NEC net profit falls

Japan's NEC Corp said on May 10 that its net profit in the January-March quarter tumbled 36.4 percent from the year before, reflecting in part the negative impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The electronics company posted a group net profit of 41.1 billion yen ($508 million) in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010.
The profit fall was also attributable to its sluggish information technology service business. Operating profit for the quarter fell 27.0 percent to 70.2 billion yen, while sales were down 16.2 percent at 925.5 billion yen.
Japan's biggest-recorded earthquake resulted in a negative impact of 14 billion yen on the company's operating profit and caused a special loss of 6 billion yen in the last fiscal year, Dow Jones Newswires quoted an NEC executive saying.
Power shortages and supply chain breakdowns sent Japanese production sharply lower in the weeks following the quake. NEC said that while the quake's impact for the current fiscal year is difficult to assess, it expects some post-quake infrastructure reconstruction demand, particularly for services for telecommunications companies. For the full fiscal year, NEC incurred a net loss of 12.5 billion yen, against a profit of 11.4 billion yen a year earlier.
The net loss came after the company booked a special loss deriving from spinning off its semiconductor unit, NEC Electronics, whose loss-making performance had long dragged on its bottom line.