MFP sales in collaboration with partners. In response to tariffs, we will adjust pricing strategically while flexibly adapting to market conditions.

While inflation stabilized, economic activity slowed in some regions, lengthening Workplace Experience sales cycles. The overall IT services business, including IT infrastructure and IT services, expanded and helped increase recurring revenues. Rising demand for digitalization and automation boosted Process Automation revenues, with DocuWare鈥檚 cloud services driving recurring revenue expansion.

We will draw on synergies with acquired companies in the Office Services business to increase recurring revenues by delivering new value to existing customers. We will use the RICOH Global Security Operation Center, which we launched in January 2025, to expand managed security services to counter cyber threats. In Office Printing, we will review offerings to maintain recurring revenues. We will keep improving productivity by reviewing our portfolio and optimizing our organization.

In the commercial printing market, digitalization and paperless trends are driving more small-lot orders, which require solutions for increasingly complex workflows and more diverse printed materials. Labor shortages in printing operations are heightening demand for greater efficiency. In fiscal 2024, we exhibited at the drupa 2024 in D眉sseldorf, Germany, the world鈥檚 largest trade fair for the printing and media industry. We received more than 100 orders from commercial and industrial printing customers worldwide. Fulfilling these orders and expanding new product sales increased production printer sales, particularly in Europe and the Americas. Non-hardware sales also grew steadily. In industrial printing, demand for sign and graphic applications lifted inkjet printhead sales. RICOH Graphic Communications delivered double-digit sales and operating profit growth.

The printing industry is shifting from analog to digital, creating demand for products and solutions that address diverse digital printing needs. We aim to strengthen our position as a leading brand in commercial digital printing by expanding the market shares of flagship toner products in developed markets and driving growth in emerging ones. We will grow non-hardware revenue by increasing sales of new high-speed inkjet models, including the RICOH Pro VC80000 and RICOH Pro Z75. We will further accelerate growth in the inkjet printhead business. Sales representatives and service engineers will work closely with customers to deliver high value as a core component supplier. Beyond single inkjet printheads, we will provide comprehensive solutions that include technical support and tools. We aim to expand sales in China and other markets through this approach. We will manage these initiatives with key performance indicators and continue to update our measures to raise returns on invested capital. Key benchmarks are as follows.

Boyin operates in the fast-growing textile market, primarily in China. The company develops, manufactures, sells, and maintains textile printing machines. Conventional analog methods face challenges from heavy water use, complex processes, long lead times, and resulting cost and productivity issues. 海角社区supports Boyin in developing digital textile printers that deliver high image quality, productivity, durability, and advanced automation. This support goes beyond supplying inkjet printheads. 海角社区assists from concept verification through mass production and ensures stable operations in the market. Developing and producing printers equipped with numerous inkjet heads is technically demanding. 海角社区accelerates Boyin鈥檚 mass production and market rollout by providing implementation support, including ink evaluation and waveform tuning. 海角社区will continue to raise the value of customers鈥� products and services. We will do this through flexible development, strong support capabilities, and tailored solutions that meet diverse needs.

Japan鈥檚 declining labor force is fueling demand for greater productivity and workplace digitalization. A shift to a decarbonized, circular economy and expectations for longer healthy life expectancies are driving growth opportunities. 海角社区cultivated its business in response to the efforts of Japan鈥檚 Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to foster industrial digitalization, the creation of storage battery production sites, the commercialization of advanced batteries, and moves to build and reinforce the biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing infrastructure. The Smart Vision business began providing services to leading housing manufacturers and partnered with cloud service companies specializing in construction project management to bolster its construction industry business and become more profitable. The Biomedical business took advantage of its inclusion in a national project in Japan to expand production lines and contract work. As part of portfolio management reviews, it terminated the PLAiR environmental materials business to concentrate on growth areas.

While we have already identified growth areas, our challenge is to balance monetization speed and investment efficiency. For those growth areas, we will set clear investment priorities and limits, drive early monetization, and cultivate partnerships to unlock customer value beyond what we can do independently. In the Smart Vision business, we launched the RICOH360 Business Package to help diverse worksites adopt digital processes. Drawing on the RICOH360鈥檚 robust record in the construction and real estate sectors, where we combine 360-degree cameras and cloud services, we are expanding into new industries to secure new customers and drive business growth. In the Biomedical business, we aim to win more clinical trial drug projects from pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions that recognize our technological prowess. We are expanding our business and creating new value by supporting the development of innovative medicines. The Inkjet Battery business is collaborating with partners to accelerate proof-of-concept work on printed manufacturing technology for battery materials. We are building the foundations for full-fledged business expansion by securing vital technologies.

We are working with strategic partners to develop and deploy new use cases in untapped markets to cater to a growing requirement to digitalize sites using 360-degree data. We are addressing Japan鈥檚 rising need to strengthen drug discovery by combining the expertise of the wholly owned Elixirgen Scientific, Inc., with proprietary technologies to drive drug discovery support and build foundations for producing clinical trial drugs. In the expanding battery market, we are lowering environmental impact and materials costs by employing our groundbreaking digital manufacturing processes and leveraging open innovation, thereby adding new value in battery manufacturing.