Office supplies maker Kokuyo Co. said Thursday it swung back into the black in fiscal 2002, posting a group net profit of 231 million yen against a loss of 1.42 billion yen the previous year.
The company attributed the turnaround to greater efforts to cut costs under a structural reform plan and to 4.2 billion yen in extraordinary profit from the return of a portion of its employee pension fund it had managed on behalf of the government.
In its consolidated earnings report, Kokuyo said its pretax profit surged 152.8 percent to 5.5 billion yen, but sales fell 1.6 percent to 272.20 billion yen due to the decline in overall domestic demand.
For the current year, the company forecasts a net profit of 2.9 billion yen and a pretax profit of 7.5 billion yen on sales of 280 billion yen.