Toshiba Corp. fell in Tokyo trading after a report it may sell assets worth 200 billion yen ($1.7 billion) amid an internal accounting probe that the company has said will lead to earnings writedowns.
The stock dropped 2.1 percent to 386.3 yen in Tokyo on Thursday, after declining as much as 7.3 percent to the lowest intraday since January 2013. The shares are down 25 percent this year, compared with a 12 percent gain in the Topix stock benchmark.
Toshiba has appointed a third-party committee to expand the investigation of accounting irregularities in infrastructure projects to its visual products, PC and chip businesses. It estimated the profit writedown over the previous five years will be 55 billion yen. The company intentionally delayed booking losses, the Nikkei newspaper reported Thursday.
“It’s beginning to look a lot like accounting fraud, raising the question of whether management was complicit,” said Mitsushige Akino, executive officer at Ichiyoshi Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. “It’s no longer about the extent of losses. The company may even face delisting. Institutional investors simply can’t touch the stock.”
Akino doesn’t hold Toshiba shares.
Toshiba is not aware of a deliberate delay in accounting for losses, as it’s still awaiting results of the third-party investigation, spokesman Hirokazu Tsukimoto said Thursday.