Japanese electronics giant NEC Corp on Thursday said its net profit in the year to March shrank to less than one-sixth of the previous year's level as cellphones and semiconductor sales fell.

But it said net profits were expected to more than quadruple this year.

NEC's net profit tumbled 84.3 percent from a year earlier to 12.1 billion yen (109 million dollars), slightly less than 13 billion yen projected by the company three weeks ago and well below its 60 billion yen initial estimate.

Operating profit dropped 32.7 percent to 95.4 billion yen on revenue which rose 0.5 percent to 4.82 trillion yen helped by higher sales in communication systems and personal computers.

"The (profit) decrease was principally due to a fall in sales of mobile phone handsets and semiconductors, and an increase in development costs, despite an improvement in profitability in mobile communications systems," the company said in a statement.

For the year to March 2007, NEC expects net profit to recover to 50 billion yen on operating profit of 130 billion yen and revenue of 4.90 trillion yen.

By: DocMemory
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