Mitsui & Co., a Japanese trading house has forecast on Wednesday its first net annual loss since started rolling in its current form during 1947. The second largest trading house in Japan is going to incur loss since a slide in energy and metal prices has forced it to embrace ¥260 billion ($2.3 billion) in write downs.
Japanese trading firms have been caught flat footed unlike major international oil and mining companies due to rout in commodities. Impairment charges of ¥225 billion on Browse LNG project in Australia and the Caserones copper development in Chile have also contributed for incurring loss.
The Tokyo based trading house expects a net loss of ¥70 billion ($623 million) during the fiscal year ending on March. Earlier, Mitsui has forecast a profit of ¥190 billion, reports Bloomberg.
Mitsui has recently disclosed that its profit falls by ¥2.7 billion for every one dollar drop in oil prices. Following the Wednesday's earnings forecast, Mitsui share prices have been witnessed to fall by 7.5% to ¥1,302 during early trading on Thursday, according to a report published in Financial Times. Resources and energy assets of Mitsui have grown significantly. However, its non resource businesses hasn't grown so fast to counterbalance, reports Reuters quoting Tatsuo Yasunaga, the Mitsui President while reasoning for the company's first annual consolidated net loss in a news conference. Defying these odds, Mitsui will continue buying competitive resource assets preferably iron ore and gas. The trading house will also reinforce non-resource operations such as medical and healthcare services, automobiles and infrastructure, adds Yasunaga while narrating the future business plan. Mitsui has somehow managed to maintain its dividend forecast of ¥64 per share for the full year despite the loss forecast. Yasunaga has also forecast that its annual earnings per share may slash to ¥48 during the financial year 2016. Markets of oil and iron ore have been hit hard due to over supply and decaying demand following slower growth in China. This fact has eventually affected the value of assets held by the Japanese trading house. In another development, Sumitomo Corp. has announced in February halving its net profit forecast for this year after writing down of resource assets for ¥170 billion. Meanwhile, Mitsubishi Corp. has warned of carefully evaluating its resource assets during the end of this year.
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