The Japanese industrial conglomerate Toshiba slightly revised downwards its targets for its financial year 2019/20 on Monday, expecting a “limited impact” of the Covid-19 pandemic on the last quarter of its financial year, ended on March 31 .
The group now anticipates a turnover of 3390 billion yen (30.7 billion francs), against a last forecast of 3430 billion yen, published in mid-February.
The drop in sales should mainly concern the electronics and storage solutions division, said Toshiba in a press release.
The group has also revised down its 2019/2020 operating profit forecast, now expected to “more than 130 billion yen” instead of 140 billion yen previously.
“Operating profit is expected to be almost four times higher than the 35 billion yen recorded in 2018/19,” the group said, ensuring it did not “expect to have to revise its targets” before the publication of its results, now set for June 5 instead of May 14 initially.
Toshiba also warns that it will release its forecast for fiscal year 2020/21 “as soon as possible, June 5 or later”.
The group also considers itself “well prepared” financially for a possible deterioration of its market environment and economic conditions. It secured a line of credit of 258 billion yen in total with banks and further increased its available cash by 150 billion yen in April.
Before the upheavals caused by the Covid-19, Toshiba seemed to slowly raise the bar, after having chained scandals and setbacks in recent years.
Its third quarter 2019/20 was thus less bad than the previous two, while remaining on a cumulative net loss of 145.6 billion yen over the first nine months of the year as well as on a 7% drop in its turnover over the same period.
In mid-February he maintained his forecast of an annual net loss of 152 billion yen.
