Japan Telegraph posts losses of $6.2bn

Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone

Corp said today it lost 812.1 billion yen ($6.2 billion) in the year to March due to a write-down of assets and major restructuring costs.

The nation's largest telecoms firm swung to a loss from a group net profit of 464.0 billion yen seen last year but pledged to climb back into the black in the 12 months to March 2003.

Its pretax profit inched up 1.1 per cent to 718.2 billion yen, on sales of 11,681.5 billion yen - a 2.3 per cent rise.

"The mobile communications segment underwent a slowdown in new subscriptions as market penetration of mobile telephones reached higher levels," NTT said in a statement.

AFP