Toshiba Corp., the embattled electronics and machinery giant once deemed a blue-chip company representative of Japan Inc., is seeking to survive the latest crisis deriving from huge losses in its nuclear power business in the United States by selling off its cash cow semiconductor unit to raise funds to pay off debts and restore financial health. While it remains uncertain whether the sale of memory chip business will proceed as hoped, Toshiba needs to realize that its survival will still depend on fixing its management and governance problems that brought it down to its current low state.
On Tuesday, Toshiba released its earnings report for the April-December period of 2016 without approval from its auditing firm — an extremely rare move for a listed company — after twice postponing the report due to differences with the auditors over the losses at the troubled U.S. unit Westinghouse Electric Co. The unaudited report said that Toshiba incurred a net loss of ¥532.5 billion over the period and that it had a negative net worth of ¥225.6 billion at the end of December — meaning that its debts were in excess of assets by that sum. Toshiba earlier said it expects its losses in the full year to March to reach ¥1.01 trillion and that the debt excess would reach ¥620 billion.
The sale of its core semiconductor business is intended to raise the money needed to erase this debt excess and bolster its financial standing. While the question remains of how the company will rebuild its group business after parting with the profitable memory chip unit, Toshiba reportedly hopes that the sale would rake in funds to the tune of ¥2 trillion — although the government's concern about an outflow of the latest semiconductor technology through possible sale of the unit to overseas firms cast doubt over the prospect of a deal.