Shimano’s Bicycle Division Sales Approach Four Billion Dollars

Shimano is in no immediate danger of losing its position as the world’s largest bicycle business as measured by sales revenue. Because it has such a large market share for bicycle components, particularly across developed nations such as Australia, Shimano’s sales are a very approximate but useful gauge to the health of the global bike industry.

For the calendar year 2019 Shimano’s bicycle division sales totalled 290,038 million yen (A$3.92 billion) which was up 4.6% on 2018.

Shimano also has a large fishing division and in addition, makes small quantities of products for other markets. Total sales overall were 363,230 million yen (A$4.9 billion)

Globally Shimano’s cycling division is approximately four times the size of the fishing division, but in Australia, partly due to our geography and culture, fishing division sales are larger than cycling.

Shimano’s operating income (profit) was up 2.5% to 68,010 million yen (A$918 million) giving a very healthy profit rate of 18.7%.

Shimano, always conservative by nature, is predicting a 2.2% increase in their bicycle division sales for 2020.

In the notes that form part of Shimano’s financial reporting there was no specific mention of the Australian cycling market. Shimano commented about favourable sales of ebikes in Europe and flat sales across Japan, China and North America.

They also said that their new GRX gravel bike components and new Deore XT and SLX mountain bike components were ‘well received in the market.’