Toshiba Corporation (fka TOSBF)

[buhg1b]

Toshiba aims to double profits over three years: president

26 minutes ago

TOKYO (AFP) — Japan's Toshiba Corp. said Thursday that it aims to more than double operating profit over the next three years as it focuses on semiconductors and nuclear power plants after defeat in a DVD format war.

The upbeat forecasts came despite growing headwinds for Japan's technology giants amid fierce global price competition and a stronger yen, which is bad for overseas earnings.

Toshiba is targeting an operating profit of 500 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars) in the year to March 2011, up from 238.1 billion last year, when earnings slipped amid tough competition, president Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters.

Toshiba, which recently called it quits in a next-generation DVD format war, is targeting revenue of 10 trillion yen, up from 7.67 trillion last year.

"We aim to achieve high growth and profits in all business domains and reinforce our global business expansion," said Nishida.

The group plans capital spending of 2.2 trillion yen on new plants and equipment over the next three years, up from about 1.7 trillion yen over the previous three years, to expand its semiconductor and nuclear power businesses.

It will spend a further 1.4 trillion yen on research and development.

Toshiba is a leading manufacturer of NAND flash memory chips that are used in iPods and other digital music players, and recently announced plans to invest 1.8 trillion yen along with US partner SanDisk Corp in a new factory in Japan.

The Japanese giant aims for a 40 percent rise in sales of electronic devices over the next three years, and a similar increase in digital products such as televisions and computers.

It plans to boost exports to offset sluggish domestic demand.

Toshiba, which bought US nuclear plant maker Westinghouse Electric from British Nuclear Fuels in 2006, said it hopes to sell 33 nuclear reactors by 2015.

"The US market has acknowledged Toshiba's entry into the nuclear power business," said Nishida. "US companies, which until didn't know about Toshiba, approached us for strategic talks," he added.

Toshiba said it will hire 16,000 more workers overseas over the next three years as it expands manufacturing hubs in emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iSTotSzZPx-ZSdYgFEOuuMKY0c3A