Toshiba delays earnings reports until March over audit woes

The company had asked Japanese regulators to extend a noon financial reporting deadline for a month, to March 14.

The impairment loss came from a USA nuclear plant construction company, which Toshiba subsidiary Westinghouse Electric acquired in 2015.

Toshiba was founded in 1875 as Japan’s first manufacturer of telegraph equipment, according to the company website.

It is also hoping to sell off its memory chip business to fix its struggling balance sheet.

According to market reports, Toshiba is poised to book a huge loss of approximately $4 billion for the April-December period on its United States nuclear business.

The company is still struggling to recover after it emerged in 2015 that profits had been overstated for seven years, prompting the chief executive to resign.

Scana slid the most in three months on Tuesday after Toshiba said it may sell Westinghouse Electric Co. – the atomic unit building plants in Georgia for Southern Co. and SC for Scana.

Toshiba had attempted to avoid the $6.3 billion write-down by selling a 20 percent stake in its profitable memory business.

The company only had shareholders’ equity of some ¥360 billion as of the end of September, or just 7.5 percent of assets, well below the 30 percent level seen as a healthy financial condition.

The numbers are not officially audited earnings as the company postponed the official announcement earlier in the day, requesting a one month extension.

Toshiba announced that it had asked for a one-month extension to today’s deadline for releasing earnings for April to December previous year. It didn’t give details about the alleged pressure.

The Japanese company took a $6.3 billion writedown to its USA nuclear unit on February 14 and announced several executive changes, including the resignation of Shigenori Shiga as representative executive officer to take management responsibility for the loss.

Shaw and Toshiba bought Westinghouse in 2006.

During the past few decades, Toshiba has been wholly or partly involved in the construction of 20 nuclear reactors in Japan, none of which are now operating following the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in March 2011.

It is speculated that Toshiba will dramatically reduce its nuclear operations and stop building new atomic power stations.

Toshiba said it wants to sell at least part of its controlling stake in Westinghouse.

Westinghouse is building reactors in Georgia and SC commissioned by utilities Southern Co. and Scana Corp., respectively. The Nuclear Power Corporation of India then allocated the Kovvada site for construction of six Westinghouse AP1000 reactors.

Toshiba itself has been more ambiguous.

Westinghouse has built 91 reactors around the world, of which 67 are still operating, 12 are closed and four are in long-term outage. “Uncertainty over the Toshiba deal shows exactly why foreign investors shouldn’t be left to keep Britain’s lights on”, he added.