Japan-based Hitachi reported Wednesday that it recorded a loss in the fiscal year ending March 31, but forecast profitability for the current fiscal year, planning to cut costs.

Hitachi said it posted a group net loss of 32.8 billion yen (269 million dollars) last year, compared with 37.32 billion yen profits the year before, due to costs in its electric power operations and a downturn in flat-panel TV sets and hard-disc drive.

“Steep price declines in the January-to-March period” made profitability at the hard-disk drive business difficult to achieve this fiscal year, Toyoaki Nakamura, Hitachi's chief financial officer, said at a briefing in Tokyo.

"We've been hit by drops in flat-panel prices for the past one to two years, and we are expecting to see a price recovery in the next one to two years," said Nakamura.

The red-ink results came despite sales going up 8.3 percent from the year before, to nearly 10.25 trillion yen, Hitachi said. For the 2007-2008 fiscal year, the company predicted a return to the black, with net profits targeted to reach 40 billion yen, on sales of 10.5 trillion yen.

Hitachi would achieve this through cost reductions in hard-disc operations as well as by pursuing more projects abroad, in particular those with its new partner in the US, the General Electric concern.

Last November, Hitachi entered a nuclear energy joint venture with GE, with the Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd. company due to be launched on July 1, with Hitachi holding an 80 percent stake.