Hazama Corp. said Monday its group net balance in fiscal 2000 swung back into the black as a one-time gain from a 105 billion yen debt-waiver wiped out most of its extraordinary losses.

In the year through March 31, the major construction company posted a 2.31 billion yen profit, a sharp upswing from the previous fiscal year's 19.82 billion yen loss. Operating revenues came to 457.43 billion yen, up 1.1 percent.

Although per-share net profit came to 7.18 yen, a turnaround from the previous year's corresponding loss of 61.71 yen, Hazama will skip dividend payments again. Pretax profit came to 10.47 billion yen, up 15.3 percent.

In September, Hazama's four major creditor banks, led by Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, now a key component of Mizuho Holdings Inc., forgave a 104.99 billion yen portion of the firm's debts. Under Japan's accounting rules, Hazama booked the sum forgiven as a one-time profit.

A range of extraordinary losses, however, crimped its net profitability, the company said.

Hazama booked a 38.85 billion yen loss associated with its loan losses, a 29.67 billion yen loss emanating from sales of real estate holdings and a 17.16 billion yen loss associated with fixed asset sales.

While special losses totaled 117.63 billion yen, Hazama was able to cancel them out by combining its pretax profit with the special gain from the debt-waiver, it said.

For the current fiscal year, Hazama forecast group pretax profits at 10.7 billion yen and net profits at 800 million yen on projected operating revenues of 426 billion yen.