Toshiba delays results again, warns of $8.4 billion net loss Western Digital takes legal action against Toshiba
Troubled conglomerate Toshiba yesterday delayed its earnings for a third time since January, but warned it likely lost 950 billion yen ($8.4 billion) in the just-ended fiscal year, with fears growing about its survival. The latest delay comes as one of Japan’s best-known firms grapples with claims of financial misconduct at money-losing US nuclear unit Westinghouse Electric, which is sitting in bankruptcy protection. Toshiba twice postponed nine-month earnings before it released unaudited results last month.
Yesterday’s warning-largely linked to the bloodletting at Westinghouse-was, however, slightly better than an earlier projected net loss of 1.01 trillion yen for the year ended in March. “We can’t officially disclose the earnings as they’re still being audited,” Toshiba president Satoshi Tsunakawa told a news briefing in Tokyo yesterday. Toshiba-still recovering from a 2015 accounting scandal-has said it needed more time to probe claims of financial misconduct by senior managers at Westinghouse and to gauge the impact on its finances. The investigation was started after a whistleblower complained that one or more executives at the US unit exerted “inappropriate pressure” on its accounting. The series of delays have stirred fears that Toshiba could be delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The company now faces a deadline for the end of June to file its results with Japan’s finance ministry, or face a possible end-of-July delisting. But it is not clear if the firm’s shares will be yanked from the exchange even if that date is missed.
Toshiba stock, which has lost more than 40 percent of its value since late December, rose 3.43 percent to 261.8 yen yesterday. “The market does not feel that the exchange is pushing toward a delisting,” Toshihiko Matsuno, chief strategist at SMBC Friend Securities, told AFP.
“If that was the case, the company would have been delisted a while ago, but the reality is that it’s been put off for quite some time.”
Lucrative chips
Yesterday’s announcement comes as a sensitive time as Toshiba looks to sell its prized memory chip business. The plan is facing opposition from Western Digital, which jointly runs Toshiba’s key chip plant in Japan. On Sunday, the USbased firm said it is taking its case to the International Court of Arbitration, seeking an injunction to block Toshiba from selling the business to a third party. Unloading the division, which accounts for about one-quarter of Toshiba’s previous 5.6 trillion yen in annual revenue, is seen as key for the company to turn itself around.
The two companies jointly operate Toshiba’s main semiconductor plant but Western Digital is not a favoured bidder for the world’s second biggest NAND chip producer, having put in a much lower offer than other suitors, a source with knowledge of the matter has said.
A legal battle could delay or put an end to an auction that could fetch some $18 billion and has attracted suitors such as private equity firm KKR & Co LP, Taiwan’s Foxconn and US chipmaker Broadcom. Toshiba is depending on the sale to cover billions in dollars in cost overruns at its now bankrupt US nuclear unit Westinghouse. The Japanese firm logged a 950 billion yen ($8.4 billion) annual net loss and had negative shareholder equity of 540 billion yen, it said in an unaudited earnings release yesterday. After months of souring relations, Western Digital has begun arbitration procedures with the International Chamber of Commerce, demanding Toshiba reverse a move to put their joint venture assets into a newly formed unit - Toshiba Memory and stop any sale without Western Digital’ s consent. Western Digital’s “efforts to achieve a resolution to date have been unsuccessful, and so we believe legal action is now a necessary next step,” CEO Steve Milligan said in a statement. —Agencies