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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (36934)	8/22/2000 9:25:29 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Toshiba profits get big lift from IT-led chip boom TOKYO, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Japanese chipmaker Toshiba Corp said on Monday it expects profits this year will be more than one-third higher than previous estimates, as the IT boom lifts demand for chips used in mobile phones and personal computers. The upbeat news sent Toshiba's shares nearly three percent higher on the day despite a slide in the overall market, and analysts were optimistic about the future. ``Toshiba's upward revision had been expected in the market but the figures came in even higher than our estimates,'' said Nomura Securities analyst Noboru Ishihara. ``Toshiba's shares look like they have more room to rise given the strong outlook for the semiconductor market.'' Toshiba doubled its forecast for operating profit in the chip sector to 130 billion yen ($1.20 billion), while the group overall now expects a 135 billion yen consolidated net profit for the business year to next March, up 35 percent from its last forecast in April. The forecast is a marked turnaround from the last business year when the company, the world's third-largest chipmaker and a sprawling electronics conglomerate that makes everything from nuclear power reactors to vacuum cleaners, posted its biggest consolidated net loss ever at 28 billion yen. The announcement came after the market closed, but investors had been tipped off by a weekend report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun financial daily, which also said the company would raise its total dividend payments for 2000/01 to 10 yen from last year's three yen. The company said on Monday it would pay a five-yen interim dividend but gave no figure for the full year. TURNAROUND FOR CHIPMAKERS Toshiba's shares ended 2.89 percent higher on Monday at 1,034 yen and have been steadily rising since early August, resuming a rally that by early July had powered as high as 1,275 from last autumn's lows just above 630. ``Sales of information and communication systems, cellular phones and PC peripherals continue to enjoy positive growth,'' Toshiba Senior Executive Vice President Kiyoaki Shimagami told a news conference. Toshiba, hit hard with other chipmakers during a slump in the dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chip market in the late 1990s, has shifted its focus away from plain-vanilla DRAMs used in computers and copiers to more sophisticated chips such as NAND-flash memories used in digital cameras and compact memory cards. Toshiba plans to boost its competitiveness by outsourcing more than 20 percent of its semiconductor production to other manufacturers over the next three years, compared with only five to six percent now. Toshiba has already outsourced about one fourth of its core DRAM chip output. With the information technology boom fuelling brisk demand for mobile phones and personal computers, as well as the chips and displays they are made with, Japan's chipmakers have been boosting their profit forecasts and capital investment plans. NEC Corp, the world's second-largest semiconductor maker, is also poised to beat its original earnings forecast, analysts said, while Japan's five big chipmakers are expected to boost their combined capital expenditure on semiconductors by two-thirds this year to more than 900 billion yen.