TOKYO, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Toshiba Corp. on Thursday submitted its delayed financial results for fiscal 2016 after the results were broadly signed off on by its auditor and has avoided being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange for the time being.
According to the filing, Toshiba's auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers Aarata LLC (PwC), issued a "qualified opinion" for the annual earnings report for the financial year ended March and for the April-June period, meaning it has basically verified the overall figures and the company's book keeping.
The auditor did, however, issue an "adverse opinion" on Toshiba's internal controls, claiming that losses the firm incurred in connection to its now bankrupt U.S. nuclear arm Westinghouse were overlooked and not presented punctually.
PwC said that some Westinghouse-related losses booked in the business year through March 2017 were supposed to have been recorded in the previous year, although Toshiba disputed this point.
In its report, PwC said that Toshiba "should have booked a respectable degree or all of the massive losses stemming from the U.S. nuclear unit in fiscal 2015 instead of the following year."
The report also stated in relation to Toshiba's filing that there is an "unfixed significant misstatement" and the firm's figures "are not based on generally accepted corporate accounting levels."
The auditor said, however, that while this had a limited effect on the overall results, "internal control had not been practiced appropriately."
If the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) deems that Toshiba's handling of its internal affairs has been inadequate, the firm could still be potentially delisted.
For fiscal 2016, Toshiba said it has fallen into negative net worth of 552.9 billion yen (5.02 billion U.S. dollars) and posted a group net loss of 965.66 billion yen.
The losses mark the biggest Toshiba has suffered and are the largest-ever for a Japanese manufacturer, sources close to the matter said Thursday.
If the losses were recorded as per its auditor's guidance, however, the conglomerate would have posted negative net worth for two successive years, that would usually lead to a delisting from the TSE.
Toshiba's April-June earnings for fiscal 2017, meanwhile, saw a group operating profit of 96.69 billion yen, compared to 16.3 billion yen booked a year earlier, owing to its profitable chip business.
Toshiba plans to spin off its chip business to help mitigate its debt woes and losses of some 6.3 billion U.S. dollars related to Westinghouse.
A state-led consortium including the Innovation Network Corp. of Japan, the Development Bank of Japan, Bain Capital and SK Hynix Inc. has been selected by Toshiba as the preferred bidder for Toshiba Memory Corp., its prized chip business.
Toshiba needs to seal the deal by the end of March to avoid its liabilities exceeding assets for two straight years and being automatically delisted from the TSE, having missed its own deadline set for June.
But its joint venture partner Western Digital Corp. has not signed off on the auction and has taken Toshiba to court over the issue, adding to the conglomerates woes.
Western Digital Corp. has also put in its own offer for the chip unit.
