Japan's Hitachi suffers net profit fall
Afp, Tokyo
Japan's Hitachi said Friday its net profit fell 79 percent in the December quarter due to an absence of one-off gains that lifted the previous year's bottom line and to losses in hard-disk drives. Hitachi posted a net profit of 5.4 billion yen (45 million dollars) in the three months to December in the absence of gains made on the initial public offering of affiliate Elpida Memory in November in 2004. Pretax profit in the third quarter fell 16 percent to 59.6 billion yen despite revenue growth of six percent to 2.26 trillion yen. Operating profit from the mainstay information and telecommunications systems division plunged 75 percent as its hard-disk drives (HDDs) business left a loss of 7.4 billion yen. The company also lost money in personal computers and consumer digital products such as plasma display panel (PDP) televisions.
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