Toshiba is more than a laptop maker, but the vast Japanese conglomerate shrunk under a wave of bad news.
Toshiba is more than a laptop maker, but the vast Japanese conglomerate shrunk on Tuesday under a wave of bad news.
In one day, the company lost its chairman, said it will stop building nuclear power plants, wrote off about $6.2 billion relating to that business, and postponed its fourth-quarter earnings report for a month.
Its financial problems were no secret: Two weeks ago, it revealed plans to sell stakes in its memory chip and SSD businesses to cover the nuclear write-offs.
Last June, it sold an 80 percent stake in its domestic appliances business, Toshiba Lifestyle, for $450 million. Before that sale, it had been planning to develop a series of smart appliances that could link up with its TVs and PCs.
On Tuesday, instead of the final results expected, the company published provisional figures showing negative shareholder equity, and Japanese media reported analyst speculation that the results were delayed because auditors refused to sign off on the accounts.
The nuclear write-down, then, could topple Toshiba, but even if it doesn’t, the company could still be forced to sell further assets, perhaps including its PC and laptop business.
