Good morning, everyone. This is Iet sugu. Today, we are having these financial highlights briefings for the year ending March 2018. We also have defined a long-term management goal. I'll cover them as well. This is what I'll cover today. I will start with financial highlights, followed by earnings forecasts. Then I'll talk about long-term management goals towards 2025. Let me start with financial highlights. As you can see on the screen, the net sales increased by 12.8% on yen terms. Operating profit was JPY 59 billion. It grew by 14.3%. The net income fell short of last year's number. It was affected by tax system, partly, having a slight misforecasting as well. At the same time, Forex condition, it trended relatively strongly. The year before last year, the yen trended stronger because of the Brexit or Trump administration.
Last year, that was slightly corrected. We are seeing a similar trend, level, in our Forex level at this point. This is a relatively comfortable level for Sysmex. Here is a breakdown of net sales and operating profit. As you can see, net sales increased in all the regions. In addition, we had JPY 10.3 billion positive impact by FX. The year before last year was quite tough on FX. This is what we got for this year just ended. On operating profit, we had slightly a huge SGA expense. Overall, the things were not so bad. The assets and liabilities and equity is exactly as you see on the screen. Cash flows. Operating cash flow was JPY 52.2 billion. Compared to the previous year, we saw a substantial increase.
As we are making investment right now, one, we're working on Bio-Diagnostic Reagent Center. We also bought OGT, Oxford Gene Technology. Those are the increases in investments. As a result, we saw the increase of cash and cash equivalents to be JPY 3.5 billion. Topics. As I mentioned, we bought the British company, Oxford Gene Technology. They are strong in FISH technology. It was established by Professor Southern from University of Oxford. We expect to enjoy various synergies with this acquisition. We also agreed to dissolve the joint venture agreement with Sysmex bioMérieux. We were selling their products in Japan. We decided to dissolve the partnership, and bioMérieux decided to go on their own in their business pursuit. We also started to offer direct sales in Ghana. We also started constructing a Bio-Diagnostic Reagent Center that was recently on a press release.
This will be the key element for the bio-diagnostic business. It's very important how we can improve this area. That's why we're making investment in this specific area. Products and technologies. XN-Series, which is a flagship product for hematology field, we had a slight minor change by adding smear preparation. We also acquired a ClearView for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Starting from this fiscal year, we can fully implement this business officially. With the personalized medicine. In Japan, there are 11 facilities designated for cancer genomic medicine. There are 100 facilities associated with those 11 facilities. Our subsidiary, RIKEN GENESIS, will be taking care of almost all the genomic medicine analysis for them. This is going to be a quite exciting business area for us. Under network solution business, we have launched a brand called Caresphere. Others.
We have also established a company to promote employment of people with disabilities. We are also supporting figure skaters Mai Mihara and Kaori Sakamoto, who are local skaters from Kobe. Kaori Sakamoto even competed in the Pyeongchang Olympics. Net sales by regions. On the far right, in blue boxes, we are showing year-on-year comparison. The Americas grew by 8.1%, EMEA grew by 6.6%, China grew by 14.8%. Asia Pacific, Japan also grew these numbers. The Americas, EMEA fell slightly short of double-digit growth. EMEA was slightly weaker in terms of growth. In every region, we are showing the growth. When it comes to exchange rates, compared to the year before last year, JPY became relatively weaker against EUR. Net sales by businesses. We have been growing in all different diverse regions year-on-year.
When it comes to clinical chemistry, we produce reagents to be provided, but while using the third-party machines. As you know, in this business area, global majors are quite strong. That's why we saw some sluggishness in growth. The other area is FCM business under NexCore. We haven't fully established this business yet. We have a new product called XF-1600 that was developed and now going through the validation. One of the key challenges for this year is relating to this launch of this new product. Let me go through by different regions, starting with Americas. Especially the United States, business has been growing along with the market share. Large part of the growth was driven mainly by the deal with Quest that we acquired the year before last year.
I'm sure there will be various affecting factors about related to Obamacare and PAMA, but I believe the U.S. business will stay growing steadily, and brand recognition has been expanding in the market. We believe it should be able to have steady growth in this region. We have also acquired a business with a large commercial lab in Canada. Central South America is basically covered by Roche on behalf of us. The key is how well we can support middle and low-end areas, and this is also an exciting area for us for the future. EMEA. This is the region, quite extensive and covering emerging all the way through developed countries. The overall economy-wise, we saw a substantial recovery compared to the times when we saw the Greek financial crisis.
Brexit in U.K. is expected to come into place, so we see the slowness in U.K. business because of that. Russia and surrounding countries are going quite well so far. At the same time, in Middle East, we have countries in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the area. There's been the slowness seen in the tenders. We should be able to expect certain growth once we see the recovery in the amount of tenders in this area. Overall, we are not pessimistic about this area. China. It sustains a very strong growth rate, supported by 1.3 billion people, and we have seen the improvement in the level of economy, especially, we see a huge growth in healthcare area because Chinese Government is trying to minimize the medical spending by introducing various systems, such as two-way referral system, a hierarchical medical system.
Many different measures are taking place, but the overall demand stays quite strong in China. We are not seeing a very strong growth as high as 20% that we saw in the past, but still around 15% growth can be ensured in China. That's how we are thinking. In immunochemistry business in China, I believe there is a total of 600 to 700 routines are already implemented. The number of parameters is still quite limited, because we are seeing hard time in getting approval by CFDA for those parameters. We are focusing on trying to get more approvals. Once we get a range of parameters, this China can be a quite exciting market for us, and we have a strength in new products for urinalysis area. We have no major concern about the market.
It's also just a matter of Chinese government's action related to the preferential treatment over the local products. We are trying to build a knockdown production facility in China. Our factory located in Jinan in Shandong, we received approval for this factory now. We also have to go through review of the plan, but that was also completed. Probably by the end of Q1, we should be able to launch this factory. When this is up running, now we can offer locally produced products. This allows us to participate various government related tenders, because in the past, it wasn't possible at all for us. This will give us new opportunities in Chinese market. Asia Pacific. In Indonesia, as you know, they are trying to introduce a comprehensive national healthcare plan towards 2019.
Right now, roughly 75% of the population is part of this plan. In other markets as well in Asia Pacific, they are going through various medical system reforms. In India, they are going through the Modicare introduction, which is led by Prime Minister Modi, especially, they are trying to offer financial support for low income populations. India has a huge population, as you know. We are quite excited to see a growth coming from India. Overall, Asia Pacific is not so bad in environment wise, but at the same time in different countries, they have differences in getting more stringent in regulations. We need to overcome such conditions so we could expand our business in Asia Pacific. Japan. The sales to domestic Japan, this business grew by 3.6%. As you know, the aging population is actually increasing the number of testings for sure.
There was a revision of insurance point system in April. Unlike the drug price revision, we saw a slight improvement in our point system. This will allow us to make steady progress and growth. Especially this year, we are expecting to see new hospitals, mainly in Tokyo area, for example, the Keio Hospital. Towards the Olympics, the new hospitals will be coming out, and those hospitals are expected to be completed this year, and that should create new demand for us. We are excited about those opportunities. Dividend forecast. We expect to increase dividend for 16 years in a row. Originally, we planned to provide JPY 30 and JPY 30 for interim and year-ends to be JPY 60 in total. We are having this 50th anniversary this year. We just commemorated the 50th anniversary this February.
We decided to provide 6 JPY as commemorative dividend to be a total of 66 JPY as the full year dividend amount. Earnings forecast. We expect net sales to be JPY 310 billion, operating profit to be JPY 62 billion, operating margin to be 20%. Of course, I wouldn't say we are expecting a strong growth, and I'm not, of course, fully satisfied with these numbers. Anyways, we plan to make various improvements, especially those loss-making subsidiaries in overseas, to be turned around to start making profits. This will also affect our earnings on Sysmex itself. We will try to pursue reaching this target or even beyond this number. Earnings forecast by regions is, as you can see, in every region, we try to make steady progress to grow.
The year before last year was affected a lot by FX condition, on a local currency basis, we have been continuously growing the business in those regions as well. Dividend. As I mentioned earlier, we plan to increase the dividend for 17 years in a row this time. This year, we expect to provide 34 JPY and 34 JPY to be a total of 68 JPY. Anyway, we plan to increase the dividend, which is underlined by the growing business performance, and looking forward to your cooperation for that. Now let me go over long-term management goals towards 2025. We made these goals. Now, through March 2018, we had a long-term target called VI2020, in which we had Sysmex Way as the corporate philosophy, and we tried to take actions based on this philosophy with the vision of a unique and global healthcare testing company.
We have acted focused on this vision with the following positionings. First, undisputed global leader in hematology, hemostasis, and urinalysis. We try to continue to be global number 1 in these core business areas and to be a leading company in the Asian IVD market. We also wanted to be a unique and competitive player in the immunochemistry field. We also talked about the focus on personalized medicine and an attractive company providing value and confidence. One Sysmex carrying out high-speed management. Through 2020. This year we are making a new midterm plan. This new midterm plan will start next year, 2019 through 2021. 2020 is coming closer now. It's actually planned in the midterm. That is why now we have decided to set a long-term direction towards 2025. We have discussed all of such goals.
Let me first go through the progress on the positionings we had. Global number 1 in the core business areas are still maintained. In hemostasis field, we maintained global number 1 market share collaboration with Siemens. Sysmex is quite strong in hemostasis area. Siemens spun off a company to build a company called Siemens Healthineers. They combine this business with imaging. This is also an exciting area for us as well. Anyway, we have the collaboration with Siemens. In Asian IVD market, we have been expanding this business, and we have a very strong penetration of the brand. In immunochemistry field, we are focused on unique parameters to grow the business. Like countries in China, we still have some problems not being able to receive approvals on those unique parameters in China, we are struggling in regulatory matters at this point.
On a basic infection disease area, we are making progress in business globally, we can expand furthermore. We will need to focus on making further progress in this immunochemistry field. A leading global player making a contribution to personalized medicine. We have expanded technology platforms. We have Inostics, Partec , a German company. We also acquired Oxford Gene Technology in the U.K., and we made RIKEN GENESIS as our subsidiaries. We have built the foundation so far. Those acquired companies, some of them are loss-making so far. We also need to address this condition for improvement. With the focus on liquid biopsy, we try to improve and grow the business at this point. We also expect to cover exosome Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. We have started the research on this area, and we need to complete such researches.
In VI 2020 that we just completed, I think we have made certain progresses in different positioning. We also try to be an attractive company providing value and confidence and trying to realize One Sysmex, carrying out high-speed management, and those are recognized at this point. This is the operating environment that we are recognizing when setting the target towards 2025. Under technological innovation, as you know, the cancer genomic medicine is taking place right now. We expect to see a major change to come in the medical environment, mainly driven by genomic medicine. The use of AI, the use of big data will come, and the use of robot. We are also challenging this area. This will come as well. Regenerative medicine technologies. New medicines, medical treatments, or technologies are coming.
We see such progress in the developed countries, also, we started to see the spread of such technologies in emerging markets. China is focusing on emphasizing a lot on these new technologies as the country. In terms of number installation of NGS, China is the largest. That's one example. They are focusing a lot on new technologies. As Japan, I guess the overall country itself may be behind by one cycle, the Sysmex can play an important role in accelerating the introduction of such new technologies. This is quite important for us to realize these technologies. When it comes to market environment, as you all know, the developed countries are facing aging population. Even in China, they are facing aging population now. There will be the growing demand for the medicines and medical services.
More countries will be trying to minimize their medical spendings. Now we started to see very expensive drugs, for example, for cancer immunochemistry drugs. While we try to minimize such a spending and still being effective is something everybody is looking for. Regulatory systems, there's no doubt there will be more stringent regulations to come out. Also, we expect entries from businesses from other industries, as you see towards the bottom half. You may be surprised to see how stringent those regulatory systems are now, because we are exposed to situations which cannot be expected in regular businesses or other industries. We need to overcome such conditions in our business. At the same time, we also have to consider capturing the growth opportunities under such conditions. Precision medicine and personalized medicines are opportunities we, of course, have to cover.
Aging-related and IVD market in emerging countries. We see further IVD market in developing countries. Decentralization of healthcare. This will be important for the primary care. We've got approval for ClearViewR in hematology business. Through such efforts, we're not just focused on hospitals anymore. We also need to pay importance on the primary care. This centralization trend should be taking place in different markets, and also preventative and pre-symptomatic domains will be another area. We also have to consider about those anticipated risks I mentioned earlier. Under this condition, we have set this long-term vision to be unique and advanced healthcare testing company. Instead of advanced, we used to say global. I believe now Well, I wouldn't say that we graduated to be a global. I think we have become global already.
Now we want to take a step forward to be more advanced in the business. Of course, we will maintain unique, being unique, so that we can show differentiation from the global major businesses. Healthcare testing, I believe we can play an important role in this area. Including those drug sensitivities, I believe we are able to support in making decisions on drugs to be utilized in our diagnostics area. We also think that roles within the medical processes will be quite important, and I think we can focus on this area, providing support. While improving the quality of medical services, but we also want to contribute to improve productivity efficiency as well. This is where we are strong at. Especially using the IT or ICT, I believe we can contribute more to see further improvement.
This is about target fields and growth opportunities. In addition to our conventional IVD market, we are looking at this personalized diagnostics area. We can cover life science, molecular diagnosis, and regenerative medicines. This area is expected to grow furthermore. In the past, the discussions were taking place at the academic societies a lot. Now we're talking about more specifics to be implemented on the field. As I mentioned, the cancer genomic medicine is now taking place in Japan. In any case, the precision medicine, personalized medicines will be required furthermore, which would increase a demand for testing or even new testings as well. We expect to see the technological innovation in healthcare applications, including genomic medicine. This is a quite exciting area. Not just in the developed countries, but the emerging countries, some of them are also focusing on this area.
On the conventional IVD market, as I mentioned before, we are seeing the aging population, not just in the developed countries, but also the emerging countries, the developing countries, will be experiencing the aging population, which should drive the testing demand furthermore. There will be the rising value of diagnosis and testings. As I mentioned, in emerging markets such as in India, we believe there's a huge room for growth. Basically, our business sees the potential in the number population. Where we have a huge population, as we see the growth in economy, that drives the demand for healthcare to give us more opportunities. I guess we are in a very blessed market. The other area is on primary care. This is our positioning for 2025, creating innovative diagnostic value as a global top five company in IVD.
We are currently number seven globally, we want to go up to number five or higher. There's been various acquisitions taking place in the world so far. We see the emergence of a player which we didn't see in the past all of a sudden. We also need to think about how we can grow this area, the new business. Now we have expanded our sales channels and service channels by offering direct services. We also see the improved recognition or penetration of a brand. Now we need to focus on the unique products or services to be offered. That way, as a result, we want to be part of the top five. Second point, a leading company in personalized diagnostics for optimizing medical treatment. This is exactly about the personalized medicine. This should contribute a lot to the selection of treatment method.
This will affect the treatment method, this improves or increases the value of diagnosis. We utilize our own measurement platforms. As you know, we cover three areas: cells, protein, and genome. Those are the three platforms that we offer. Along with these platforms, by combining with open innovation, we try to fuse into new technologies, we think it's important for us to accelerate such effort. Third point, this is about primary care. A solution provider contributing to the advancement of primary care diagnosis. We will be focused on this area. It also depends on how we utilize ICT, we also want to offer a simple, convenient, and high-precision testing. That is quite important. Testing requires good quality. Also for the genomic testing, they need to have reliability of data.
Sysmex was quite good at accuracy control in our IVD market, that gives us a strength, we want to leverage on this strength. We have two more positionings, which are same as the current one. An attractive company providing value and instilling confidence. One Sysmex carrying out high-speed management. Now, we have introduced a new corporate message saying that lighting the way with diagnostics. We changed the color as well in this corporate message. This concludes my presentation. Thank you very much for your attention.