Stocks in Tokyo Pause, Panasonic and Tesla in Battery Venture

Hiruki Nakamura
26 Feb, 2014
New York City

Stocks in Tokyo paused and investors focused on the yen weakness. Panasonic Corp soared after the company plans to build electric batteries for Tesla Motors Inc. The gained 0.3%.

[R]4:30 PM Tokyo – Stocks in Tokyo paused and investors focused on the yen weakness. Panasonic Corp soared after the company plans to build electric batteries for Tesla Motors Inc. The gained 0.3%.[/R]

Stocks in Tokyo paused after the reference index traded above 15,000 in yesterday’s session and investors reassessed valuations.

Energy and bank sector stocks led the decliners and investors focused on the yen trading in currency market. Future increase in stocks and market indexes are likely to be driven by additional decline in the yen.

Investors also turned caution on the worries that China’s growth may be slower than anticipated as large banks put more restrictions to overheated construction sector.

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average slipped 80.63 or 0.5% to 14,970.97 and the Topix index slid 8.31 to 1,225.35.

The yen closed at 102.32 against the U.S. dollar.

Mt. Gox Closes

Mt. Gox, the Tokyo based operator of Bitcoin digital currency operator mysteriously disappears from Tuesday and there is a rising speculation that the company may have faced theft of large amount of virtual currency.

Documents from the company shows 740,000 bitcoins were stolen from Mt. Gox, equivalent of about $365 million.

Spokesperson of the Japanese government said the government is collecting information from Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox.

The company said on its website “In the event of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on Mt. Gox’s operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users.”

On February 25, value of one bitcoin share worth declined 15% since Sunday to $515, from $1,151 in last December.

Stocks in Review

Toyota Motor Corp dropped 73 yen to 5,917 yen after the auto maker said worldwide total production jumped 5.3% to 855,145 units in January. Total production in Japan including overseas assembly climbed 8.5% to 380,781 vehicles.

Toyota reported total production, for the month outside Japan grew 2.9% to 474,364 units and sales in Japan surged 24% to 198,790 units for the month from a year ago.

Honda Motor Co slid 5 yen to 3,705 yen after the automaker reported sales in Japan soared 64.5% to 91,504 vehicles and mini vehicles'' sales grew 21.3% from last year. Registrations surged 135.9%. Total exports from Japan declined 68.2%.

The automaker added worldwide production in January climbed 10.5% to 378,718 units. Production in Japan jumped 65.3% to 97,145 units while outside Japan production slipped 0.9% to 281,573 units.

Honda reported production in North America fell 3.9% to 144,747 units and production in Europe plunged 26.7% while production in Asia grew 8.9% and in China surged 37.5%.

Nissan Motor Co Ltd slid 0.3% to 917 yen and the auto maker said global production in the month of January jumped 6.5% to 429,580 units and production in Japan climbed 13.7% to 80,360 units.

Nissan added production in the U.S. surged 38.1% to 77,996 units and production in UK rose 4.3% to 44,511 units. The company sold 67,469 units in Japan a 19.6% increase from a year ago.

Nissan said exports in January tumbled 12.6% to 32,737 units.

Sony fell 2 yen to 1,764 yen after the electronics products maker said it sold a total 322,083 PlayStation 4 units in Japan in the first two days of the weekend launch in Japan, four times better than the PS3''s 88,443 unit Japanese launch.

Softbank Corp fell 105 yen to 7,990 yen after a Japan-based mobile messaging service operator Line Corporation’s chief operating officer Takeshi Idezawa said the company has not offered to acquire a stake in popular chat service provider.

Fast Retailing Co slipped 200 yen to 36,180 yen.

Panasonic Corporation soared 5.3% to 1,259 yen after the electronics products maker is in talk with Tesla Motors Inc, to build a lithium-ion battery plant in the U.S. for its electric cars. Total investment is expected to be 100 billion yen or $978.67 million the Nikkei reported.

Zensho Holdings Co Ltd plunged 7.5% to 1,125 yen after the restaurant operator plans to raise as much as 30.1 billion yen or $294 million through a public offering and third party allotment.