JS Group Forecasts Large Profit Rebound in F2012

JS Group Corporation announced on Monday the firm forecasts 50 billion yen of annual consolidated operating profit for fiscal 2012 ending in March 2013, about 2.8 times of the operating profit in fiscal 2011. The operating profit decreased by 55.7% to 17.9 billion yen in fiscal 2011 from fiscal 2010 due to operation damages by the Japan Earthquake and Thai flood. The firm forecasts the wide-range profit recovery in fiscal 2012 when extraordinary negative factors would disappear.

JS Group forecasts 1.47 trillion yen of consolidated net sales with 50 billion yen of recurring profit and 29 billion yen of net profit for fiscal 2012. The net sales would increase by 13.8% in year-to-year basis. The recurring profit would improve to 3.1 times. The net profit would expand to 15.5 times. The net sales will increase by 130 billion yen thanks to the integration of Permasteelisa, Italy’s major curtain wall supplier. Meanwhile, JS Group regards the profit contribution as zero when the auditing is ongoing to distinguish goodwill, intellectual properties and amortization.

In fiscal 2011, JS Group posted 1.29 trillion yen of net sales with 16.1 billion yen of recurring profit and 1.9 billion yen of net profit. The net sales increased by 6.3% in year-to-year basis while the recurring profit decreased by 58.8% and the net profit deteriorated by 88.2%. Thai plant was forced to suspend the operation in October due to the flood, which covers near 30% of JS Group’s residential aluminium sash production. Alterative production in Japan pushed up the production costs. Some orders flowed to other suppliers.

In April 2011, JS Group’s five operating companies integrated into LIXIL Corporation. The new IT system caused the temporarily slowdown of order receipts and other operations. Another negative factor was sales decrease of plumbing fixtures. JS Group temporarily suspended order acceptance for plumbing fixtures after the major earthquake due to the material shortage. Restoration works started in the disaster areas soon but new housing starts were delayed due to worker shortage.

Extraordinary loss related to Thai flood totaled 21.2 billion yen. The insurance payment delayed into fiscal 2012.

On the same day, JS Group also announced the firm changes the corporate name to LIXIL Group Corporation from July 1, 2012.