By Mariko Yasu - Oct 12, 2011 9:34 AM GMT+0700
Pioneer Corp. (6773), a Japanese maker of car-navigation systems, fell the most in seven months, leading declines among companies such as Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) and Nikon Corp. (7731) that closed plants in Thailand because of flooding.
Pioneer dropped as much as 9.5 percent, the biggest intraday slide since March 17, and traded 4 percent lower at 315 yen as of 11 a.m. in Tokyo trading. Camera maker Nikon dropped 5.2 percent, while Toyota fell 1.5 percent. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average declined 0.7 percent.
The worst floods in more than 50 years crippled operations of Japanese companies in the southeast Asian nation, a key overseas production hub for them. The deluge has forced Toyota to shutter three factories in its biggest Asian manufacturing base outside home and Nikon to halt its largest facility for making cameras with inter-changeable lenses.
“There are concerns that this production halts may lead to supply chain problems,” said Mitsuo Shimizu, an analyst at Cosmo Securities Co. in Tokyo. “The damage for manufacturers of autos, electronics and parts seems to be very severe.”
The Thai plants are among Pioneer’s main facilities for car electronics, spokesman Hiromitsu Kimura said by phone today.
Nikon hasn’t been able to determine when it can resume the operation of the flooded plant in Ayutthaya, the company’s biggest manufacturing base for single-lens reflex cameras, Yasuyuki Takeda, a Tokyo-based spokesman, said by phone today.
SLR Cameras
The company’s inventory of SLR cameras will probably last for about a month and the impact on earnings would be negligible if the company resumes the plant’s operation within a month, Hisashi Moriyama, a JPMorgan analyst in Tokyo, said in a report dated yesterday.
Two months of suspension could cut Nikon’s revenue by 30 billion yen and operating profit by 5 billion yen to 10 billion yen, he said.
Honda Motor Co., Japan’s third-biggest automaker, may lose production of an estimated 4,500 vehicles due to plant closures, while Pioneer plans to suspend operations at its two plants for two weeks, the companies said in the past two days.
Thailand is Honda’s biggest production base in Southeast Asia, and the second-biggest in Asia-ex Japan. In 2010, the automaker made about 170,000 units in the country. The carmaker makes models including the Accord and Civic in Thailand, and exports to Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia from there.
Hitachi Ltd.’s plant that makes compressors for refrigerators was halted from Oct. 7, spokesman Yuichi Izumisawa said. Hitachi Metals Ltd., a unit of the Tokyo-based electronics maker, also halted two plants making components used in hard disks and autos, he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mariko Yasu in 東京 at myasu@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net
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