Furukawa Electric Co. said Monday it registered group net losses last business year, blaming sluggish sales of information technology-related and electronics products, and increased depreciation costs for capital spending.

The comprehensive nonferrous metal maker posted group net losses of 3.38 billion yen. The year before, it turned a profit of 167.39 billion yen.

The company also blamed the reversal on a sharp fall in extraordinary profits from selling securities. Those profits fell from 228.76 billion yen in 2000 to 26.66 billion yen.

Its consolidated per-share net losses came to 5.16 yen, a marked downswing from the previous year's per-share net profits of 256.56 yen.

The company's group pretax profits plunged 89.8 percent to 7.64 billion yen. Group sales declined 6.7 percent to 771.41 billion yen.

It also attributed the smaller pretax profits to increased research and development costs, and anticipatory investment.

The firm said it will reduce its dividend for the reporting year to 6 yen per share, including an interim dividend of 3 yen already paid. The previous year it was 10 yen per share, with interim and yearend dividends of 5 yen each.

For the current business year, the company forecasts consolidated net losses of 49 billion yen and pretax losses of 19 billion yen, on group sales of 810 billion yen.