Toshiba puts prized chips unit up for sale to salvage business

Tokyo

AFTER a chaotic day of earnings, it has become clearer that Toshiba Corp may soon end up a shadow of its former self.

Buried in company presentation materials on Tuesday was a note that the Tokyo-based conglomerate is considering selling a majority stake in its memory chip business, a reversal of a previous plan to limit the sale to 20 per cent. Then president Satoshi Tsunakawa took that a step further, saying that a sale of the entire unit is now possible.

NAND flash memory, used in smartphones and solid state disk drives, is one of Toshiba's few bright spots. Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that the entire division could be worth as much as US$14 billion, which would more than cover the US$6.3 billion writedown in the struggling nuclear unit. That would leave Toshiba with few growth prospects, relying on public infrastructure projects, elevators and a struggling consumer electronics business. In response, investors sent the stock down to 10-month lows; one…