Toshiba Forecasts $1 Billion Loss (zdnet.com) 38
Toshiba has announced a forecast net loss of $970 million due to the tax impact of selling its memory chip business, which was itself sold to make up for losses incurred from its nuclear energy business. ZDNet reports: The loss will come instead of its previously forecast net profit of 230 billion yen due to taxes incurred during the sale of the chip business, although its revenue forecast remains unchanged, Reuters reported. Toshiba had last month announced that it would be selling its memory chip business for 2 trillion yen to a consortium led by Bain Capital that includes Seagate and is backed by the Japanese government. As part of the sale, Toshiba said it would be investing 350.5 billion yen into the memory chip unit, maintaining some ownership over it, and last month said that it expected to close the deal "within days."
The tech company had originally named Bain as its preferred bidder back in June, although the sale had been slowed down after joint venture partner Western Digital had struggled to submit a competing bid alongside KKR after its original bid was rejected. As a result, Toshiba announced in June that it was planning to sue Western Digital for 120 billion yen, claiming the latter had interfered in the sale of the memory chip business. Western Digital had "continually interfered with the bid process" and "exaggerated" the power it had in relation to a potential sale, Toshiba claimed, and also made moves to prevent Western Digital employees in its Yokkaichi plant from accessing information pertaining to their partnership. Reuters said the delayed sale could potentially lead to Toshiba "not getting anti-trust clearance before the end of the financial year," which could in turn result in the Tokyo Stock Exchange delisting the company.
The tech company had originally named Bain as its preferred bidder back in June, although the sale had been slowed down after joint venture partner Western Digital had struggled to submit a competing bid alongside KKR after its original bid was rejected. As a result, Toshiba announced in June that it was planning to sue Western Digital for 120 billion yen, claiming the latter had interfered in the sale of the memory chip business. Western Digital had "continually interfered with the bid process" and "exaggerated" the power it had in relation to a potential sale, Toshiba claimed, and also made moves to prevent Western Digital employees in its Yokkaichi plant from accessing information pertaining to their partnership. Reuters said the delayed sale could potentially lead to Toshiba "not getting anti-trust clearance before the end of the financial year," which could in turn result in the Tokyo Stock Exchange delisting the company.
Toshiba nuclear ... (Score:3)
How things have changed since...
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The scandal was about Toshiba and a few other companies selling their own technology. US technology wasn't involved. Moreover, it's not like the US wasn't funding and supplying terrorist groups around the globe while they were on their high horse about the sale of a bit of CNC equipment
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Impressive memory (Score:3)
I vaguely recall that division sold the top secret low-noise low-cavitation propellors of nuclear submarines technology to the Ruskies....
How things have changed since...
I did a search on that. That was 30 years ago. Toshiba Machinery and Norway's government owned Kongsberg both were involved in that debacle. Clearly the sales were a violation of export control but at the time it seems that nobody was talking about holding Norway responsible for their part in that and there was some debate about whether that particular sale really was the cause for Soviet submarines getting quieter. Senator Nunn at the time said that Soviet subs were getting quieter prior to the sale.
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Unrelated to their current difficulties. Toshiba owned Westinghouse Electric Company, and nuclear power has been in decline for a decade. There were doubts about the AP1000 reactor design, and they became more urgent after Fukushima in 2011. As renewables developed quickly there was less and less money being thrown at nuclear, and some poor engineering/project management lead to massive losses on plants being constructed in Georgia and South Carolina.
It's not just Toshiba/Westinghouse though, European nucle
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Free market capitalism isn't always pretty or nice. But these are things that needed to happen and in the end it will produce the most efficient supply chain and lowest prices. It's no different than a cheetah bringing down a gazelle on the African savanna. These are things that need to happen for the good of us all..
Did it need to happen? I am a former Toshiba employee, and my take on this is that their troubles stem from a couple major issues:
1. Toshiba invested approximately $1B or more in Nuclear technology prior to the Fukushima disaster. They were not alone- Alstom and other companies expected a Nuclear Renaissance to provide clean base load power to support future growth of non-dispatchable renewable power. The value of this R&D, staffing, and facility buildup is now approximately $0.
2. Toshiba sold
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1. Toshiba invested approximately $1B or more in Nuclear technology prior to the Fukushima disaster. They were not alone- Alstom and other companies expected a Nuclear Renaissance to provide clean base load power to support future growth of non-dispatchable renewable power. The value of this R&D, staffing, and facility buildup is now approximately $0.
It was nearly $0 before. Even before Fukushima they couldn't find anyone interested in their reactors that was also willing to pay for them. Investing so much in nuclear when "alt" power was growing so quickly was just stupid.
2. Toshiba sold 4 new reactors in the US which were under construction or about to begin construction at the time of Fukushima. These projects were sold and managed by a somewhat recently acquired subsidiary (Westinghouse Nuclear). It turns out that Westinghouse had no idea what they were doing, anyone with a clue had either retired or left.
Anyone with a clue knew that about Westinghouse anyway.
3. Toshiba couldn't absorb both of the above hits.
1+2=3, but you don't get to count it as a separate event. Only two things conspired to kill Toshiba, and both of them were incompetence. To wit: betting on nuclear at literally the worst time in history. And by that I mean before F
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But if not now, and they had moved it up the beach past the generations-old high water markers, then it would just have been later due to sea level rise effectively moving the markers.
Odds are that if they had done that, the site would have been closed down by that time. Nuclear reactors have finite lifetimes, and that would likely be much shorter than the sea level rise timetable barring any massive increase in levels due to unforeseen events.
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Nuclear reactors have finite lifetimes, and that would likely be much shorter than the sea level rise timetable barring any massive increase in levels due to unforeseen events.
Due to the slope of coastlines, small increases in sea level rise result in large inland encroachments in the tsunami danger zone.
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Yesterday's headline bot at work (Score:2)
Let's see now: credited to BeauHD, derogatory reference to something nuclear. Yep.
Megacorporations (Score:2)
Nuclear industry is killing Toshiba (Score:2)
Here's an article of them pouring 4 billion into a reactor they had bankrupted on earlier. http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/1... [cnn.com]
WRONG (Score:2)
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it was sold to make up for the over $1 billion accounting scandal
Let's see, is Toshiba struggling over a $1bn accounting scandal, or the $6.3bn Westinghouse writedown? hmmmmm. Let's do some math. errr carry the one, one minus 3 is seven, divide by the the numerator.... oh Got It! If it were just the accounting scandal then Toshiba would have a cool $5.3bn spare and wouldn't need to sell anything.