Panasonic to exit plasma TV panel business by end-March 2014

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2 ... USBRE99801720131009

By Reiji Murai
TOKYO | Tue Oct 8, 2013 11:19pm EDT

(Reuters) - Panasonic Corp will pull out of the plasma television panel business by the end of the financial year to March 2014, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters, marking a key milestone in the long-term decline of Japan's TV industry.

Panasonic had been widely expected to back out of the unprofitable business, but the exit comes sooner than predicted and underlines President Kazuhiro Tsuga's determination to weed out weak operations as he focuses on higher-margin products to end years of losses at the consumer electronics conglomerate.

Panasonic's TV division has been a major contributor to the electronics company's combined $15 billion (9 billion pounds) net loss in its two latest financial years. Its TV business posted an operating loss of 88.5 billion yen ($913 million) in the last financial year.

With the closure of its sole plasma panel factory in western Japan, Panasonic will book an impairment loss of more than 40 billion yen on the last remaining factory building in operation, the sources added. The company set aside 120 billion yen to cover restructuring costs at the start of the current financial year.

The move also signals the demise in Japan of a technology in which TV makers once invested heavily but has now been overtaken by advances in the liquid crystal display (LCD) business. Plasma display TVs accounted for less than 6 percent of global shipments in 2012, compared with 87 percent for LCD TVs, according to research firm DisplaySearch.

Squeezed by the strong yen in recent years, Japan's TV makers have also lost their innovative edge against nimbler rivals such as South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, with deep resources to spend on research and development.

Sony Corp, Panasonic and Sharp Corp combined had a less than 20 percent share of the worldwide flat panel TV market by revenue. Samsung had a 27.7 percent share, and LG Electronics Inc had 15 percent.

Panasonic said in a statement on Wednesday that it continued to consider various options for the plasma display panel business but that nothing had been decided yet.

The several hundred employees in Panasonic's plasma operation are expected to be deployed to other parts of the company, the sources said.

The move is in line with the strategy adopted by company President Tsuga since he took charge in June 2012. Panasonic is trying to engineer a turnaround away from low-margin consumer electronics goods to products catering to automakers and other business clients.

Tsuga has warned that he would weed out any division that fails to meet a 5 percent operating margin goal within three years. Non-core assets like its healthcare unit are also being sold as he overhauls the company.

Panasonic agreed last month to sell the healthcare business, which makes blood sugar monitoring devices and electronic record-keeping systems, to U.S. private equity firm KKR & Co in a $1.67 billion deal.

Shares in Panasonic were down 0.2 percent at 913 yen in morning trade in Tokyo, in line with a 0.3 percent slip in the benchmark Nikkei average.

4Ktv

Panasonic 在今年四月份的時候，否認了關於等離子電視停產的傳聞。現在看來，這個傳聞將變成事實了。日本權威的產經新聞媒體 Nikkei 報導稱，Panasonic 將會比最初設想的還要快退出等離子電視市場。報導還指出，Panasonic 已經停止了新等離子電視的研發，比打算在 2013 財年底，也就是 2014 年 3 月份的時候停止生產等離子電視。銷售將會繼續，直到庫存消化完畢。

2012 財年較弱的產品線也給 Panasonic 帶來了 7,500 億日元左右的虧損，公司也在考慮租賃權轉讓及出售現有的等離子工廠等可能。冰凍三尺非一日之寒，等離子電視在這幾年的銷量均無法抗衡液晶電視，再加上 Samsung 和 LG 對於日系廠商造成的巨大壓力，Panasonic 的市場生存空間也越來越小。如果 Panasonic 離開等離子電視行業（Sony 和 Toshiba、Hitachi 先後推出），那麼市場上將很難再看到相關產品，液晶電視將會成為較為主流的選擇。