Panasonic to Beat Annual TV Sales Target of 21 Million Sets, Ohtsubo Says
Panasonic to Beat Annual TV Sales Target, Ohtsubo Says
Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg
Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo speaking in an interview in Tokyo.
Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo speaking in an interview in Tokyo. Photographer: Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg
Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo
Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg
Ohtsubo in an interview in Tokyo.
Ohtsubo in an interview in Tokyo. Photographer: Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg
Panasonic Corp., the world’s largest maker of plasma televisions, expects to beat its full-year TV sales target, helped by sales in the Japanese market, President Fumio Ohtsubo said.
TV sales in the year ending March 31 are poised to exceed the 21 million sets the company had anticipated, Ohtsubo said in an interview in Tokyo today. The Japanese government’s "eco- point" incentives for purchases of energy-saving electronics boosted sales at home, its biggest market, while demand in the U.S. has been in line with the company’s expectations, he said.
Japanese consumers rushed to buy TVs before the government scaled back incentives for energy-efficient TVs and appliances this month. Shipments of flat-panel sets in Japan jumped fivefold last month from a year earlier, according to electronics-research firm BCN Inc. in Tokyo.
“Panasonic benefited a lot from the subsidies as Japan accounts a large portion of its sales,” said Nobuo Kurahashi, an analyst at Mizuho Financial Group Inc. “But it’s inevitable sales in Japan will decrease next year and Panasonic will have to compensate the decline with revenue from developing countries or Europe and the U.S.”
Panasonic fell 0.7 percent to 1,186 yen at 1:47 p.m. in Tokyo trading. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped 0.5 percent.
Year-end
The company expects year-end revenue of audio and visual products in Europe and the U.S. to increase by 1 percent to 2 percent, Ohtsubo said. The U.S. TV market “lacks forcefulness, but sales there haven’t gone down below our estimate.”
Panasonic, the first major TV maker to sell 3-D sets in the U.S., has said it’s aiming to boost TV sales 33 percent to 21 million sets this fiscal year, including 1 million 3-D models.
For 3-D, meeting the target will be "difficult" because of the scarcity of content, the executive said. Panasonic plans to release more Internet-enabled TVs to boost demand, he said.
Panasonic expects a stronger yen will continue eroding its earnings next year, the president said. The maker of Lumix cameras aims to increase the proportion of overseas production to 60 percent in the year to March 2019, from less than 50 percent currently, Ohtsubo said.
The company is shifting plasma-display panel facilities from Japan to Shanghai as part of its effort to turn around the money-losing TV operation. The TV operations, which are expected to lose money in the six months to Sept. 30, may turn profitable in the second half, Yoshiiku Miyata, the head of Panasonic’s TV business said in August.
To contact the reporters on this story: Mariko Yasu in Tokyo at myasu@bloomberg.net; Maki Shiraki in Tokyo at Mshiraki1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net.
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