[Mistral75]

It's not huge, yet Pentax brand is still profitable, Ricoh is making money from Pentax and they seem satisfied with that, good for them.
(...)

We don't know whether Pentax is profitable. We do know from Ricoh's financial reporting that Ricoh \ Other \ Smart Vision, which includes both (i) Pentax-branded cameras, lenses and accessories and (ii) Ricoh-branded cameras (GR III, WG, G, Theta) and accessories is growing and profitable. The growth seems to come from the success of Ricoh GR III and Theta Z1 though.

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(...) it seems as if Pentax has - at least to some degree - outsourced their lens R&D to Tokina/Tamron.

They have not, at least not to a significant degree.

Three lenses in the current Pentax line-up are rebranded Tamron lenses, as already indicated. One lens (12-24mm f/4 launched in 2004) has an optical formula licenced from Tokina.

All other Pentax-branded lenses are based on optical formulas patented by Pentax Corp., Hoya, Ricoh Imaging or Ricoh, depending on who was owning the brand when the patent request was filled.

This applies to the recently launched D FA★ 50mm f/1.4. Its optical formula was licenced from Ricoh by Tokina for their opera lens, not the other way around.

For those who would like to check: patent request filled by Ricoh on the 14th of February, 2018 (JP,2018-024300) and published on the 22nd of August, 2019 (JP,2019-139158,A). Inventor is Minoru Murayama, a Pentax employee since at least 2003.