Hitachi is showing Sony and Panasonic that there can be life after TV.
The company ended 56 years of TV manufacturing in August as part of a turnaround from a record loss three years ago. President Hiroaki Nakanishi, a 42-year company veteran, has also shed units making liquid-crystal displays and hard drives while seeking annual cost cuts of some 450 billion yen ($5.7 billion).
Outsourcing TV production let Hitachi escape rising South Korean competition and slumping prices that have hit Panasonic, Sony and Sharp with growing losses. Instead, the 102-year-old manufacturer is benefiting from demand for power stations in India, high-speed trains in Europe and auto parts in China.
“Hitachi’s decision came just in time,” said Masayuki Kubota, who first covered the Tokyo-based company as an analyst in the 1980s and now holds its stock among the $1.9 billion of assets he manages at Daiwa SB Investments Ltd. “Japan has lost its competitive edge in consumer electronics.”
Sharp, Sony and Panasonic have each slumped more than 70 per cent in Tokyo trading since April 2010, when Nakanishi took over at Hitachi. His company has risen 16 per cent, boosting its market value to $24 billion — almost as much as the three consumer electronics makers combined. It fell 1.2 per cent to 404 yen today.
Hitachi’s array of industrial products such as construction equipment, software and escalators has made it easier for it to shed TV operations than it would be for rivals. Its consumer products division accounted for 8.3 per cent of sales in the quarter ended September, down from 12 per cent four years earlier.
Sony, Sharp and Panasonic get more than two-thirds of sales from electronics, giving them fewer alternatives for boosting revenue.
“It would be particularly difficult for Panasonic and Sharp to stop making televisions,” said Ichiro Michikoshi, an analyst at BCN Inc.
Nonetheless, Hitachi should be an example for other companies in the country as they consider what to do about loss-making operations, said Atsushi Osanai, a Sony veteran now working as an associate professor at Waseda University’s business school. “Many Japanese companies tend to hold onto businesses even if they aren’t profitable,” he said. “They could learn a lot from Hitachi.”
Hitachi’s investment areas include cloud computing and smart cities, and it’s aiming to cut costs by five per cent through greater cooperation among its 900 or so units in purchasing, production and back-office functions. The company is also emphasising emerging markets to reduce its reliance on Japan’s shrinking population. It will highlight the push by holding a board meeting in India next month, its first outside Japan. About 60 per cent of sales now come from Japan.
Hitachi began its shift away from consumer-electronics in 2007, when it stopped making personal computers. It later shed two LCD-making units, a stake in chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc and a hard-disk drive business.
The sale of the drive unit, which Nakanishi had headed and turned around following losses, was valued at $4.8 billion. That helped the company post a record net income of 347 billion yen in the year ended March. Three years earlier, it lost 787 billion yen, partly because of tax write-offs. “The biggest loss in our history was a big driver of change,” said Atsushi Konno, a spokesman. “No one asked why we were selling the hard-disk drive unit after that.”
In TV-making, the company closed its overseas factories and then in August shuttered its last plant, in Japan. While it still sells Hitachi-branded TVs, Konno said, “we don’t need to make them ourselves.”
The company should consider halting TV sales altogether as there is still a possibility of losing money in the business, even if outsourcing has reduced the risk, said Takeo Miyamoto, an analyst with Deutsche Bank AG in Tokyo.
Japanese TV-makers have been caught between falling demand and competition from Samsung Electronics and LG. As global TV shipments have declined more than four per cent this year and are expected to remain little changed in 2013, Japan’s deliveries plunged 77 per cent in the second quarter, according to researcher DisplaySearch.
The slump has left Sony, Japan’s biggest television maker, forecasting a ninth straight annual loss at its TV unit. Number two Panasonic is expecting a net loss of 765 billion yen this fiscal year. It plans to cut 8,000 jobs in the six months ended March, it said today. Sharp has increased its full-year loss forecast and drawn up plans to close plants and shed staff.
Hitachi expects to increase its operating profit 16 per cent this year to 480 billion yen. Net income will probably fall 42 per cent to 200 billion yen, after a boost a year earlier from the sale of the hard drive unit to Western Digital Corp. sales will total 9 trillion yen.
While Hitachi has returned to profit, its operating margin was only 4.5 per cent in the quarter ended September 30. That compares with 9.6 per cent for General Electric (GE) and 8.6 per cent for Siemens, companies Hitachi has said it wants to match. The Japanese manufacturer’s margins have been squeezed by difficulties managing costs across units and by a stronger yen.
The company could boost margins by quitting other consumer-goods businesses such as washing machines, vacuum cleaners and air conditioners, said Mitsushige Akino, who oversees $600 million in assets at Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co in Tokyo.
“Hitachi has cut a lot of costs,” he said, “but it still has the ability to do more.”
