Fujitsu Ltd announced Tuesday that group net profit for the first half ended September 30 plunged 71.6% to 2.37bn yen ($22.8m). Total revenue for the period rose 1.3% to 2.44 trillion yen ($22.84bn). The Japanese electronics giant said group operating profit rose 44.1% to 63.62bn yen ($595m) thanks to reduced operating expenses stemming from the restructuring of the company’s electronic devices business, which helped to offset the effects of falling prices in the disk drive market and lower sales of large-scale servers.
Despite the jump in operating profit, Fujitsu cited a sharp rise in the yen during the latter part of the six-month period and the extraordinary losses associated with restructuring as the prime reasons for the much lower bottom line. The company said its communications equipment business was helped by gains in the fiber optic transmission systems business in the US, as well as by income from large-scale undersea fiber optic cable projects. Overall telecommunications sales for the half rose 7% to 346.5bn yen ($3.24bn).
Despite strong growth in PC sales, restrained corporate spending led to weak sales of large-scale servers in Japan and overseas, the company said. International sales of small form-factor magnetic disk drives were also lower, and were impacted by falling market prices. Overall, half-year consolidated information processing sales amounted to 762bn yen ($7.12bn), a decrease of 6% from last year.
Although the company said its systems integration and outsourcing business enjoyed steady growth in Japan, the high value of the yen ate into the sales of overseas units. Total half-year sales in the software and services segment were flat with last year at 909.7bn yen ($8.5bn). The electronic devices business segment posted a 6% rise in first-half revenue to 267bn yen ($2.5bn), on the back of growing demand for flash memory chips, logic ICs, compound semiconductors and SAW filters.
