been downgraded.

Do you have link to this?

Thanks

By Tim Kelly and Yoko Kubota

TOKYO | Fri Feb 3, 2012 8:10am EST

(Reuters) - Japan's Panasonic Corp warned of a record annual $10.2 billion net loss, joining beleaguered rivals Sony and Sharp in a sea of red ink as they struggle to fix their broken TV businesses and show they have not lost their way.

Panasonic's forecast loss of 780 billion yen ($10.24 billion) for the year to March dwarfed expectations, and is almost all due to restructuring charges and writedowns for its Sanyo Electric unit.

At a press briefing in Tokyo on Friday, Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo apologized for the unprecedented loss. "I feel the responsibility for the huge amount," he said.

He gave no sign, however, that he would step aside to let someone else try to revamp the sprawling consumer electronics giant, as Sony's boss Howard Stringer has done.

Sony on Thursday pressed its reset button after warning of a bigger-than-expected annual loss, announcing that Kazuo Hirai will take over from Stringer as CEO in April, triggering an 8 percent jump in its share price on Friday, its biggest one-day percentage gain in almost a year.

"We will accelerate our profit structure reform and make sure we achieve a V-shaped performance improvement in the next business year," Ohtsubo told reporters instead.

Together, Panasonic, Sony and Sharp Corp expect to lose $17 billion this year, highlighting the savaging of Japan's electronics industry by foreign rivals led by South Korea's Samsung Electronics, weak demand and a strong yen.

With TVs becoming smart - linked to other devices like tablets and smartphones - an inability by Panasonic to win in the TV market risks hobbling sales across their wider consumer electronics line-up.

Panasonic trimmed its forecast for the number of flat-screen TVs it will sell by 1 million to 18 million sets.

"They don't seem like a company that's progressing towards a particular goal," said Yuuki Sakurai, CEO and president of Fukoku Capital, which managed assets worth $7.6 billion as of last March.

"What exactly is this company good at? What does it want to do? They don't have answers to these questions."

Panasonic, which is in the process of shedding 17,000 jobs by end-March, also missed third-quarter market forecasts, diving to a loss of 197.6 billion yen from a profit a year earlier, much of the damage coming from the TV business.

TV HERE TO STAY

Ohtsubo dismissed any suggestion he will ditch the TV business.

"I don't think it's a business that has lost its growth potential," he said. Panasonic, he explained, wanted to "develop TV in a different manner" by exploring growth in sales to businesses, such as high-quality monitors for hospitals, rather than direct to more fickle retail consumers.

Yet, even with expansion into niche markets, the living-room market still dominates and the near-term outlook for TV sales is grim.

By 2015, annual global sales of liquid crystal TVs will contract by 8 percent to $92 billion, forecasts flat panel industry research company DisplaySearch. Worse still, plasma sets, a market that Panasonic dominates, will shrink 38 percent to $7 billion.

If Panasonic's market share "keeps shrinking by 10 percent or so, they may need to prepare some more restructuring," said Shiro Mikoshiba, analyst at Nomura Holdings in Tokyo.

Moody's Investors Service downgraded the debt ratings of Panasonic and Sony last month and retained a negative outlook for both, citing their continued TV losses.

SANYO WRITE DOWN

It's not only TVs, though, that pose a risk to profits and are keeping investors away from Panasonic shares, say analysts.

Panasonic shares initially fell on Friday, extending a slide to their lowest in more than 30 years, but later rallied to close 1.2 percent higher ahead of the quarterly results, likely helped in part by the jump in Sony shares.

Punching a big hole in Panasonic's finances, and adding to 514 billion yen in restructuring costs, is a 250 billion yen goodwill writedown from the 2009 acquisition of rival Sanyo, bought as part of a strategy to focus more on business-to-business markets such as auto components and green technologies.

If that business performs poorly, analysts say there could be a need for a bigger write-off.

"On its balance sheet, Sanyo's goodwill comes to 900 billion yen. That's really, really big and we know the situation of the battery business is really, really terrible," Nomura's Mikoshiba said before the earnings release.

"Panasonic's previous record net loss in 2001/02 was because of the impact of a sudden slump in PCs after the IT bubble burst, but there was hope then for growth in flat-screen TVs," said Hideyuki Suzuki, general manager for investment research at SBI Securities.

"This time, and not just for Panasonic, it doesn't feel like they've got rid of all the rot."

Ohtsubo said he had no regrets over buying Sanyo. The acquisition, he insisted, "provided clarity about the future course of Panasonic."

SILVER LININGS

"One silver lining is that there is investment being made for the future," said Hiroyuki Fukunaga, CEO of Investrust.

"You could take the added restructuring costs as a serious move by the company to reform and improve its business. You could look at this as the bottom, to show all the losses and then move aggressively towards the next quarter," he said.

Panasonic does expect to make an operating profit - which excludes one off items such as restructuring charges - though this is now seen at just 30 billion yen, down from a previous 130 billion yen. Last year, Panasonic logged an operating profit of 305 billion yen.

Ohtsubo took up much of his earnings presentation talking about the company's most profitable parts: its refrigerators, washing machines and other household appliances, which increased quarterly operating profit by more than 8 percent to 26 billion yen, with an operating margin of 8 percent.

Next year, Ohtsubo promised more products to attract global consumers, including shavers, massage chairs and the more traditional kitchen appliances - as well as other goods ranging from bicycle pumps, fax machines and light bulbs to nose hair trimmers and lighted toilet seats.

($1=76.15 yen)

(Additional reporting by Taiga Uranaka, Daiki Iga and Yoko Kubota in TOKYO; Editing by Mark Bendeich, Edmund Klamann and Ian Geoghegan)

And there are more...

This post has been edited by apple1188: Apr 11 2012, 04:08 PM

The news was two months ago

http://klse.i3investor.com/servlets/anpth/100210.jsp

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Added on April 11, 2012, 4:38 pmhttp://www.btimes.com.my/articles/panatvf/Article/

KUALA LUMPUR: Panasonic Malaysia Sdn Bhd expects sales for its current fiscal year ending March 31 2012 to be RM1.85 billion, short of RM500 million from the initial target of RM1.9 billion.

Managing director Jeff Lee said the company suffered five per cent drop in sales due to Japanese earthquake and tsunami as well as Thai flood.

"The natural disaster has affected our stock supply and shortage of deliveries," he told reporters after the launch of Panasonic new Smart VIERA televisions (TV) and Eco refrigerators yesterday

Panasonic introduced 30 new TV models of which 12 models are Plasma TVs, 16 models light emitting diodes (LED) TVs and two models of liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs as well as seven new Eco refrigerator models from Econavi, Inverter and Top Freezers.

The firm targets to sell 250,000 units of its new TV units and 135,000 units of new refrigerator products between now and end of the year.

Lee said the current trend in consumers electronic industry is toward "greener gadgets" which are smarter, more energy-efficient devices.

"Consumers now want more eco-friendly options on how to use them efficiently and comfortably for the enrichment of their lifestyles.

"To meet this demand, Panasonic has been aggressive in accelerating its efforts to manufacture and promote consumer electronic products that are smart and eco features," he said.

Currently, Panasonic's local market share for Plasma TV is above 45 per cent while LED and LCD is 15 per cent. Meanwhile, its market share for refrigerators stands at 22 per cent.

With the launch of new products, Panasonic hopes to maintain the 45 per cent market share for Plasma and more than 20 per cent for both LED and LCD, as well as achieving 24 per cent of share for refrigerators.

Read more: Panasonic: Sales may drop to RM1.85b http://www.btimes.com.my/articles/panatvf/.../#ixzz1riegfvBK

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Added on April 11, 2012, 4:41 pmBtw, i think more people prefer SONY, SAMSUNG, LG than panasonic. Panasonic is an old brand, its like outdated and trying hard to improve.

This post has been edited by apple1188: Apr 11 2012, 04:41 PM

Hi

You have to understand Panasonic Corp Japan is different from Panasonic Malaysia.
Panamy is only into marketing, not mnaufacturing.

Next the news that you showed



0.05billion is 50 mil, not 500 million.........

Panasonic Japan has nothing to do with Panamy.

You already get the answer from the quote, whether people prefer or not.
45% market share for Plasma, 20% for LED/LCD, 24% of refrigerator, and a sizeable market share for air-con as well.

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Added on April 11, 2012, 9:49 pmSony got produce air-cond, refrigerator?

Panamy is all about home appliances, not electronic gadget.

This post has been edited by cherroy: Apr 11 2012, 09:49 PM

Not exactly........just the biz models are different.

Panasonic Japan holds a substantial shareholding in Panamy. Thats why we see Jap directors
everytime. Not sure how much though...........

says here..

Panasonic Japan is its parent company, yes.
But operational wise, profit issue has nothing related to Panasonic Japan business issue.
Even Panasonic Japan making huge loss or huge profit, has nothing to do with operation of Panamy.

What's the trend in TV market? I thought Plasma TV was declining, while LED TV was hot?

That i agree..the biz model is different.

Panamy is not a manufacturing company.

However, i cannot say that operatiion wise, its not related as some exec directors are seconded from Japan

Thanks for your views. But even at the current price TDM is still trading at a low PE of <10. Do u feel that it wouldnt be able to maintain its current good performance going forward? What about RSawit - is it a better bet than TDM?

rsawit confirm not better bet then tdm

plantation you need play those big 1 ... tdm, twsplant, cbip, hapseng plant etc

Would like to know wats the ROI here? even around 20%? uhmmm

TDM aren't really planting new fields for expansion although they have plans to do so. Meaning their profit growth is due to CPO price. So as long as CPO prices hold, they can maintain their profits but it won't grow without reason.

- deleted -

This post has been edited by river.sand: May 2 2012, 10:07 AM

Not sure what you are trying to show here...

But yes ......either p/e goes up or earnings goes up to manintain price of share.

For comparison......

Nestle p/e is 28. Dlady is 19.6. Guiness is 22. Carlsberg is 20.

SAPIND not bad these few days. Hopefully can get dividend announcement soon. Maybe end of the month or so.

now stock so high. where got higher than FD? i bought bat at 38, nestle 30 and public bank 8rm... this is more than FD. now forget it i wont buy any

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Added on May 7, 2012, 4:24 pmmisc at this price giving 5% dividend dont know worth buying or not?

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Added on May 7, 2012, 4:24 pmmisc at this price giving 5% dividend dont know worth buying or not?

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Added on May 7, 2012, 4:24 pmmisc at this price giving 5% dividend dont know worth buying or not?

This post has been edited by normanTE: May 7 2012, 04:24 PM

then you can look at those growing stock lor.....