Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. said Thursday that aggressive cost-cutting measures sharply reduced group net losses in the first half of fiscal 2001.

The comprehensive heavy machinery maker logged group net losses in the April-September period of 8.26 billion yen, almost a third of the 23.47 billion yen in losses reported in the same period a year ago.

The company posted a group pretax profit of 2.77 billion yen, down 74.6 percent from 10.91 billion yen a year before.

Group operating profits amounted to 20.39 billion yen, down 12.2 percent from the 23.22 billion yen profit a year earlier, on sales of 1.252 trillion yen, down 4 percent from 1.304 trillion yen in the first half of fiscal 2000.

The Tokyo-based company said it will pay dividends of 2 yen per share for the six months. It skipped payments in the first half of fiscal 2000.

Mitsubishi Heavy booked an extraordinary loss of 15.37 billion yen from appraisal losses on its securities holdings.

For the entire fiscal year, the company expects to post 80 billion yen in group operating profits, up from 74.89 billion yen in fiscal 2000, and 55 billion yen in group pretax profits, down from 63.23 billion yen a year before, on sales of 2.85 trillion yen, down from 3.045 trillion yen in fiscal 2000.

Group profits are expected to stand at 20 billion yen, swinging the company back into the black from a group net loss of 20.35 billion yen in fiscal 2000, the company said.