TOSHIBA STOCK LISTING STATUS DOWNGRADED
Company also flags bigger loss than previously estimated
CRISIS-wracked Toshiba Corp suffered further indignities yesterday, estimating bigger losses for the past financial year and getting demoted to the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
It received regulatory approval to delay filing its annual earnings by more than a month amid a prolonged accounting investigation at its bankrupt Westinghouse nuclear unit. It is the sixth time since 2015 that Toshiba has delayed an earnings filing.
Underscoring the firm’s dire financial position that has forced it to sell off its highly-prized chip unit, Toshiba said it now estimated it had a worse-than-expected negative shareholders’ equity of US$5.2 billion (RM22.2 billion) as of end-March.
With negative shareholder equity confirmed, the Tokyo Stock Exchange said it would move Toshiba’s listing to the second section of the bourse from August 1.
Regulators have given Toshiba until August 10 instead of June 30 to make its earnings filing.
Failure to gain an extension would have put the company’s stock exchange listing in jeopardy.
The firm has been on the Tokyo bourse’s supervision list since mid-March as it has failed to clear up concerns about its internal controls after a 2015 accounting scandal. It still needs to dig itself out of negative shareholders’ equity by the end of this financial year to stay listed.
Toshiba estimated a net loss of 995.2 billion yen (RM38.3 billion) for the past fiscal year from a previous estimate of 950 billion yen.
The group also said yesterday it is open to talks with Western Digital Corp in their dispute over the sale of its chip unit — an apparent olive branch after it chose another suitor as preferred bidder.
Toshiba has picked a consortium of Bain Capital and Japanese government investors as the preferred bidder. Reuters