NTT Logs 14.2% Fall in April-December Group Net Profit

By Kyodo News International, Tokyo

Feb. 2–TOKYO — Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. said Friday its group net profit for the April-December period last year dropped 14.2 percent to 410.14 billion yen on 7.93 trillion yen in sales, up 0.2 percent.

Consolidated operating profit for the first nine months of fiscal 2006 also fell 5.0 percent to 966.74 billion yen, accounting for 81 percent of the target at 1.2 trillion for the full year, the telecommunications giant said.

NTT said the number of contracts for its “B Flet’s” high-speed broadband communications service increased by 1.94 million during the nine months, against a target of 2.7 million for the whole of fiscal 2006. The number totaled 5.36 million at the end of December.

The number of contracts for the FOMA third-generation mobile phone service of the firm’s NTT DoCoMo Inc. unit rose by 8.65 million during the period to 32.11 million at the end of December, NTT said.

It is targeting an annual increase in contracts of 11.34 million.

NTT left its group net profit estimate for the whole of fiscal 2006 unchanged at 500 billion yen, up 0.3 percent from the previous year, on 10.8 trillion yen in projected sales, up 0.5 percent.

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