Sharp Corp. on April 10 forecast a consolidated net loss of 380 billion yen ($4.7 billion) for fiscal 2011, an increase from its earlier predicted loss of 290 billion yen, which was already a company record.
The Osaka-based electronics maker said the downward revision was caused mainly by growing inventory of large liquid crystal display panels and declining sales of LCDs for handheld devices.
Sharp also revised downward its forecast for sales to 2.45 trillion yen and expanded its expected operating loss to 40 billion yen for the business year that ended in March.
“We were too optimistic about market trends,” Tetsuo Onishi, Sharp’s executive managing officer, said at a news conference.
Onishi said he expects business to pick up in fiscal 2012, and noted that the company at the end of March started mass-producing high-resolution LCD panels using oxide semiconductors.
He also announced that Sharp’s subsidiary operating its mainstay LCD plant in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, will integrate the LCD color filter businesses of Dai Nippon Printing Co. and Toppan Printing Co., which are based at the same site.
Sharp hopes the integration, expected around June, will improve the capacity utilization rate and cut costs, Onishi said.
In late March, Sharp announced that it agreed to form a partnership with Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics components. Sharp said the Hon Hai group will acquire a 46.5-percent stake in the company operating the Sakai plant by the end of March 2013.
Sharp said newly issued shares for the planned business integration will be allotted to Dai Nippon Printing and Toppan Printing, and the ownership ratios of Sharp and Hon Hai in the company operating the Sakai plant will fall below 40 percent.
As a result, the Sakai plant operator is expected to be excluded from Sharp’s consolidated financial settlements.
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