Here is the Bloomberg report:-
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aRJv.HxndPMY
Hoya Corporaton's Chief Operating Officer (COO) was interviewed and he has talked something about Pentax. The relevant parts are quoted:-
"An acquisition of a health-care business would help President Hiroshi Suzuki expand the company’s most-profitable division, and build on a strategy that led to the 2007 purchase of endoscope maker Pentax."
Well, Pentax is still an endoscope maker in the eyes of Hoya..
"Hoya is a little weak in basic technologies, so it makes sense they’d consider buying a business in order to save development time"
They admit that their technologies base is weak.
"I don’t know whether we’ll go with Samsung or somebody else, but I can say that we’ll have a deeper relationship with some electronics guys"
It seems that the partnership with Samsung has come to an end and a new partner has *been* found and something is under the pipeline (maybe).
"There will be consolidation in the camera business and a small player like us will be like a small boat on a rough sea. But let me be clear: we will not shut down this (Pentax) business."
It is told that Pentax will continue to play in the field in the meantime. Anyway, this is somehow meaningless as Lehman Brothers etc. didn't tell us that they would go out of business but the world could only know until those happened!
"Pentax’s sales of 24.6 billion yen ($267 million) in the first quarter were one tenth the 246 billion yen in camera revenue at Canon Inc., the world’s largest maker of the devices."
Having 1/10th of the sales of Canon is not bad indeed, IMHO.
"Pentax was the only unprofitable unit among Hoya’s divisions, posting a 941 million yen loss during the quarter ended June 30."
"The Pentax unit likely turned profitable for the first time in seven quarters after the company cut costs by reducing the workforce, the Nikkei said. Hamada declined to comment on the report"
It seems that the COO has not much confidence in turning the Pentax business from red (which is the only thing red within the Corp.) to black, or he wants to keep it as a secret for some reasons.