Toshiba : second-quarter profit down 64% on pandemic, below estimates

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp on Wednesday reported a 64% drop in quarterly operating profit as the industrial conglomerate struggled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Operating profit for the second quarter ended September came to 15.75 billion yen ($149.84 million), down from 44.23 billion yen in the same period a year prior.

That compared with a 23.30 billion yen average of five analyst estimates compiled by Refinitiv.

Toshiba maintained its profit forecast for the year ending March at 110 billion yen, down 15.7% from a year earlier.

The outlook compared with a consensus estimate of 131.03 billion yen from 12 analysts.

A new midterm business plan released on Wednesday targets operating profit of 400 billion yen in the year through March 2026, with the ratio of profit to sales at 10%, by expanding businesses related to renewable energy, medicine and quantum cryptography.

Those targets, however, are roughly the same numbers the company had set for the year through March 2024 in the previous business plan.

($1 = 105.0800 yen)

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Christopher Cushing)