Ricoh's a pretty good sized company. They have a lot of camera and lens expertise, just not in the DSLR or Medium Format Digital space. My impression is that they've been doing pretty well and have not been at risk at all. It's Pentax that's had the financial problems and has now been bought twice. So I think we have to consider this from the Ricoh perspective, since it is Ricoh buying the Pentax brand and technology from Hoya, not Pentax driving the deal. Pentax technologies are essentially being split up, the camera portion of the company separated from the medical portion.
I feel the mainstream SLR domain is coming to a close and the mirrorless digital camera on the rise. In the mirrorless domain, Ricoh has been very innovative with the GXR system. The "Camera Module A12" with Leica M mount is just about ready to ship for the GXR system: it would be extremely easy to provide adaptation for M42 and K-mount lenses (it already exists through third party adapters!) and not too much more daunting to build a dedicated K-mount version, with more features dedicated to the Pentax K mount lens specifics.
More interesting would be creating dedicated A12 camera modules with integrated lenses like an "A12 31 Limited", "A12 60 Limited", "A12 105 Limited" camera modules based on the DA21, DA40, DA70 (all great, compact optics designed for an APS-C sensor, amongst others) would be another way to expand Ricoh's GXR system more swiftly than for Ricoh to develop the optics from scratch.
I had read some rumors shortly after it was announced that the Pentax Q system was actually being manufactured by Ricoh. I have no idea of the truth of that and can't remember where I read it, but if true it would now make sense.
It will be very interesting to see where this goes. I do hope it's a positive for everyone.