The pros and cons of leaping to conclusions

Since this popped up on more than one website now, I wanted to air some thoughts. 

We put a lot of effort into the analysis and reporting that we do on both Canon financials and on CIPA reported data and try to break down in as much detail as possible and segregate the data out properly.  We find it surprising that others make grand assumptions lacking data to back it up so easily.  There's one thing to read financial reports and do a lot of work to analyze the results. It's another thing to read them quickly and pull a bunch of false assumptions from the reports and jump to extreme conclusions.

We have made mistakes and had to backtrack on information here, as we get more experienced in running a website of this nature. However we can be excused more for that based on growing pains, than can sites that are established for the last decade.

A good example of this seems to be happening with the latest Fuji financial reports where some are taking the overall success of the Fuji imaging department and putting a false equivalence on the electronic imaging aka Fujifilm mirrorless lineup.

However; when you investigate the details of where and what Fuji is selling and what makes up most of that money in sales, you quickly realize that most of their sales is coming from their wildly profitable and successful Instax lineup and not their mirrorless cameras.  It's safe to assume then, that it's unknown where the increase in operating profit is coming from because there's too much difference in the sales data areas in Fuji's imaging departments either by instax or electronic imaging.

Also, Year on Year quarterly percentages will be heavily influenced by the Kumamoto earthquake in 2016 - overly inflating year on year growth statistics.  Which is why just about every analysis we did included the earthquake as a contributing factor to some statistical information.

To give credit, the results from Fuji are brilliant, showing significant gains in their imaging department, which some rather breathlessly are reporting on right now.  We are applauding a stronger market and competition as it serves all of us.

We all would love for Canon to do what we want from them.  As both a user of Canon equipment and someone that enjoys getting into the dirty details with patents, financial data and reporting – I for one would also love to see more credible commentary from peers.