Message From the President

Hideaki Takahashi President and CEO

In this cumulative second quarter (April 1 - September 30, 2011), the world economy exhibited a gradual yet sustained improvement, which was centered on emerging nations. From the summer onwards, however, concerns about government finances in Europe and fears that the U.S. economy would fall into recession led to a slowdown. The domestic economy, meanwhile, continued to bounce back from the slump caused by the earthquake and tsunami, though the improvement was only gradual due to factors such as the slowdown in overseas economies.

In the cumulative second quarter, the Hitachi Cable Group's sales were on a par with the same period the previous fiscal year (April 1 - September 30, 2010), at 210,434 million yen. On the earnings side, while progress was made with cost reductions, both operating profit and ordinary profit fell year on year. Operating profit was 1,356 million yen, having been hit by factors such as the strong yen and fluctuations in the price of copper. Ordinary profit, meanwhile, was 296 million yen, reflecting the booking of equity-method investment losses. And because we recorded extraordinary losses due to a restructuring of our operations, we suffered a net loss of 9,056 million yen.
After taking everything into account, including our financial performance and the operating environment surrounding the Group, we decided not to pay an interim dividend. We wish to offer our deepest apologies to all our shareholders for this. We will also consider whether to pay an end-of-year dividend based on our operating environment going forward, our progress in implementing our corporate policies, and so on.
The future of the operating environment surrounding the Group is impossible to predict, given lackluster demand due to the slowdown in the world economy, concerns that yen will remain strong for the long term, and so on. Although conditions are tough, the Group has put together a new midterm management plan, "Renewed Plan BRIDGE," that is aimed at achieving new growth, and that reflects our current operating environment and the issues facing the Group. We intend to implement this plan speedily yet steadily in order to meet targets of 440 billion yen in sales, 30 percent of sales from overseas, and an operating margin of 4.1 percent by fiscal 2012. I therefore hope that the Hitachi Cable Group can continue to count on the support of all our shareholders.

*1	Fiscal 2012: April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013

Overview of business performance

*2	FY2008:The year ended March 31,2009 FY2009: The year ended March 31,2010 FY2010: The year ended March 31,2011 FY2011: The year ending March 31,2012
*3	In FY2011, in conjunction with the reorganization of our internal structure, we made changes to reporting segments. To aid comparison, for FY 2010 we have shown sales for both the old and new segments.
*4	Figures have been rounded off to the nearest unit.
*5	Due to alignment of closing dates, full-year forecasts for FY2011 include forecasts for a 15-month period for our overseas consolidated subsidiaries.
*6	Intra-company sales have been eliminated from the figures for sales by segment.