Hitachi losses worsen

Low consumer spending, currency depreciation and higher taxes produce negative effects in 2007

Hitachi saw spending on hard disk drives increase

Hitachi saw its net losses rise to 58.1bn yen (£287m) for the 2007 financial year from 32.8bn yen (£162m) in 2006.

The Japanese electronics company said lower consumer spending, a rapid depreciation of the value of the yen against the US dollar and increased income taxes were behind the figures.

Hitachi’s revenue rose 10 per cent from 10,247.9bn yen (£50.1bn) to 11,226.7bn yen (£55.5bn), with operating income rising steeply by 89 per cent from 182.5bn yen (£902m) to 345.5bn yen (£1.7bn) in the same period.

The value of sales in the US market declined three per cent while revenues in Europe grew 24 per cent year-on-year.

The information and telecommunications systems division (including hard disk drives) grew sales by 12 per cent to 2,761bn yen (£13.7bn).

But revenue from digital media and consumer products division (including TVs) and the electronic devices division remained flat at 1,505bn yen (£7.4bn) and 1,293bn yen (£6.4bn) respectively.