Japan's largest electronics group, Hitachi Ltd, is expected to post sharply higher profits in the year to next March, driven by improved earnings at its hard disk drive (HDD) unit, a Japanese newspaper said on Sunday.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily said Hitachi's operating profit was likely to exceed 250 billion yen ($2.3 billion) in 2004/05, up from an estimated profit of 170 billion yen in 2003/04.
Net profit is expected to reach 70-80 billion yen in the year to next March, well ahead of an expected 10 billion yen in the last business year. The paper said Hitachi could also raise its annual dividend by up to 25 percent to about 10 yen per share this financial year.
The newspaper said an earnings recovery at its disk drive subsidiary, coupled with strong demand for plasma screen televisions and other digital electronics products would boost Hitachi's earnings.
A Hitachi spokesman said the report was based on the newspaper's own forecasts.
He said the company would announce its 2004/05 earnings outlook on April 28, at the same time it is expected to post its earnings for the year to end-March 2004.
Jun Naruse, chief executive of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST), the world's second-largest HDD maker, told Reuters last month he was confident the unit would be back in profit in 2004 after an operating loss of $87 million last year.
Unlike its parent, HGST's business year starts in January.
As the top maker of small HDDs for mobile devices, HGST is benefiting from brisk demand for notebook PCs and portable music players.
Comments
Comments are closed.