Panasonic Corp, the Japanese multinational in third place in terms of number of employees, has already eliminated 39 jobs last year, and according to the company's CEO no further cuts are foreseen, despite disastrous estimates for the future.
Investors are not in: after cutting the workforce by 11%, double that of Sony and Sharp combined, Panasonic will lose approximately $9,6 billion by March 2013, according to the company's latest communications. This is why in Tokyo they have decided not to issue the next dividend (it is the first time since 1950), to consolidate the financial position.
“They have to cut, cut, cut. They're not doing it fast enough,” insisted Edwin Merner, president of Atlantis Investment Research COrp in Tokyo, responsible for approximately $300 million in assets.
Forecasts indicate a loss thirty times higher as estimated by analysts, which indicates the difficulty with which Japanese hi-tech products compete with giants such as Samsung and Apple. Not even Sony and Sharp are immune to the market downturn: together with Panasonic they are settled at levels not seen for thirty years, but it is not just a question of the economic situation: investors have strong doubts that the know-how of the "three sisters ” lives up to the times.
The reluctance to cut headcount, in addition to market prospects, according to Japanese analysts has repercussions on debt sustainability, so much so that the cost of Panasonic's five-year CDS has now shot up by 62 basis points, reaching 378.
Sony is also in critical condition: capitalization is at its lowest, barely 12 billion (while Sharp is worth 2,4). Numbers that cannot compete with the Korean Suwon (which produces for Samsung), which is worth approx 177 billion, fifteen times the value of the Japanese house.
According to analysts, the three companies are excessively dependent on the television market, and need to diversify production to protect themselves from the unreachable competition of the American giants (Apple in particular) and Koreans, which steal market shares such as to make the financial position unsustainable , certified by downgrade by the rating agencies (Moody's revised the Panasonic rating downwards in September, bringing it to Baa1).
Il decline of a once thriving sector is not determined solely by material factors: having the most advanced technology today matters less, as consumers increasingly pay more attention to content and apps, rather than hardware specifications. According to Kazuyuki Terao of Allianz Global Investors Japan, this is a common evil in the Japanese hi-tech sector which, so far, has not been able to give structural answers.
