TOSHIBA POSTS US$8.8B LOSS
Auditor issues qualified opinion on company’s financial statements, says they are ‘mostly appropriate’
TOSHIBA Corp yesterday met a looming deadline to report its long-delayed financial results, saying it lost around US$8.8 billion (RM37.6 billion) in the last fiscal year over its hardhit United States nuclear unit Westinghouse Electric.
The move by one of Japan’s best-known firms greatly reduces the chance of an embarrassing delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
But the troubled company is still on shaky ground as it faces a court battle to sell off its prized memory chip business for around US$18 billion — the sale is seen as crucial to its turnaround.
There were growing worries that Toshiba might not make yesterday’s deadline to supply financial statements for the fiscal year ended in March, as it was at odds with its auditor over multi-billion dollar losses at Westinghouse.
Toshiba had repeatedly delayed the release of its financial statements, saying it needed more time to gauge the impact of Westinghouse on its balance sheet.
The massive losses at the division — largely owing to delays and cost overruns — have raised doubts about the future of Toshiba, which is still recovering from a 2015 accounting scandal.
However, the auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers Aarata, issued a qualified opinion on Toshiba’s statements yesterday, saying they were “mostly appropriate”.
The company said it had a net loss of 965.7 billion yen (RM37.6 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31 but said would swing back to profitability in the current fiscal year.
Earlier this month, the company’s shares were demoted from the prestigious first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange over inadequate internal controls.
It still needs to get itself out of a negative net worth by March next year to avoid being delisted.
“Toshiba has made one positive step forward to avoid the imminent risk of being delisted,” said Makoto Sengoku, a market analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Centre. AFP