TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp <6502.T>, Japan's biggest chipmaker, kept its outlook below market estimates on rising materials costs and tumbling TV and PC prices after posting a smaller-than-expected operating profit.
TOSHIBA (JP6502.TK) which owns U.S. nuclear firm Westinghouse, is fighting to clinch nuclear power plant orders, while it tries to expand in lithium-ion batteries and power grids to balance out chip price volatility.
Toshiba, the world's No.2 maker of NAND-type flash memory chips after Samsung Electronics Co <005930.KS>, kept its annual operating profit outlook at 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion), below a consensus average of 136 billion yen by 21 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Toshiba, which supplies chips to Apple Inc
Its quarterly net loss came to 10.63 billion yen, compared with a 121.1 billion yen loss the previous year on a 6 percent rise in sales.
Ahead of the news, its shares fell 2.9 percent, underperforming a 1.9 percent fall in Tokyo's index of electrical machinery stocks <.IELEC.T>. The stock gained 8.5 percent in the past quarter, outpacing a 3 percent rise in the index.
(Reporting by Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Anshuman Daga)
