Japan's Nikkei fell to a one-week closing low on Friday, dragged down by Sony Corp, Apple Inc supplier Nitto Denko Corp and NTT Data Corp after they sharply lowered their earnings guidance. Gains in Panasonic Corp and mobile operator SoftBank Corp offered some respite, however. The Nikkei fell 0.9 percent to 14,201.57 points, reversing earlier gains and adding to Thursday's 1.2 percent slide. Still, the benchmark was up 0.8 percent this week and is up 37 percent year-to-date.
Panasonic climbed 6.2 percent to a 2-1/2 year high after it lifted its earnings forecast while index heavyweight SoftBank rose 3.4 percent on the back of a record six-month profit. SoftBank was the most traded stock on the main board by turnover, followed by Sony, which plunged 11.1 percent, marking its worst one-day decline since October 2008 and knocking about $2.2 billion off its market valuation.
The maker of famed Walkman music players to the game console PlayStation slashed its annual operating profit forecast by 26 percent as its struggling TV operations fell back into red. Both Nitto Denko and NTT Data also cut their estimates. Nitto Denko lost 2.1 percent and NTT Data dropped 4.8 percent. Among other top-weighted losers were Ricoh Corp and TDK Corp, off 6.7 and 3.9 percent respectively, after their quarterly results.
The broader Topix index lost 0.9 percent to 1,183.03, with 2.73 billion shares changing hands, slightly lower than Thursday's 2.81 billion. Sony, the maker of the famed Walkman music player to the game console PlayStation, tumbled 10 percent after it slashed its full-year operating profit forecast by 26 percent as its struggling TV operations fell back into red.
Rival Panasonic was cheered by investors, with the stock up 5.9 percent to a 2-1/2 year peak after it lifted its earnings forecast on strong sales of products like batteries to industry clients. Sharp Corp, like its domestic peers which have been struggling against the onslaught of foreign rivals such as Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc, posted its first quarterly net profit in two years, beating market expectations. The stock was up 5.2 percent. Adding to the positive sentiment, China's manufacturing sector expanded at the fastest pace in 18 months in October, official data showed on Friday, providing fresh signs of a stabilisation in the world's second-largest economy. A senior trader at a foreign brokerage in Tokyo said company earnings after Thursday's market close were a bit mixed but added that buy orders still outpaced sell by two to one.
Index heavyweight SoftBank jumped 3.7 percent after it reported a record six-month profit, spurred by strong sales of handsets, subscriber growth and a share price that has more than doubled this year. SoftBank was the most-traded on the main board by turnover, followed by Sony, Sharp and Panasonic. Ink-jet printer and electronic parts maker Seiko Epson Corp was untraded with a glut of buy orders after it raised its annual operating profit guidance by 57 percent to 58 billion yen. The stock was notionally quoted at 1,996 yen, up 25 percent from its Thursday's close of 1,596 yen.
Underscoring the mix bag of earnings, TDK Corp dropped 3.9 percent to a three-week low, with analysts expressing concerns about its outlook on hard disk drive business. Nevertheless, the quarterly earnings season so far has sprung few surprises. Of the 83 Nikkei companies that have so far reported quarterly earnings, 58 percent of them either beat or met analysts' expectations, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine, in line with the previous quarter. The Nikkei has risen nearly 40 percent this year on the back of the Japanese government's aggressive monetary and fiscal stimulus.