Good morning, everyone. My name is Ietsugu. Thank you for coming today. Today, I will go over business results for the first six months of fiscal year ending March 31, 2019. Specifically, I will go over financial highlights and consolidated earnings forecast. First, the financial highlights. As you can see, net sales is JPY 136.1 billion, 3.9% growth. In the past, we saw two-digit growth, so we are not doing too well. As for operating profit, JPY 28.5 billion, 1.8% growth. The first half financial results are pretty tough. While we saw good sales of reagents, we struggle with instrument sales. As for exchange loss, we saw a loss of JPY 1.31 billion. In China, our transaction is in USD. Stronger USD and weak CNY. We saw that during the trade war. As a result, it led to exchange loss.
That is the overall situation. This is the net sales and operating profit. We saw negative growth in Japan and other areas saw slight increase. For operating profit, we invested in R&D expense, and overall it was a JPY 0.4 billion growth. Here are assets and liabilities. Overall, JPY 3.4 billion growth. Here is cash flow. The investing cash flow, we see significant negative because Bio-Diagnostic Reagent Center in Kobe is being constructed to be opened next April. That is the capital investment, the significant contributor. As for topics, we started direct sales in Egypt. Sysmex and JVCKENWOOD jointly established Creative Nanosystems Corporation. JVCKENWOOD have strength in micromachining, including CDs and Blu-rays, and we utilize their micromachining technology for the development in immunochemistry arena. That is how we started a joint venture. For RIKEN GENESIS, the Todai OncoPanel started for sequencing analysis.
Sysmex launched a new product using the OSNA method. In the U.S., we opened Center for Learning training facilities for customers. We have a studio opened and very well accepted by the customers for e-learning opportunities. In China, we employed the knock-down production method in September for the launch of new XN-Series product, and full launch after the third quarter. Next, the sales by business and product type. For hematology, 3.5% growth, not so strong. In Japan, we see negative growth. That is because in the U.S., the qualitative or chemical, with Eiken, the FDA submission has not been approved. In Europe, the dissolution of a contract with bioMérieux for U.K. and France. Those are two contributing factors. FCM business has been delayed. By product type, instruments, see 8% down. The reagents and maintenance services are pretty good.
As for net sales by geographic region, by local currency base, Americas 3%, EMEA 3.7% growth, China 4.2% growth, AP is flat, Japan negative growth. Compared with the first half last year, China recorded 16% growth. Americas and EMEA performance were quite similar. The significant change for this first half is the dramatic decrease in China, and I will explain the details later. Geographic segment information starting with Americas. In Americas, local currency base is 3% growth. For the agents, we see pretty good growth. In the U.S., they recently had a midterm election, and we are starting to see some movement soon. The machines are installed, but there is a delay in acceptance. That is why we struggled in the second quarter.
Since the Democrats won the Congress, Obamacare should continue. That has been concerned by our customers, and that is the reason why they refrained from accepting such machines. For Latin America, the loss sales are slow. For EMEA, local currency base is 3.7% growth. For EMEA, hematology performance was quite good. The currency in the region, ruble and Turkish lira are weakening. That resulted in JPY 600 million exchange loss. The Europe itself is quite unstable with Brexit and a struggling economy in Italy. That is the situation in EMEA. That resulted in slow growth. For Middle East, they have a pretty tough situation due to the situation in Saudi Arabia. However, we are confident that we can catch up with the sales. For China, as mentioned earlier, we had a 4.6% growth.
First half last year, they had 16% growth. The instrument sales was low because of product failure that resulted in shipment suspension. It was the immunochemistry machines. That issue is already resolved. The root cause was a pipette. That resulted in shipment hold in-house. Another issue is the new product, SP-50, the smear machine. We had some issues for the new product as well. Although we have good presence for tier 3 institutions, our presence is still weak for tier 1 and 2. Chinese government has a Buy China policy to have a favorable treatment for domestic products. We would enhance our operations for tier 1 and 2. Overall, the market itself is quite strong in China. We had some internal issues for the first half of the year. Those issues are already solved.
That was not the market issues. The issues found in the market was internally found. For Asia Pacific, it's almost flat. Last year, we had a major tender acquisition in the same period. We do not have such opportunities this year. We are especially focusing on India. We're working toward direct sales, even though we are using distributors now. The distributors are not buying the product as we expected in India. Next, Japan. For domestic Japan, we had negative growth. As explained earlier, it is due to the impact of the dissolution of a joint venture with bioMérieux. That resulted in about JPY 1 billion opportunity loss. The number of samples is increasing following the aging society, but the growth is not as many as we expected. Moving on to consolidated earnings forecast. Unfortunately, we made a downward revision of the earnings.
This is the first time to have a downward revision for a reason other than foreign exchange loss. It was originally JPY 310 billion, now it is revised to JPY 300 billion. Operating profit too, from JPY 62 billion to JPY 59 billion. The figures in red have been revised, JPY 10 billion down for top line and JPY 3 billion down for the operating profit. Next, I would like to explain the lower instrument sales reasons and countermeasures. The first reason is the hematology lengthening instrument upgrade cycle from 7 years in the past for main products to 10 years. The interval has lengthened from 7 years to 10 years. In addition to longer upgrade cycle, it's also due to delayed launch of new products.
How we are going to boost upgrade demand is that we have to continue to provide attractive products to our customers, that will be the biggest incentive for customers for upgrading. In China, we have intensifying competition, especially with Mindray. For tier 1 and tier 2, Mindray is winning against us. For tier 3, Mindray is launching new product, our product is definitely superior. For urinalysis, as mentioned earlier, we are in the FDA submission now, we are asking Eiken Chemistry. That is not our product. We are marketing authorization holder, but Eiken is doing the process. For urinalysis, we had falling sales due to dissolution of alliance contract with alliance partners in U.K. and France, direct sales to start in the second half of this year.
For hemostasis, our alliance with Siemens started in 1995, their selling capability is not as strong as we expected. In the past, we worked with Dade Behring and Siemens succeeded, we have been negotiating with them, including the use of a sales network in the United States. FCM is finally launching in the United States. Another development is Caresphere, our software. Our plan is to include this software in our products. Caresphere has data aggregation and conversion to valuable information, it does data analysis as well. It may be replaced by AI in the future. These are the applications, lab management, productivity improvement in the laboratory, quality management, operation management, and clinical support. How we are going to utilize such data in actual clinical setting and standardization of laboratory data. It will also result in shorter waiting time for the patients.
We will launch this as an additional value to our XN model. Next, the dividend forecast. Interim dividend JPY 34, year-end dividend JPY 34. No change from the initial forecast at the beginning of the year. Dividend ratio, 35.9%. Dividend increases for the 17th consecutive year. Thanks to our customers, we continue to grow, we always thought about returning, in accordance with our revenue growth. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your kind attention.