Toshiba Corp more than doubled its full-year earnings forecast on asset sales and a projected recovery in its power and computer memory divisions.
Net income will total ¥100bn ($918mn) in the 12 months ending March, Toshiba said in a release yesterday. That compares with a ¥40bn forecast in March.
Toshiba is trimming its empire as it tries to recover from a multi-year accounting scandal over padded profits. The conglomerate agreed to sell its medical unit to Canon and home-appliance division to China’s Midea Group Co. Incoming president Satoshi Tsunakawa is facing the task of winning back investor confidence after record losses, executive resignations and a plunge in its share price.
Toshiba kept its outlook for ¥120bn in operating profit this fiscal year, rebounding from a loss of ¥719.1bn, with revenue forecast to reach ¥5.1tn. The company reported a net loss of ¥483bn for the year ended March on sales of ¥5.67tn yen.
Tsunakawa, currently a senior vice president, will replace Masashi Muromachi as president if shareholders approve the move at a meeting scheduled for late June. Muromachi took over as president temporarily in July after three of his predecessors stepped down amid the accounting scandal. He is staying on as a special adviser.
The energy systems solution business, which includes Westinghouse, is expected to return to profit after writedowns last fiscal year. Operating income will be 51bn yen the 12 months ending March, compared with a ¥361.2bn loss a year earlier.
Storage and device solutions, which includes computer memory, is expected to have operating earnings of ¥32bn, it said. The company is investing ¥360bn over a period of three years till March 2019 on a new factory which will make its proprietary 3D flash memory chips. Toshiba expects output to begin no earlier than 2018. It maintains a flash memory partnership with SanDisk Corp and is in talks with the US- based company about investments in 3D flash, Toshiba said in March.
The PC unit will break even this year after a loss of ¥87.1bn. Toshiba has also been in discussions with Fujitsu and Vaio Corp, the personal computer maker spun off from Sony Corp, on a possible merger of their PC operations. While Toshiba is still considering options, the business is in a position to make a profit independently after scaling back production and targeting enterprise clients, Tsunakawa said earlier this month.