Bearings maker NSK Ltd. said Wednesday it now expects to report only a quarter of its earlier projected consolidated net profit for the 2001 business year due mainly to declining demand from information technology firms.
The nation's largest manufacturer of bearings said it expects its group to post a net profit of 3 billion yen and pretax profit of 1.5 billion yen on sales of 490 billion yen for the 12 months to March 31.
The company projected on May 23 a net profit of 12 billion yen and pretax profit of 18 billion yen on sales of 530 billion yen.
NSK said domestic sales in bearings and precision machinery products have been declining sharply due to the falls in IT-sector demand. Sales in overseas markets are also likely to drop due to the U.S. economic slowdown and worldwide deterioration in the IT sector.
Also squeezing the group profit is about 1.4 billion yen of appraisal losses in stockholdings to be reported in the first half of the business year, it added.
NSK's midterm results were also revised downward from those predicted in May.
It now expects a midterm net profit of around 6 billion yen, down from 8 billion yen, and pretax profit of 3.5 billion yen, down from 7 billion yen, on unchanged sales of 250 billion yen for the period that Sunday.