Toshiba Might Sell Majority Of Semiconductor Business Following $6.3 Billion Nuclear Loss

Toshiba's woes continue to get worse. The company announced today that it is taking a $6.3 billion write-down due to losses in its nuclear business, and as a result, it may sell a majority stake in its semiconductor business.

We've already covered the company's announcement that it is spinning off its semiconductor business and planned to sell a 20% stake in the new outfit. At the time, Toshiba predicted its write-down to total "a few billion." The revised $6.3 billion projection, and the news that the company might sell a controlling stake of its NAND fabs, promises to send shockwaves through the semiconductor industry.

The latest Toshiba scandal has already claimed its first high-level victim. Shigenori Shiga, a Toshiba chairman that hailed from the failed U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric nuclear plant subsidiary, tendered his resignation. The resignation implies that the current losses may go beyond a bad investment and tread into scandal territory. Toshiba's already on shaky ground with regulatory agencies due to a previous accounting scandal, so its options are severely limited.

Toshiba was faced with cost overruns and construction delays in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, so it acquired nuclear construction outfit CB&I Stone and Webster in 2015. Unfortunately, Toshiba pegged the "goodwill" booking at $87 million, but then restated the charges as "several billion U.S. dollars."

Toshiba's initial answer was to spin off its semiconductor business, which generates 80% of its operating profit, and sell a 20% stake to investors, thus raising enough capital to keep the company afloat. Most analysts predicted the 20% stake would only generate around $2.5 billion, which falls well short of the $6.5 billion loss.

Toshiba emergency semiconductor spin-off is also taking a different path than many expected. In light of the heavier-than-expected losses, Toshiba announced it is prepared to take a more aggressive stance with its spin-off, which could include selling a majority stake of its operations instead of 20%. The company delayed its financial disclosures, but then hastily released the preliminary results today outlining the losses. The results come with the caveat that it isn't a final reporting and could change.

WD and Toshiba partner in NAND production, and as such, it is in WD's best interests to protect its joint venture with Toshiba. Recent comments from WD's CEO indicate the company might step in to assist its ailing partner. However, recent reports indicate that Toshiba is exploring other offers from various funds due to concerns that a WD intervention would trigger a long regulatory approval process. Other potential investors include several NAND fabs, such as SK hynix and Micron, but those investments would likely also trigger a regulatory overview. Unfortunately, Toshiba doesn't have an extended time period to recover. Seagate has also been suffering due to its woeful lack of SSD market penetration, so it might also attempt to buy into the new spin-off.

Toshiba selling a majority stake of its semiconductor business could alter the NAND landscape entirely. The company is one of the world's largest NAND producers, and Tsinghua Unigroup, one of the many tentacles of the Chinese state-controlled Tsinghua University, has been listed as a possible investor. Tsinghua is investing heavily in new NAND fabs, but isn't currently shipping NAND-based products and lacks the IP and experience necessary to make a quick entrance into the market. Of course, procuring a majority stake in Toshiba's memory business would solve that nicely, while also helping the Chinese government finally attain its publicly stated goals of indigenous semiconductor production.

Toshiba also announced it is halting all of its bids for new nuclear projects. The company will likely announce its spin-off investor in the coming weeks.

Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

  • Deniedstingray
    That "Leading innovation" motto makes me laugh. They clearly don't anymore.
    Reply
  • ssdpro
    Once they bought OCZ nothing could contain the virus from spreading.
    Reply
  • kenjitamura
    19297895 said:
    Once they bought OCZ nothing could contain the virus from spreading.

    Doesn't look like OCZ has anything to do with this fiasco. Just read a more in-depth story about this on Bloomberg and some guys down in Louisiana seem to be to blame and yet funny enough they got out of this with a fine mint because they found some dupes in Toshiba to take the problem off their hand.

    Some people started off small with buying out a pipe manufacturing business for cheap and kept expanding until they had enough engineering assets to convince people they could lead a "nuclear renaissance" back in 2005. They had bought out a failing company that was responsible for building many nuclear plants back in the 50's-70's and apparently it was enough to convince some businesses to throw contracts their way. But as time went on they were shown to be entirely incompetent as nuclear engineers and they managed to unload before the extent of the problems came to light.

    Toshiba was really stupid though because they actually played a couple of roles in this. They had hired the incompetent engineering company that went on to sell itself over in 2012 to another company. Then in 2015 the company that bought the failing engineering company realized they'd screwed up big and went on to sell it again, to Toshiba, at a low price just to get rid of it.

    In summary, Toshiba bought a company in the US looking to start making nuclear plants and that company gave the contract to some entirely incompetent company made up of several failed engineering companies that were bought out cheap and whose names were once reputable and used to garner contracts.

    Then the person responsible for this frankenstein corporation bailed in 2012 when the problems started coming to light and came out of it all pretty wealthy. The buyers of this engineering company then went on to realize they screwed up and dropped it like its hot and it was sold over to Toshiba.
    Reply
  • YB_Burgergold
    Following IBM in the selling of its semiconductor business which no Corp has the $$$ to pay for in R&D and modernization unless they are one enough % in the market
    Reply
  • CTpc5
    The operative phrase is "... due to losses in its nuclear business..."
    Reply
  • teamninja
    Guess they will spin off their semi conductor business it is their best bet, I wonder who might take that huge Chunk of that business... some very lucky semiconductor business can easily obtain a controlling share of a profitable business
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    I read "nuclear business", and initially thought "Toshiba's core business"
    Not actual nuclear power plants.
    Reply
  • Nicholas Steel
    19298415 said:
    19297895 said:
    Once they bought OCZ nothing could contain the virus from spreading.

    Doesn't look like OCZ has anything to do with this fiasco. Just read a more in-depth story about this on Bloomberg and some guys down in Louisiana seem to be to blame and yet funny enough they got out of this with a fine mint because they found some dupes in Toshiba to take the problem off their hand.

    Some people started off small with buying out a pipe manufacturing business for cheap and kept expanding until they had enough engineering assets to convince people they could lead a "nuclear renaissance" back in 2005. They had bought out a failing company that was responsible for building many nuclear plants back in the 50's-70's and apparently it was enough to convince some businesses to throw contracts their way. But as time went on they were shown to be entirely incompetent as nuclear engineers and they managed to unload before the extent of the problems came to light.

    Toshiba was really stupid though because they actually played a couple of roles in this. They had hired the incompetent engineering company that went on to sell itself over in 2012 to another company. Then in 2015 the company that bought the failing engineering company realized they'd screwed up big and went on to sell it again, to Toshiba, at a low price just to get rid of it.

    In summary, Toshiba bought a company in the US looking to start making nuclear plants and that company gave the contract to some entirely incompetent company made up of several failed engineering companies that were bought out cheap and whose names were once reputable and used to garner contracts.

    Then the person responsible for this frankenstein corporation bailed in 2012 when the problems started coming to light and came out of it all pretty wealthy. The buyers of this engineering company then went on to realize they screwed up and dropped it like its hot and it was sold over to Toshiba.
    So:
    2012: Incompetent Nuclear Company was hired by Toshiba
    2012: Incompetent Nuclear Company boss left
    2012-2015: Incompetent Nuclear Company sold to another (incompetent) company
    2015: Other (incompetent) company sold to Toshiba
    2015: Toshiba screwed

    Correct?
    Reply