Japanese electronics maker Hitachi said Monday its net loss shrank by 8.5 percent in the quarter to June while operating profits jumped 13-fold thanks to improved overseas sales.
Net losses decreased to 22.04 billion yen (192.7 million dollars) from 24.08 billion yen a year earlier, Hiatchi Ltd said in a statement.
Operating profit soared to 17.14 billion yen from 1.29 billion yen while revenue grew 9.7 percent to 2.25 trillion yen, with overseas sales up 21 percent to 981 billion yen.
Pre-tax profit more than doubled to 11.9 billion yen from 4.85 billion.
Hitachi attributed its continued losses to increased costs associated with its drive to grow its share of the highly competitive flat-screen television market.
"While we managed to capture a 30 percent share of the domestic plasma display TV market our sales push for this market also weighed on our margins," Hitachi chief financial officer Takashi Miyoshi told a news conference.
"However, in order to further improve the brand image of our plasma TVs and shore up market share, we will continue to spend heavily on sales promotions," he said.
In the digital media and home appliance business, which includes flat TVs, Hitachi incurred an operating loss of 16.1 billion yen, up from the 8.2 billion yen loss a year ago.
"As we will continue our heavy sales promotion spending here, it may be difficult to turn around the loss-making flat TV business in the second half to March 2007," Miyoshi said.
Hitachi left unchanged its estimates for the full year to March 2007 with net profit at 55 billion yen, operating profit at 290 billion yen and revenue at 9.7 trillion yen.
