NTT May Beat Overseas Sales Target of $13 Billion, Unoura Says

Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (9432), Japan’s largest fixed-line phone company, will probably earn more in overseas markets than it forecast at the beginning of the fiscal year, President Hiroo Unoura said.

NTT may beat its estimate of generating $13 billion in revenue outside Japan in the year started April 1, Unoura, who took over as president this month, said in an interview today in Tokyo where the company is based. “Our overseas affiliates have started to make more cross-selling synergies.”

The telecom operator spent 1.7 billion pounds ($2.65 billion) to buy Dimension Data Holdings Plc, an U.K. computer services company, in 2010 as it expanded overseas after the Japanese market slowed. The company has announced 10 overseas acquisitions totaling $3.02 billion in the past three years, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

NTT shares rose 1.5 percent to 3,700 yen at 2:18 p.m. in Tokyo trading, paring their decline this year to 6 percent.

NTT’s businesses outside Japan “are making an operating margin of 5 percent or more,” Unoura said. In November 2010, he said their operating margin was “just about break-even.”

The company will consider more acquisitions outside Japan to help it expand, the executive said today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Shunichi Ozasa in Tokyo at sozasa@bloomberg.net Yoshinori Eki in Tokyo at yeki@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anand Krishnamoorthy at anandk@bloomberg.net

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NTT President Hiroo Unoura

Junko Kimura/Bloomberg

Hiroo Unoura, president of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.

Hiroo Unoura, president of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. Photographer: Junko Kimura/Bloomberg