NCR Japan Ltd has reported a 1.1 billion yen ($7.8m) pretax loss for the six months through June, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. The poor performance is said to be largely due to the weak yen, which pushed up import costs, and slow sales of computer terminals to financial institutions, company officials told the newspaper. It is the company’s first pretax loss since it went public way back in 1961. For the same period a year ago, pretax profit was 1.5 billion yen ($10.6m). Sales for the six months fell 15% to 44.1 billion yen ($313m) with computer sales plummeting 22%. The effect of the weaker yen is estimated to have negatively impacted results by 2.5-3 billion yen. Results also included a one-time charge of 1.4 billion yen stemming from severance pay for staff cut in restructuring moves. Net losses for the period amounted to 2.6 billion yen ($18.5m), against a profit of about 800 million yen ($5.8m) last year. Though the company has not announced its estimate of fiscal 1998 profit, pretax profit for the whole year is expected to fall to about 2 billion yen ($14.2m), or half the total for fiscal 1997, company sources said.
