TOKYO—Matsushita Communication Industrial, the leading mobile handset vender in Japan, announced that it is expecting to have a 40 billion yen (US$325 million) operational loss for fiscal year (FY) 2001 ending March 2002 due to gloomy sales of handsets. It will be the first time that Matsushita has had an operational loss since the firm started reporting its consolidated financial results in March 1989.
Matsushita Communications has been the largest handset producer in Japan. However, according to recent statistics, Matsushita was pushed from the top position by rival NEC this year.
During the past several years, Matsushita Communications has been making large profits and pushing up Matsushita Group’s total profits. However this year’s gloomy results of Matsushita Communications should negatively affect financial results of Matsushita Electric Industrial, the flagship company of Matsushita Group.
Matsushita Electric is going to announce its financial results on 30 October.
Matsushita Communications also announced that its revenues for the first half of FY 2001 ending September 2001 dropped by 24 percent to 392.4 billion yen (US$3.2 billion). Sales of the mobile communications business segment, the core business unit of Matsushita Communications, dropped by 38 percent.
To cope with the situation, Matsushita is going to close mobile factories in Britain and shift all the production to Matsushita’s new factory in the Czech Republic, which is scheduled to launch operations in April 2002.
The firm is also going to invite 400 employees to participate in its early retirement program on a voluntary basis.
