Hitachi Ltd. on Wednesday raised its operating profit outlook to 420 billion yen ($4 billion) from the previous estimate of 400 billion yen in the business year through March due to robust IT-related sales and recovering demand in China.

The Japanese industrial conglomerate said it revised its fiscal 2020 net profit outlook upward to 370 billion yen, surging over four-fold from a year earlier, compared with a forecast of 300 billion yen made in October.

The company already booked a special profit of 278.8 billion yen from the sale of its chemical unit, formerly known as Hitachi Chemical Co., to Showa Denko K.K. in the April-June quarter.

In the nine-month period to December, Hitachi's net profit soared more than five-fold to 307.88 billion yen from the previous year. Operating profit fell 28.9 percent to 316.91 billion yen, on sales of 5.98 trillion yen, down 5.8 percent.

==Kyodo

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