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Asahi Glass: first half “98 report

5 November 1998: Japan“s Asahi Glass Co. said its recurring profit for the April-September fiscal first half dropped 30.9% from a year before to 10,414 million yen.
The major glassmaker“s half-year…

5 November 1998: Japan“s Asahi Glass Co. said its recurring profit for the April-September fiscal first half dropped 30.9% from a year before to 10,414 million yen. The major glassmaker“s half-year sales fell 15.9% to 363,748 million yen as sales in all categories but one tumbled 16-21%. The electronics division fared well, owing to the strong performance of glass substrates for thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays, Asahi Glass Senior Managing Director Masashi Sakamoto said. Asahi Glass suffered an operating loss of 2,801 million yen in the six months, the first since its stock exchange listing in 1950, as cost-cutting efforts failed to offset drops in sales volume and product prices, Sakamoto said. But it expects to report an operating profit of one billion yen for the full year to March 1999, still down a sharp 92.7% from the previous year, by eking out 5 billion yen in cost reductions and 2 billion yen from higher sales volume of plant equipment, he said. Asahi Glass booked a stock appraisal loss of 3 billion yen as an extraordinary loss, Sakamoto said. The step helped improve its nonoperating balance and thus narrowed the year-on-year decline in recurring profit. The company saw first-half after-tax profit sink 49.7% to 5,043 million yen. It will keep the interim dividend unchanged at 4.5 yen per share. In the full year, Asahi Glass expects a recurring profit of 17 billion yen, down 45.9%, on sales of 740 billion yen, down 13.4%. Both figures are unchanged from previous projections. A slump in construction demand is expected to hurt sales of its mainstay glass and construction materials by 13.3%. Sales of chemicals are also expected to slide 17.1%, Sakamoto said. Full-year after-tax profit is estimated at 10 billion yen, down 50.2%. The company plans to pay an annual dividend of 9 yen per share, down from the previous term“s 10 yen, by dropping a commemorative payment.

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