A number of leading Japanese industry leaders, including Toyota, Hitachi, Honda, and NEC are rushing to revise group operating loss projections further downward on Friday as the spread of the economic crisis produced larger-than-expected effect on their profitability.

Toyota Motor Corp. is expected to revise its fiscal 2008 group operating loss to around 400 billion yen from a 150 billion yen loss it projected a month ago, company sources said Friday.

It would be the third downward revision to its fiscal 2008 earnings forecasts for Toyota.

NEC Corp. said Friday it expects to incur 290 billion yen in group net losses for the current business year through March due to its struggling chip operations and dwindling sales of other products.

The loss compared with its October estimate of a 15 billion yen net profit and a year-earlier profit of 22.68 billion yen.

Hitachi Ltd. said on the same day it expects to incur a group net loss of 700 billion yen for the current business year and plans to streamline its business by cutting around 200 billion yen in fixed costs.

Honda Motor Co., Japan's second-largest automaker, managed to remain in positive territory but it now expects to post 80 billion yen in group net profit, instead of 185 billion yen it projected a month ago, due to the yen's steep appreciation and plummeting sales amid the global economic downturn.

The projected profit represents an 86.7 percent plunge from a 600 billion yen profit it reported a year earlier.

(Xinhua News Agency January 30, 2009)