Japan's Nintendo sees record high profit amid crisis

TOKYO, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Japan's game maker Nintendo Co. said on Thursday that its group net profit in fiscal 2008 rose 8.5 percent from the previous year to a record high of 279.09 billion yen (2.8 billion U.S. dollars), bucking the corporate trend of declining profits amid global economic downturn.

Nintendo's strong performance was due to the popularity of its DS and Wii game consoles, as well as the software to go with them, the company said.

The company's operating profit increased 14 percent to 555.26 billion yen (5.6 billion dollars) for the business year ended March 31.

It is the fifth straight year that Nintendo's net profit has reached a record high, reflecting a robust growth of world's game market.

Nintendo is eyeing further profit growth for the current business year. It projects that its group net profit will rise 7.5 percent from the previous year to 300 billion yen (3 billion dollars) for fiscal 2009.

Berkshire's Q1 profit set to fall

Special Report: Global Financial Crisis

BEIJING, May 4 -- Warren Buffett says his holding
company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc, will report a roughly 10 percent drop in its
first-quarter operating profit this week.

Buffett offered a glimpse of Berkshire's
first-quarter earnings during the company's shareholders' meeting on Saturday.
But the full details, including Berkshire's net income, won't be available until
Friday when the company releases its earnings report.

Berkshire owns more than 60 subsidiaries including
insurance, clothing, furniture, and candy companies, restaurants, natural gas
and corporate jet firms. Berkshire also has major investments in such companies
as Coca-Cola Co and Wells Fargo Co.

Buffett says Berkshire will report an operating
profit of about US$1.7 billion in the first quarter. That's down from the US$1.9
billion in operating profit Berkshire reported in the same period a year ago.

Operating profit does not include gains and losses on
Berkshire's investments and derivatives, which have had a significant impact on
the Omaha-based company's reported profits in recent quarters.

In 2008, Berkshire recorded a largely unrealized
US$7.5 billion loss on derivatives and investments that dragged down profit.
Berkshire still reported a 2008 profit of US$4.99 billion, or US$3,224 per Class
A share, but that was down 62 percent from the previous year.

Berkshire's fourth-quarter results were worse.
Buffett's company reported net income of US$117 million, or US$76 per share,
down 96 percent from US$2.95 billion, or US$1,904 per share, in the same period
a year earlier.

Buffett said that in the first quarter, Berkshire's
utility and insurance businesses performed fairly well during the quarter. He
said profit from insurance underwriting should increase slightly because it's
not tied to the recession.

But many of Berkshire's other businesses, such as its
jewelry stores, Shaw carpet, Acme Brick and Clayton Homes, have been hurt.

(Source: Shanghai Daily)

Chinese listed companies net profit up 450% in Q1

Special
Report: Global Financial Crisis

BEIJING, May 4 (Xinhua) -- The combined net profit of
all the 1,624 listed companies in the Chinese mainland hit 203.8 billion yuan
(about 30 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter, up 450.39 percent from the
last quarter in 2008, reports from the country's two main exchanges showed
Monday.

Among them, 1,186 companies reported gains, taking up
73.03 percent of the total. The number of companies suffering losses increased
nearly 200 compared with the same period last year to 436.

The total net profit in the first three months
dropped 25.81 percent year on year.

"The quarter-on-quarter profit surge showed
production began to stabilize in the first three months after taking the major
blow from the global financial crisis in the fourth quarter last year," said Qin
Xiaobin, chief analyst with Beijing-based Galaxy Securities.

Measures issued by the government to support the key
industries also helped with the profit rise, experts said.

However, companies are still troubled with
over-capacity that led to the year-on-year decline and it is still too early to
tell if the overall economy has bottomed out, according to Qin.

Gome reports first fall in annual net profit

BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- Gome, China's largest consumer electronics retailer in terms of number of stores, announced its net profit for 2008 fell by seven percent from a year earlier, the first ever since listing.

The company did not say when it will resume trading, according to Wednesday's Shanghai Securities News.

The company has suspended trading for five months due to the investigation of Gome's founder Huang Guangyu who was in police custody for alleged illegal share trading.

Company executives attributed the profit decline to the sluggish electronics market in the country due to the financial crisis, and more importantly, to the ongoing investigation on Huang Guangyu.

As Gome's 2008 financial report showed, the company posted a profit of 1.05 billion yuan last year, falling from 1.13 billion yuan in 2007, on sales of 45.9 billion yuan.

Sinopec's net profit rises 85.1% in Q1

BEIJING, April 28 (Xinhua) -- China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) reported Tuesday that its net profit in the first quarter rose 85.1 percent year on year, because of lower international crude oil prices and adjusted refined oil prices on the domestic market.

Net profit totaled 11.219 billion yuan (1.64 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter, due to the country's adjusted refined oil pricing mechanism since the beginning of this year, the company said in a statement to the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets.

Sinopec saw its net profit drop by 69 percent to about 6 billion yuan in the first three months of 2008 because of China's price ceilings on refined oil products and global oil price rises.

The slump in the international crude oil prices has given a positive boost to the performance of Sinopec, the country's top refiner, as the government launched the new pricing mechanism for refined products in 2009, which ensured profits of oil refiners, despite the still weak demand in the domestic market.

The company predicted its net profit for the first half of 2009would increase by more than 50 percent year on year.

In contrast, PetroChina Company Limited, reported Monday its net profit in the first quarter slid 35.3 percent year on year to 18.956 billion yuan, pulled down by the low price of crude oil and less demand.

PetroChina is the leading oil producer of China, with most crude oil it refined produced by the company itself, while Sinopec has over 70 percent of its crude oil imported.

The amount of crude oil refined by Sinopec fell 3.27 percent year on year, but was up 1.21 percent quarter on quarter. The company attributed these movements to the macro-economic situation, but it gave no details on this and did not specify the production figures.

Listed in Hong Kong, New York, London and Shanghai, Sinopec is the listed subsidiary of China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group).

Share prices of the company in the mainland A-share market dropped by 2.38 percent to 9.44 yuan on Tuesday, and down 4.11 percent in the Hong Kong market to 5.6 Hong Kong dollars (72 cents).

Bank of China Q1 net profit down 14.41% on writedowns for toxic assets

BEIJING, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Bank of China, the country's third largest lender by market value, said Tuesday its first-quarter net profit fell 14.41 percent from a year ago on writedowns of sub-prime-related assets.

Net profit in the first three months stood at 18.57 billion yuan (2.73 billion U.S. dollars), or 0.07 yuan per share, down from 21.7 billion yuan, or 0.09 yuan, a year earlier.

The bank wrote down the value of sub-prime-related assets and other securities by 378 million U.S. dollars in the first three months, bringing the funds set aside for toxic assets up to 4.84 billion U.S. dollars, the bank said in its first-quarter report.

The bank still held 2.2 billion U.S. dollars in U.S. sub-prime-mortgage investments, 1.05 billion U.S. dollars in securities backed by Alt-A home loans, 3.2 billion U.S. dollars of "non-agency" mortgage investments and 3.4 billion U.S. dollars of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae securities, as of March 31.

Non-agency mortgage refers to mortgage-backed securities not issued by government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The lender's domestic institutions extended 569.4 billion yuan of yuan-denominated new loans in the first quarter, up 24 percent from the end of last year, as the country's banks have been instructed to make more loans in a bid to stimulate the slowing economy.

Yuan-denominated customer deposits increased 18 percent from the end of last year to 723.1 billion yuan in the first quarter, it said.

However, the bank's income from interest declined 9.74 percent from a year ago to 36.84 billion yuan in the first three months.

The bank said it adjusted its holding of foreign currency-denominated assets down by 6 percentage points to 29 percent of the total in the first quarter.

The non-performing loan ratio was 2.24 percent at the end of March, 0.41 percentage points lower than the end of last year, with outstanding non-performing loans at 85.13 billion yuan.

The bank's shares closed at 2.76 HK dollars in Hong Kong Tuesday, unchanged from the previous close. Shares in Shanghai edged up 0.29 percent to 3.47 yuan. Trading in Shanghai ended before the lender's first-quarter results were announced.

China Citic Bank reports 60% net profit increase in 2008

BEIJING, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Net profit of China Citic Bank grew 60.7 percent year-on-year to 13.3 billion yuan (1.95 billion U.S. dollars) in 2008, announced the bank in its 2008 annual report released on Tuesday night.

Business income of the bank grew 44.3 percent from a year earlier to 40.16 billion yuan in 2008, according to the report.

The Beijing-based bank said its assets quality continued to improve last year, with non-performing loans ratio dropping by 0.12 percentage points to 1.36 percent by the end of 2008, and the bank's provision coverage ratio rose by 40 percentage points to 150 percent.

Returns of net assets increased 0.54 percentages points to 14.84 percent.

The bank's A-shares gained 1.91 percent to 4.79 yuan on Tuesday prior to the report release.

Pacific Securities rakes in $16.4 mln net profit in 1Q

Special Report:Global Financial Crisis

BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Pacific Securities announced Saturday that its net profit in the first quarter topped 112 million yuan (16.4 million U.S. dollars) due to the first-quarter upbeat stock market performance.

China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has gained more than 32 percent from the beginning of this year.

This was the first quarterly report from the nine listed brokerage firms and analysts predicted that the performance of securities firms was recovering.

Zhang Yunpeng, an analyst with Beijing-based Huarong Securities, told Xinhua on Sunday that brokerage companies benefited from the turnover increase and index rise in recent months as more economic recovery signs emerged, adding that this sector was still bullish in the long run.

The total turnover of the Chinese stock markets reached 9.44 trillion yuan from January to March this year, only 3.5 percent lower from a year ago.

The southern Yunnan-based Pacific Securities lost 645 million yuan last year, compared to a profit of 749 million yuan in 2007 when the domestic stock market was bullish.

China Merchants Bank net profit up 38%

Special Report:Global Financial Crisis

BEIJING,April 10-- China Merchants Bank (CMB), the country's
fifth-largest bank by market value, said its net profit for 2008 grew 38.27
percent to 21.08 billion yuan ($3.78 billion).

But the bank's profit growth slowed in the fourth quarter amid a weakening
global economy. CMB's fourth quarter net profit fell to 2.09 billion yuan, down
63.65 percent from its 5.75 billion yuan net profit in the third quarter.

The bank's earnings per share rose to 1.43 yuan, up 37.5 percent from the
previous year's 1.04 yuan, according to a preliminary earnings report released
Thursday. CMB also postponed the release of its 2008 earnings report to April
24, from a scheduled release date of April 16.

The bank said the figures were unaudited.

(Source: chinadaily.com.cn)