Battery Recall Costs Sanyo 2 Billion Yen

Sanyo Electric Co. revealed that the recall of its joint venture’s cell phone battery packs cost the parent company a 2 billion yen loss in fiscal 2006 on both a group and parent-only basis. However, the company stated that the loss associated with the lithium ion battery packs made by Sanyo GS Soft Energy Co does not require revising the parent’s financial results for the business year ended March 31.

The battery packs had been incorporated into Mitsubishi Electric Corp’s FOMA D902i handsets sold via a handset marketing network of NTT DoCoMo Inc. NTT DoCoMo and Mitsubishi have recalled 1.3 million units in the packs, saying they may overheat and blow up under certain conditions.