Panasonic to Speed Up Pace of Acquisitions to Meet Sales Target

Industry:    2016-02-17

Panasonic Corp. plans to accelerate the pace of acquisitions to meet its target of generating 10 trillion yen ($87 billion) of annual revenue by fiscal 2018. Purchases will be balanced with divestitures as the company restructures a portfolio of businesses spanning home appliances to chips and solar panels, Eiichi Katayama, the head of mergers and acquisitions at Panasonic, said at a briefing in Osaka on Tuesday. Katayama didn’t provide further details. President Kazuhiro Tsuga has steered Panasonic away from consumer electronics to focus on housing, car information systems and the batteries it makes with Tesla Motors Inc. The Osaka-based company in December agreed to pay 186.6 billion yen for U.S.-based maker of refrigeration systems Hussmann to bolster its housing operations, part of a push to spend 1 trillion yen to boost sales. “There weren’t many acquisitions in the past aimed at truly changing the company,” Katayama said at the briefing. “That’s why we need to pick up the pace and increase the number of deals.” Katayama joined Panasonic last month after leaving Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Tokyo, where he was head of equity research.

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