Suffering from huge appraisal losses on an overseas investment, cellular operator NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Wednesday its group net profit in the first half of fiscal 2001 plunged to 103.8 billion yen, down 52.2 percent from a year earlier.

On an unconsolidated basis, DoCoMo registered a net loss of 16.6 billion yen, due to special losses of 300.8 billion yen incurred by a sharp fall in shares of its Dutch cell phone affiliate, KPN Mobile N.V.

For the same period last year, DoCoMo reported a net profit of 101.45 billion yen on a parent-only basis.