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Ricoh and Hitachi Reach Basic Agreement on Ricoh's Acquisition of Hitachi Printing Solutions, Ltd.

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 2004--Ricoh Co., Ltd. (TSE:7752)('Ricoh') and Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT)(TSE:6501)('Hitachi') today announced that Ricoh and Hitachi have signed a basic agreement to the effect that Hitachi will transfer all its shares of Hitachi Printing Solutions, Ltd. ('Hitachi PRS'), a 100% owned subsidiary, to Ricoh. Details are as follows.
1. Reasons for the basic agreement

Ricoh is committed to strengthening its printer business, an
important pillar of its growth strategy. To this end, Ricoh will
strengthen product lines for the office color printer market,
printers for mission-critical systems and POD, or print-on-demand,
markets, in which Ricoh is yet to participate. In addition, Ricoh
will enhance IT sales channels on top of its conventional copier
marketing channels. Through these initiatives, Ricoh will optimize
"Total Document Volume" as the strategic objective of its imaging
solutions business.

In accordance with the basic agreement, Ricoh will acquire Hitachi
PRS, which enjoys considerable success with its printers for
mission-critical systems, high-speed printers for the POD markets
and also low-end color laser printers. Hitachi PRS's participation
in the Ricoh group will not only create synergistic effects in the
areas of technology, products and human resources for Ricoh
printer business but also contribute to increasing Ricoh's
corporate value.

Hitachi, for its part, is making every possible effort to ensure
that all its businesses win in the global marketplace in
accordance with its mid-term business plan: "i.e.HITACHI Plan II."
This basic agreement was made within the context of this plan.
Hitachi sees printers as important products for its information
and communication systems business and intends to provide its
customers with even higher valued-added solutions, maintaining all
the while a strong business partnership with Ricoh.

2. Corporate profile of Hitachi PRS

(1) Name Hitachi Printing Solutions, Ltd.
(2) President Toshiaki Katayama
President and Chief Executive Officer
(3) Address 15-1, Konan 2-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
(4) Date of incorporation October, 2002
(5) Business content Printers and related equipment, software
development, product development, design,
production and marketing
(6) Fiscal year-end March 31
(7) Number of employees 820 (Group 2,200) as of December, 2003
(8) Capital stock 5,000 million yen (Number of shares held
100,000)
(9) Net sales About 60,000 million yen (estimate for
fiscal year ended in March 2004)

3. Changes in share holding ratios

Current Ricoh 0% Hitachi 100%
After the transfer (plan) Ricoh 100% Hitachi 0%

4. Schedule

Scheduled transfer of shares: October 2004

5. Influence on Ricoh and Hitachi consolidated financial figures

None for fiscal 2003 ending on March 31, 2004 is expected.
Influence in fiscal 2004 ending on March 31, 2005 will depend on
result of current negotiations.
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Don't knock it. We became a Hitachi Dealer about 4 months ago. Their high end printers are fantastic. IBM buys the Hitachi printers and relabels them. You can sell these boxes in areas where you don't necessarily need a 1075, 2085, or 2105 for a lot less. Go to our website www.peterswalker.com go under products, pick Hitachi, and look at the 70ppm & 92ppm printers Hitachi offers. It feels great to finally be ahead of Ricoh on something!
We just finished talking to our Hitachi Rep and here's what's going on. He said that this deal will put Ricoh above everyone else in the world. Hitachi has what Ricoh needed, and Ricoh has what Hitachi needed. Have you wondered why Ricoh hasn't pursued graphics color? Because the Hitachi deal has been working for a while. Hitachi currently has a 25ppm graphics color laser printer, a 40ppm one, and in 2005 a 100ppm graphics color laser printer is coming out. What's your bet that there will be a copier version of these in the future also. Ricoh bought the whole store. The inkjet technology, the B&W and Color Technology, and the big $1,000,000. machines that do rolled to cut sheet. Hitachi has Data stream conversion programs and software, and can customize software for their machines to the customer's needs. It was the Hitachi guy that made a 2090 w/ Fiery and SR90 booklet maker work with Unix after the top networking people at Ricoh said it never would. The Hitachi guy spent about an hour (as a favor to us) re-writing code at the customer's location to make the software work. This is going to be the biggest WIN-WIN in this industry in over a decade. Get ready to watch Canon, Toshiba, Xerox and all the rest start sweating!
Wow, thats pretty incredible, was not knocking, was just not that knowledgable about Hitachi.

Wonder if dealers will get to offer these products. I have wanted a 92PPM laserprinter for years. Also the the datastream with roll feed is great for "back office" printing.

Ted, whatever you hear please keep me up to date.

Art
One more thing. The Hitachi B&W printers (70ppm & 92ppm) have 6000 pages out of four paper sources. You can print a job using different type papers in the trays (ie color in one, plain in another, etc) from all the paper trays for a single job if you want. Also, the 70 ppm smokes the 1075 and 2090 in processing and print time, and the 92ppm smokes the 2105. The processor in these Hitachi's are faster than any Ricoh or Ricoh Fiery processors we have! They also have post process inserting like Ricoh has now and they have booklet makers like the SR90 etc.
This will be huge for my dealership. We have a large printer sales division and need something that will out perform the higher end Kyocera printers with some better volume ratings. Kudos to Ricoh on this one.

With all the acquisitions, re-branding etc out there, makes one wonder if the time will come when there is one line of copiers with 15 differrent model numbers and labels!

Funny!
Mike, we can sell anywhere in the US. Give the office a call (800-451-3161), and talk to Kenneth Peters. We can work out a deal that benenfits us both. As far as maintenance is concerned, it's simple. Anything we sell outside our Service area we put on Hitachi Service. Either the Hitachi service reps themselves service the machine, or if there is not a local Hitachi Service office, then Hitachi contracts the service out to the nearest service location. The maintenance like Ricoh is standard nationwide pricing.

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