The Japanese computer and electronics majors rather limit the impact of their figures by all deciding to report on the same day (we know the ploy of companies all holding their annual meetings on the same day to make life harder for the Yakusa, the Japanese gangsters that love to practise blackmail on companies by threatening to disrupt their annual meetings if they don’t come up with the readies, but that does not require all the announcements to be made on the same day). It was particularly unfortunate yesterday, because most of the majors are showing some benefit from the personal computer boom after several difficult years. NEC Corp, Japan’s biggest semiconductor maker, said group net profit for the year to March 31 soared 435% to the equivalent of $410m (the dollar was in the tank again yesterday, so dollar conversions may vary slightly). The two next biggest in the chip world are Hitachi Ltd and Toshiba Corp, recording profit growth of 75% to $1,320m and 268% to $519m respectively – and for Toshiba, that marked the first rise for five years. As well as chips, disk drives, liquid crystal displays, portable telephones and personal computers all had a sunnier year. Fujitsu Ltd swung back into profit after the embarrassment of last year’s $438m loss, coming out $523m to the good at the net level. Mitsubishi Electric Corp’s group net profit more than doubled to $489m, and all five are forecasting further profit rises this fiscal year. They expect the average dollar rate to fall to 85 to 90 yen over the year, from an average of 100 the previous year – it was hovering just above the 85 yen mark yesterday afternoon, so they may be being optimistic, and that means vast numbers of yen lopped off their profits – but they look for increased semiconductor sales to make up for the losses. According to Reuter, NEC managing director Yoshihiro Suzuki said market prices of memory chips would stay high until the end of next March, enabling it to raise export prices, and it expects group semiconductor sales to reach $12,200m this fiscal against $10,900m last. NEC plans to raise group capital spending on semiconductors to $1,740m from $1,450m last; Hitachi plans to invest $1,510m, up from $1,390m. Toshiba will raise investment to $1,270m from $1,160m, and Fujitsu will up its investment to $1,680m from $1,320m. Mitsubishi Electric will invest $988m, up from $895m.
