Editing The Pen Addict 605/transcript (section)

== Mitsubishi Pencil Co. acquisition news ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' This is coming in from The Wire, February 28th, 2024, five minutes after we stopped recording last week's episode. Mitsubishi Pencil Co. Ltd, founded in Japan in 1887, and the company behind the well-known Uni brand, is taking over C. Joseph Lamy GmbH and the Lamy brand. The family-owned company Lamy underwent a complex process to look for a buyer who could lead the company, founded in 1930 by C. Joseph or Josef Lamy, into the future with expertise, experience, and love for the Lamy brand, along with a commitment to Germany as a business location. The process has, today, been successfully concluded of all shares in the company now sold. The annual turnover of Mitsubishi Pencil is several times that of the company of Lamy. I will add my own part and say, I don't think that that final sentence was worth it. Like, I feel like it was just a flex. I feel like they were just flexing on Lamy, but never the other.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's the mic drop portion of the press release. Yeah. Yes. It's like, that was the, do you know who I am?

'''Myke Hurley:''' How dare you even question us? I mean, to be fair, that was written by Lamy, but also it probably wasn't. You know what I mean? That was published by Lamy, but there's no way that something like that is written. Anyway, we're ignoring the point of this, so basically, just after we finished recording last week, you announced Mitsubishi Pencil, who you will mostly know for Uniball, right? That's how I mostly know them. Because when I see Mitsubishi, I think of the car company, right? Like, I don't think of...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Unrelated. They are completely unrelated. Which is hilarious. So it's, what is the Mitsubishi car company? It's Mitsubishi General or something like that? I forget. There's a different name.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's just a name, though, right? So this is just like Western brain, where I'm like, oh, it can't be one thing. Let's just a name. But yeah, so Mitsubishi Pencil, who are obviously their biggest products, is the uni range of products. I feel like maybe at least the most internationally recognized is that. They have acquired Lamy. So they have bought Lamy, the whole thing, the whole kit and caboodle. They acquired 100% of Lamy. And as it says here, they're going to be... It looks like they will be operating it as an independent brand inside of Mitsubishi, because they're going to be keeping them in Germany and stuff like that. You know, you've got to assume that... I mean, maybe you have more information about this, but what you've got to assume is you are acquiring a lot of really good assets. You have designers, you have manufacturing capability. And like the whole worldwide network of sales representatives all now within Mitsubishi.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that's the number one takeaway from this purchase. I can't think of a more complimentary purchase from current product line matching between two different companies that there's not a lot of overlap.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They really don't overlap, which is wild, but they really kind of don't, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They kind of don't, but they're both beloved companies with very high standings, very sought after products and different ways about going about things, right? Mitsubishi is the much larger company of the two, as they said in their mic drop statement. So just a couple of quick numbers that I was able to ascertain. Um, that like last year's, let's see, I think this is 2023 Mitsubishi revenue was around 500 million US dollars. That's just total revenue. Looked like a $66 million profit as best as I can tell. Lamy's 2022 revenue was 82 million, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' So... Jesus.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So Mitsubishi... Wow, that's a big difference. Yeah. And what's funny in the... So Lamy's a private company. So the information is very difficult to come by, right? And Mitsubishi is a publicly traded company. I literally went to like the Financial Times Mitsubishi page and got those numbers. Lamy, you're kind of looking at Google searches that people have dug up and kind of sort of found these things. So like I found a number from 2020 from Lamy that their annual revenue was 130 million. And then a few years later, 82 million, which I find interesting, but I'm not going to put like 100% validation on those numbers, right? Because they're not publicly released. So, um, so yeah, um, Mitsubishi is a big company. The one thing I wanted to find out was what else does Mitsubishi have in their product range that we're not aware of, right? So like when we talk about, we've, like I mentioned in the past, like Sailor, right? They had like a robotics division, right? Does, you know, what other company, and then the company that bought them plus has, you know, basically an office supply division, things that we may not be completely familiar with that is bringing in revenue for these companies. I think we literally know every product that Mitsubishi makes through their unique product line. I was digging and digging. I was like, I feel like I'm missing something, Uni. What am I missing? And it was literally just all the UniBall products, all the Posca products, you know, the Mitsubishi pencil lineup. It was, there was no surprises to be found.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, Uni are incredibly dominant in office supply, which does tell me like the, to me, it makes sense that they have the kind of, uh, the profit that they do, which is like, I don't know, around like 11%, which is not huge, right? They don't actually don't seem to have like a massive profit margin. Or maybe they have a big margin, but not a profit margin, because I assume they are a high volume business, right? Yeah, you have to be. And that's their, that is their business, where I feel like Lamy like to have their products in the same places, like in the same stores, but you don't see like packets and packets of Lamy pens inside of businesses. But you do UniBall pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. It's all, they're both sell pens, but they're in completely different categories. I think it's probably like the easy way to put it. Yeah. And you're selling to a different market, you know, Uni's selling a lot of bulk, right? Lamy's selling a lot of individual, right? So again, I think it's a great, almost like a collaboration, even though.