TOKYO.- Japan’s Toshiba Corp., the world’s No.2 maker of flash memory chips, reported a 1.6 percent rise in quarterly operating profit on its chips and laptops on Friday, and it raised its first-half forecast as chip prices recover.
Toshiba and rival Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. are betting on solid prices of flash memory, system chips and image sensors for new digital music players, multimedia cellphones and game consoles from customers such as Apple Inc., Nokia and Sony Corp.
Analysts expect earnings at Toshiba, which also competes with General Electric in nuclear reactors, to beat the company’s current full-year outlook of an operating profit of 260 billion yen ($2.2 billion), short of a consensus estimate of 277.1 billion yen by 14 analysts polled by Reuters Estimates.
Price falls of Toshiba’s NAND-type flash memory slowed in April-June, with average prices nearly level to the previous quarter.
Toshiba is watching price falls to see if they are in line with its outlook, based on its forecast for a 50 percent price decline this year, said Executive Vice President Fumio Muraoka.
«We are reviewing and recalculating our full-year projections, and will announce new forecasts at a later date,» Muraoka said at a news conference.
Toshiba, the world’s second-biggest maker of NAND-type flash memory after Samsung, reported an operating profit of 21.18 billion yen for the April-June quarter, compared with 20.84 billion yen a year earlier.
Toshiba’s microchips and sales of its laptops in the U.S. outweighed sluggish sales of its hard drives, mobile phones and lighting systems and a 5.5 billion yen loss in its liquid crystal display businesses, hit by stumbling prices.
Toshiba supplies chips to liquid crystal display TV makers like Sharp Corp, and also co-developed with IBM the Cell microchip, which runs Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console.
Toshiba, whose chips earned half its profit last business year, posted a net profit of 20.6 billion yen for April-June, a five-fold increase from 4.04 billion yen a year earlier, on a one-time 12.7 billion yen gain from the sale of its 45 percent stake in local music venture Toshiba-EMI Ltd. to EMI Group Plc.
Ahead of the announcement, shares of Toshiba closed down 3.1 percent at 1,115 yen, compared with Tokyo’s electrical machinery subindex which fell 2.8 percent.
Toshiba bought a 77 percent stake in Westinghouse, the U.S. power plant unit of British Nuclear Fuels, late last year and is eyeing growing demand for nuclear power worldwide.
Shares of Toshiba rose 36.6 percent in April-June, beating the subindex, and have since climbed to a seven-year high on steady NAND prices.
Fuente: Reuters
