3 major telecom carriers bolster pretax profits.

TOKYO, Nov. 18 Kyodo

Three of Japan's four major telecom carriers apart from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) have bolstered their unconsolidated pretax profits for the first half of fiscal 1999 due partly to the success of restructuring efforts, according to financial results released by Thursday.

Japan Telecom Co., DDI Corp. and KDD Corp. -- operators of both international and domestic phone services -- logged sharp increases in pretax profits in the April-September period, leaving Tokyo Telecommunication Network Co. (TTNet) the sole loser.

Japan Telecom registered operating revenues of 190.4 billion yen, up 0.1% over the corresponding period a year earlier.

The company engineered a sixfold jump in pretax profit to 13.2 billion yen by cutting back on various types of expenses, such as personnel costs, lease charges and transportation costs.

DDI jacked up its pretax profit by 79.7% to 21.7 billion yen, while KDD boosted its pretax profit by 2.2 times to 11.1 billion yen.

KDD said its merger with Teleway Japan Corp. last December has allowed it to squeeze expenses by 12 billion yen.

TTNet reported having received a boost from the great popularity of its bargain-rate domestic and international telephone service, dubbed "Tokyo Denwa (Telephone)."

But its merger on April 1 with Astel Tokyo Corp., a money-losing operator of microcellular personal handy-phone system (PHS) services in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures, forced it to incur a pretax loss of 2.2 billion yen.

The following are the four firms' results in billions of yen for the first half of fiscal 1999, with figures in parentheses denoting percentage changes.

Operating Pretax
 Revenue Profit/Loss
 Japan Telecom 190.4 13.2
 (0.1) (6.2 times)
 DDI 318.9 21.7
 (8.6) (79.7)
 KDD 212.0 11.1
 (47.2) (2.2 times)
 TTNet 85.5 -2.2
 (57.7) (--)

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Comment:	3 major telecom carriers bolster pretax profits.
Publication:	NTT Topics
Geographic Code:	9JAPA
Date:	Nov 22, 1999
Words:	308
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