TOKYO: Major Japanese mobile phone carrier SoftBank Corp. said Thursday that its consolidated net profit in fiscal 2020 is projected to rise 3.6 pct from the previous year to a record 490 billion yen.

The figure is up from the company’s previous forecast of 485 billion yen in profit.

In the year, which ends in March, the company is enjoying robust demand related to teleworking amid the novel coronavirus crisis. Yahoo Japan Corp., under the wing of SoftBank, is seeing growth in revenue from its online shopping business.

SoftBank also revised up its consolidated sales forecast to 5.1 trillion yen from 4.9 trillion yen and the operating profit estimate to 970 billion yen from 920 billion yen. The new estimates are up 4.9 pct and 6.4 pct, respectively, from its fiscal 2019 sales and operating profit.

SoftBank President and CEO Ken Miyauchi told a press conference that the company expects to launch its planned new low-cost mobile phone fee plan in mid-March, suggesting that the discount service is expected to push down profits from its business for individual customers in fiscal 2021.

SoftBank representative director Junichi Miyakawa, who is set to become the next president, said that the company aims to achieve profit growth in the coming year by more than offsetting the projected profit drop with earnings from businesses for corporate clients and other operations.

In April-December 2020, SoftBank logged consolidated sales of 3,807,035 million yen, up 5.2 pct year on year. Its net profit inched down 0.7 pct to 433,770 million yen, due to a fall in the appraisal value of its financial assets.

JIJI Press