Japan’s Toshiba Corp will likely post an operating loss in the first half and significantly downgrade full-year forecasts as its chip business rapidly deteriorates, a report said yesterday.
A global slowdown is weakening demand for Toshiba’s chips used in home electronics, while a supply glut is lowering prices of flash memory chips for mobile phones and portable music players, the Nikkei Shimbun said.
The electrical giant expects to suffer an operating loss of some ¥30 billion (US$290 million) in the six months through this month as a global slowdown hurts demand for microchips, the newspaper said.
The loss would be a turn-around from a year-before profit of ¥82.5 billion and the first time in five years the group has posted an operating loss for a first half.
Toshiba, whose businesses include US nuclear power plant maker Westinghouse, had earlier projected an operating profit of ¥70 billion.
Toshiba in a statement would not confirm the report, saying it was still compiling earnings data.
The Nikkei, which did not identify its sources, said Toshiba would consider reducing the ¥367 billion it has earmarked for capital investment in the semiconductor segment this year.
Toshiba plunged into the red in the three months to June, blaming falling semiconductor prices and a stronger yen.
But the company kept its annual forecasts for a net profit of ¥130 billion, operating profit of ¥290 billion and revenue of ¥8 trillion.
The Nikkei said that Toshiba would be forced to significantly downgrade its full-year earnings projection because of poor results for the first half. The paper did not mention specific figures.
The group also suffered after giving up in February on its next-generation DVD format, clearing the way for the rival Blu-ray developed by Sony and its partners to become the industry standard.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS