Loss-hit Toshiba warns over survival
Toshiba on Tuesday warned its survival was at risk as the struggling Japanese industrial giant reported a loss of $4.8 billion in long-overdue financial results.
One of the country’s bestknown firms, Toshiba had twice delayed its earnings and faced the possibility of an embarrassing delisting from the Tokyo stock exchange if it missed the Tuesday deadline for reporting.
The unaudited results showed the troubled firm lost 532.5 billion yen in April-December. It has previously forecast losses could balloon to more than a trillion yen in the fiscal year to March.
Japan’s financial regulators had given the firm more time to assess the impact of huge writedowns at its US nuclear unit Westinghouse Electric, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month.
“It’s likely that the company’s financial situation will turn severe” owing to problems at Westinghouse, it said in a Japanese-language statement released with the results. “There are events and circumstances that may bring about significant questions about the idea of (carrying on) as a going concern.”
The warning comes amid media reports that Taiwanese giant Foxconn is offering to pay the firm up to 3.0 trillion yen for its prized memory chip business.
Toshiba has said it needed more time to probe claims of financial misconduct by senior managers at Westinghouse and gauge the impact on its finances.
Toshiba’s auditor said Tuesday it would not sign off on the latest results until it had finished “evaluating” the firm’s probe, among other issues. “This evaluation process was continuing at the time of the reporting,” it said in the statement.
“As a result, the auditing firm was unable to judge whether the... financial statement requires amendments or not.”
Toshiba shares have been hammered this year, losing more than half their value since late December when it first warned of multi-billion-dollar losses at Westinghouse. They fell 2.69% to finish at 223.5 yen on Tuesday, before the results.