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We aim to transform the world one step at a time and generate value – smiles – for our various stakeholders.
Teiichi Goto
President and Chief Executive Officer of FUJIFILM Holdings
Over the last 20 years, Fujifilm Group has transformed itself into a diversified conglomerate whose focus stretches from imaging to healthcare, electronics and business innovation,. What common theme unites this wide-ranging portfolio? A commitment to “Giving our world more smiles,” says Fujifilm president and CEO Teiichi Goto.
When Teiichi Goto got a job with Fujifilm back in 1983, he knew exactly why he wanted to work there. “I joined Fujifilm because photography makes people happy. Looking back at heartfelt photographs, people can’t help smiling,” he says. There must have been moments, however, in Goto’s career when smiling was difficult. The transition from analogue to digital plunged Fujifilm into crisis, as the demand for photographic film dropped to one-tenth of previous levels between 2000 and 2010.
The company was quick to see the urgency of transforming itself. Posted in Asia for much of this disruptive period, Goto himself intuited the need to shift to a business model less reliant on photographic film - and acted accordingly. “I streamlined the photography-related business and launched a medical equipment sales company in China in 2003,” he says.
Proof of Goto’s prescience can be seen in last year’s results, when Fujifilm’s Healthcare segment accounted for fully one-third of the group’s ¥2.96 trillion revenue, more than any other segment. Over a 20-year journey, as well as developing new applications for its proprietary photographic-film technologies, Fujifilm has evolved into a diversified business operating in four segments: Imaging, Electronics, and Business Innovation, in addition to Healthcare.
With the reconfigured group on a solid footing, now is the time to go for growth and in April 2024, Goto unveiled his new medium-term management plan, VISION2030. Positioned under the umbrella of Fujifilm’s CSR plan that places the resolving of social issues and the environment as a consideration for its business activities, VISION2030 is a detailed action plan for achieving sustained growth up to the end of the decade. By 2030, Goto aims to lift overall revenues by 35% and operating margins to 15% or more. This will be done by investing the profits from stable, cash-generative “Earnings Base” businesses, such as display materials, imaging and office solutions, into “Growth Driver” and “New/Future Potential” businesses like Bio CDMO and semiconductor materials.
“With VISION2030, we aim to operate as a collection of businesses with outstanding technology and world-class business scale. By creating products and solutions that hold a major share in each segment, we aspire to transform the world one step at a time and generate smiles for all stakeholders,” Goto says.
But what exactly is the word “smiles” doing in there? Taken from Fujifilm’s new group purpose - “Giving our world more smiles” - the word references the group’s origins in photography, while encapsulating the ultimate value it provides to stakeholders across its various businesses in the form of happiness and smiles.
So how exactly does Goto plan to generate smiles across Fujifilm’s four business segments? In the Healthcare segment, the answer is in part by detecting diseases at an early stage. Launched in early 2021, NURA is a chain of emerging country-based health check-up centres that use Fujifilm’s own AI-powered diagnostic imaging equipment to help increase accuracy and support doctors in catching early signs of cancer and myocardial infarction. “Working with our business partners, we currently operate in seven locations in India, Mongolia and Vietnam. We plan to expand to 100 locations, primarily in emerging countries, by 2030,” Goto says.
As the cause of an estimated 1.3 million deaths every year, TB ranks alongside Aids and malaria as one of the world’s most lethal communicable diseases. That’s why ending TB is another big social issue that Fujifilm is helping to tackle. How? Because its small, lightweight portable X-ray device with real-time AI-powered image analysis is ideally suited to bring tuberculosis screening to the remotest regions. “We’re collaborating with private organisations and public entities to expand tuberculosis screenings by deploying these devices in developing countries,” Goto explains.
“Partners for Life” with the pharmaceutical industry
These days more and more pharmaceutical companies are outsourcing drug development and manufacture to so-called contract development and manufacturing organisations (CDMOs) to mitigate risk, gain access to broad expertise and to generally speed things up. Indeed, so strong is demand growth in the CDMO sector, that manufacturing capacity is struggling to keep up. The shortfall is only exacerbated by the fact that next-generation antibodies require even more capacity due to lower yields and more numerous production steps.
Fujifilm’s Life Sciences business provides a range of services from the contract development and manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals and cell therapy processes, to research and development and manufacturing support for pharmaceuticals. Currently, Fujifilm is dramatically increasing its manufacturing capacity, particularly for antibody drugs, with Goto looking to more than triple Bio-CDMO revenues by FY2030. Given the critical nature of the business, trust is every bit as crucial as capacity, flexibility or track record. “Our Life Sciences business has a vision of ‘Partners for Life,’” Goto explains. “We aim to become the most trusted partner for stakeholders, enabling the global supply of innovative products and services.”
The everywhere component
Health may be one indispensable component of a good life; so increasingly are semiconductors, crucial components found in everything from cars to washing machines. Fujifilm’s Electronic Materials business makes many of the most widely used chemicals for processing silicon wafers in semiconductor manufacturing.
“We’ve invested in facilities near our customers in Japan, the US, Taiwan, Korea and Belgium to expand our production capacity, and thanks to our 2023 acquisition of Entegris’ high-purity process chemicals business, our products cover nearly all stages of semiconductor production,” Goto says. He is confident that Fujifilm’s electronic materials business will grow twice as fast as the semiconductor manufacturing sector itself.
We all spend a large part of our lives working, so the more smiles we can get at the office, the better! Fujifilm’s Business Innovation segment, which comprises office solutions (document-related services), business solutions (systems integration, cloud services, business process outsourcing etc.) and graphic communications (print and digital media for marketing) is all about streamlining work processes.
Goto is keen to stress that paper-based communication has a role to play even in the advancing paperless society. “Fujifilm is a multifunction-printer (MFP) pioneer. MFPs are an important gateway for integrating digital and analogue data, through scanning, storing and printing,” he says.
Whether products or services, Fujifilm’s mission is the same: optimising workflow and knowledge-utilisation to free up organisations to focus on more value-added tasks. The Business Innovation segment is focusing on digital transformation (DX) for its growth. One Fujifilm subsidiary uses robotics and AI to help organisations convert reams of paper documents into digital data, an essential task, a raft of more than 100 DX solutions, is helping Japanese SMEs digitally transform themselves.
We will create a solid foundation for sustainable growth as we look towards our upcoming 100th anniversary and beyond.
Teiichi Goto
President and Chief Executive Officer of FUJIFILM Holdings
A heroic journey
Appropriately enough, there’s plenty to smile about in Fujifilm’s Imaging segment. Buoyed by the popularity of instaxTM instant cameras and retro-styled X Series and GFX Series digital cameras, it boasts 20%-plus profit margins, the highest across the group’s businesses.
“Photography may have migrated to digital cameras and smartphones, but printing and preserving photos of cherished moments still has unchanged value. We’re the only company to offer a full range of products and services encompassing cameras, printers and apps,” says Goto, for whom preserving the culture of photography is one of Fujifilm’s core social missions.
Over its 90-year history, Fujifilm has successfully navigated through the crisis of losing its core business to expand into diverse fields with positive social impact. What does Goto see when he looks into the future? He sees a group of different business all unified around and motivated by a single common group purpose: providing solutions to social issues in order to “give our world more smiles.”
“Our journey has been a story of effort and challenge,” Goto says. “Harnessing the flexible power of self-transformation cultivated throughout our history will create a solid foundation for sustainable growth as we look towards our upcoming 100th anniversary and beyond.”
Japanese company Fujifilm has evolved and expanded dramatically over the past two decades. President and CEO Teiichi Goto explains the purpose that all its different business segments have in common and his plans for the growing business in the run up to 2030.
