Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. on Monday reported a consolidated net loss of 57,902 million yen for April-June, marking its biggest loss on a quarterly basis.

The result is compared with the net profit during the same period last year, which amounted to 16,372-million-yen.

The firm’s earnings are based on international standards.

The red ink in the first quarter of fiscal 2020 reflects the sluggish performance of its commercial aircraft division, due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, as well as a loss of 68.8 billion yen from its SpaceJet small passenger aircraft project.

The Japanese firm plans to halve the scale of the SpaceJet project, which has suffered delays in development.

 Development spending will be reduced to some 60 billion yen per year, while the number of staff employees involved in the project was cut by a total of around 1,000 at home and abroad.

Consolidated sales in April-June stood at 778,009 million yen, down 15.4 pct year on year, because the auto parts division also performed poorly.

Mitsubishi Heavy reduced the production of aircraft parts for delivery to Boeing Co. as the U.S. aircraft manufacturer cut back on production.

Mitsubishi Heavy Chief Financial Officer Hisato Kozawa said in an online press conference that the losses were “within expectations.”

The company left its break-even estimate unchanged for its mainstay operations for the full year to March 2021, believing that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic would prove largest for the April-June period.

JIJI Press