Matsushita first half profit up

Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd posted a 21 percent rise in first-half profit on Friday on strong plasma TV sales, and stood by its outlook for a full-year profit gain of 9 percent.
Matsushita, the No 1 plasma TV maker ahead of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics Inc, benefited from a growing trend for consumers to trade in bulky cathode-ray tube TVs for flat screen models as prices come down.
The Osaka-based company also enjoyed robust demand for its Lumix digital cameras and household appliances such as air-conditioners and tilt-drum washing machines.
Operating profit at Matsushita, the world's largest consumer electronics maker, was 207.39 billion yen ($1.75 billion) in April-September, up from 171.1 billion yen a year earlier. Sales rose 3.1 percent to a record 4.39 trillion yen. Its plasma business is expected to face tougher competition as liquid crystal display (LCD) TV makers such as Sharp Corp strengthen their line-up of TVs in the 40-inch class and larger, considered until recently to be plasma territory.
But Matsushita President Fumio Ohtsubo said he is confident that the company will be able to maintain plasma's competitive edge against LCD in the area of large-sized panels.
"Competition between LCD and plasma in larger panels will be here to stay. But the larger panels become, the more important response speeds for moving images are. In this point, plasma still excels," Ohtsubo told a news conference.
The company said it now expects to sell about 3.7 million plasma TVs in the year to March 2007, down from its original target of 4 million, because the sales mix is likely to include a greater proportion of larger-sized sets.
"Compared with the time when the initial 4 million target was set, the market is now geared more towards larger models," Matsushita Executive Vice President Tetsuya Kawakami told reporters. "The original target is comparable to about 3.7 million under the current circumstances."
Larger models generally command higher selling prices than smaller ones. The company earlier this year launched the world's largest 103-inch plasma TV. Measuring 2.4 metres by 1.4 metres and weighing 215 kg, the panel is bigger than a double-sized mattress and almost as heavy as an upright piano.
Matsushita, which offers Viera brand flat TVs, controlled 28.3 percent of the global plasma TV market in April-June, followed by LG Electronics with 17.1 percent and Samsung with 13.6 percent, according to DisplaySearch. The research firm expects the global plasma TV market to grow 43 percent this calendar year to $21.6 billion.
For the full year to March, Matsushita stood by its previous operating profit forecast of 450 billion yen, up 9 percent on the year. That compares with the consensus of 491.5 billion yen in a poll of 20 analysts by Reuters Estimates. Matsushita plans to review its full-year forecasts when it announces its results for the October-December quarter, a critical period for consumer electronics companies.