Epson Philippines upbeat on revenue growth

MANILA, Philippines - The local unit of Japan’s Seiko-Epson Corp. expects to remain ahead of other Epson markets in the region as the Philippines’ robust economy continues to spread wealth outside major cities.

Ed Bonoan, Epson Philippines Corp. head of marketing, said the company sees revenues growing another double digit in 2016 on the back of the improving spending power of Filipinos and a slew of new products it is set to launch in the coming months.

“For Epson Philippines, we’re quite bullish about the next years. The past few years we’ve been blessed with good economic growth and so the economic growth was the one that spurred demand for our products and that subsequently gave us good performance,” Bonoan noted.

“So the same thing also for this year, it looks like the Philippines is expected to be a leader for growth in terms of the countries with regards to its ASEAN neighbors. Because the economy is doing well and is expected to do well, we also expect that we will take advantage of the good economic situation,” he added.

Bonoan said Epson Philippines’ growth this year would be driven primarily by robust demand for its inkjet printers and projectors.

He said Epson is currently the market leader locally in both inkjet printers and projectors with market shares of 48 percent and 36 percent, respectively, as of end-2015.

The company’s market shares for both products are among the highest across Epson’s regional operations, Bonoan noted.

“We are still expected to grow in terms of our market share. We expect that the business conditions will be a good driver for growth and our readiness against competition puts us at an advantage,” Bonoan said.

“Geographically, we’re seeing a lot of growth in the provinces. There’s a lot of room for expansion in the provinces which is where we are going. We’re going into the second-tier cities where traditionally many vendors have not gone. The important thing here is the economy. We’re now seeing a lot of demand coming in from the provinces because of the better distribution of wealth and business. There’s a lot of growth of business in the provinces,” he added.

Epson has a manufacturing plant in Lipa which produces printers and projectors distributed in 24 countries worldwide, including the Philippines.