The future for Sharp is looking bleak as the company wallows under a mountain of debt with lenders now becoming wary of lending money to the Japanese Company who reported $3.12 billion loss for the quarter.The 100 year old Company said last night it had doubts about remaining a “going concern”.
Sharp’s warning came as the company wallowed from one crisis to another.
In Australia the Company who has been gaining ground in the large TV market is set to face stiff competition from both LG with their new 84″ Ultra Definition TV and Samsung with their highly popular $10,000 75″ LED TV.
Sharp has predicted a second straight year of record deficits, and a yearend loss of $10 billion. The company said it is burning through more cash than it is generating and noted difficulty in securing short-term financing.
Sharp shares fell 1.7% and Sony’s fell 4.1% in Tokyo on Thursday. Panasonic’s shares fell 19%.
The Wall Street Journal said that Sharp exemplifies a company whipsawed by boom-and-bust investments. It established a string of plants across Japan to build liquid-crystal-display panels, banking on steady growth of its own TV-set business and that of customers for whom it supplied large LCD panels. When the market slowed, Sharp was saddled with excess capacity and the company’s losses ballooned.
“We lacked a sense of speed,” Sharp President Takashi Okuda told reporters Thursday. “The situation could have been different if we took steps more quickly.”
Sharp’s shares are down 75% this year.
In August Sharp said it would cut 5,000 jobs from its global workforce, the first layoffs at the company since 1950.
