Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co. said Wednesday it has halved its group net profit projection due to massive appraisal losses on its stockholdings for the first half of the business year ended Sept 30.

It now projects group net profits of about 6 billion yen, down from 12 billion yen projected in May.

Sumitomo Trust also said it will skip its interim dividend payment for both ordinary and preferred shares. The company had intended to pay dividends of 3.50 yen and 3.04 yen, respectively.

In the second half, however, the trust bank said it would pay 7 yen on ordinary shares and 6.08 yen on preferred shares to maintain its annual dividends for the business year ending March 31.

It also cut its consolidated pretax profit projection to 15 billion yen from 25 billion yen.

Sumitomo Trust said it expects to report about 35 billion yen in losses on its portfolio due to the falling stock market.

It will report losses on all stocks on hand that have fallen in value by more than 50 percent from their book values, under new accounting rules introduced for the year that began in April, it said.

The bank said it had latent losses of 125 billion yen on stockholdings at the end of September.