Panasonic operating profit jumps 31 pct in Q2 on shift away from price-squeezed products
Xinhua, October 29, 2015 Adjust font size:
Panasonic Corp. said on Thursday that its operating profit in the second quarter of the fiscal year rose 31 percent owing to a redistribution of investments focusing on its auto-parts and eco-tech home systems.
Panasonic said its operating profit in the July-September quarter increased to 123.9 billion yen (1.0 billion U.S. dollars), from 94.7 billion yen logged a year earlier, coming in ahead of median analysts' expectations of a 106.5 billion yen profit.
The Osaka-based maker of Lumix digital cameras and 4K Viera curved screen HD TVs also said it had maintained its outlook for an annual operating profit of 430 billion yen in the year, which would mark a 12.6 percent increase compared to the same period a year earlier and a fourth straight year of profit growth.
The company also said it has actively been shifting assets and investments away from markets where the firm is being squeezed out by ever-lowering global price competition, such as in its smartphone and TV markets, and into high-profit sectors like its high-tech auto parts and eco-friendly home systems.
Such systems include Panasonic's variety of home-based network solutions that allow users to control appliances and other equipment, boasting the firm's eco-friendly technology, for what the company describes as "smarter energy use."
The power a user requires to heat its IH cooking equipment, for example, will be "automatically reduced when the overall electricity consumption in the home is large," the company says of one of its latest home-based eco-tech solutions.
Panasonic also said on Thursday that it would sell its lead acid battery business for about 30 billion yen (250 million U.S. dollars) to Japanese battery maker GS Yuasa Corp. so as to focus on the production of its lithium ion batteries. Panasonic's lead acid battery business had revenue of around 50 billion yen in the year ended March, it said.
In the first half of fiscal 2015, the group announced Thursday its net profit increased 38 percent to 111.3 billion yen. Enditem