KDDI to Take $1.55 Billion Charge, Miss Forecast (Update2)
By Ian Messer with reporting by Miki Anzai and Tomomi Sekioka
quote.bloomberg.com
Tokyo, March 13 (Bloomberg) -- KDDI Corp. will cut its full- year profit forecast by more than 90 percent after taking a 200 billion yen ($1.55 billion) charge to write-down old equipment and unsold inventories, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said.
Japan's No. 2 cellular-phone operator, which runs the Au and Tuka mobile-phone services, may report group net income of 5 billion yen in the year to March 31, down from its forecast of 63 billion yen, the report said.
The charges, which are double KDDI's earlier forecast, stem from write-downs on the valuation of older network equipment and on a 2.5 million inventory of unsold mobile phones, the daily said, without citing sources.
``This company was focused too much on gaining market share, instead of increasing profits, so the move to trim down its idle assets is an appropriate thing to do,'' said Michitaka Kato, who manages 15 billion yen in assets at Japan Investment Trust Management Co.
The write-down of aging networks may help Tokyo-based KDDI focus more on its newer equipment and services as its struggles to retain market share. Rivals NTT DoCoMo Inc., the world's largest mobile-phone operator by sales and J-Phone Ltd., a unit of Vodafone Group Plc, have snatched market share from KDDI by introducing more new phone models and services. |
