Message from the President Jun 2013

Recently, one of the questions I was asked by the economic reporters was “What effect the Abenomics has to the Japanese manufacturers?” My answer to this question was “There are no customers who are in festive mood by the Abenomics.”

This is what I felt overall from talks I had with customer's management people on my visit to the customers I started from end of last year. There are still many customers who highly depend on export. And there are many customers whose performances for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2013 had improved more than they anticipated because of weaker yen. But there are no customers who would say that they would increase their capital investments nor build new factory in Japan because of this.

But I also comment to those reporters that our customers' attitude toward technological development investments are quite steadily. About this time of last year, due to deterioration of the European economy and the slowdown of the Chinese economy, business confidence in the future was much darker than now. Nevertheless, even at that time, and even now, there is no significant change in the volume of orders we receive from our customers throughout the company. I determined that, based on the experience of the Lehman Shock, and the perspective of medium-and long-term, there are many customers who are taking position of continuing on their technological development investments in order to polish their strong point and compete in world market without being affected by the economic trends. I determined such because, not only the automotive field which is said to be strong in general, but even customers of electrical machinery industry, who are in the difficult situation as the whole industry, are also in similar move.

I think that we should learn from their attitude of carrying thorough what they have decided to do without being fooled by the noise around them or being affected by the trend in the near term. I think that Meitec also shall continue our business according to what we have decided to do, by identifying things which does not change in future trend of the engineer staffing market or in how the labor market would change.