Shimano’s bike component sales decrease 14.6% in first half of 2020

Shimano has released its summary of financial results from 1st January to 30th June 2020.

Net sales from the bike components segment decreased by 14.6% from the same period of the previous year to 122,613 million yen, and operating income decreased 19.7% to 22,963 million yen.

The company said that in Europe, many bicycle retailers were forced to be closed temporarily as COVID-19 spread, but with the lifting of restrictions on going outside and travelling, demand for bicycles “rapidly increased”. In addition, as subsidies and other policies to encourage the purchase of bicycles were devised in each country, distributor inventories remained at low levels from May.

In North America and China, demand for bicycles rose as in Europe, which led to low levels of distributor inventories from May. In South America, where the spread of COVID-19 continued, demand for bicycles was “solid” and distributor inventories remained at “appropriate levels”.

In the Japanese market, despite some increase in demand for bicycles, sales of both community bicycles and sports bicycles were “weak as a whole”, affected by the Government’s request that people refrain from going outside under the emergency declaration, said Shimano. Meanwhile, distributor inventories remained at “appropriate levels”.

Under these market conditions, Shimano said its new Deore MTB components were “well received” in the market.

Overall, for the first half of 2020, the company said net sales decreased 11.9% from the same period of the previous year to 160,255 million yen.

Read the July edition of BikeBiz below: