Japan's Nidec lifts annual profit outlook after Q1

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese electric motor maker Nidec raised its full-year operating profit forecast by 4.3% on Tuesday off the back of a recovery in demand for hard drive motors, efforts to raise its profitability and a weaker yen.

The company raised its expectations for operating profit in the financial year to the end of March 2025 to 240 billion yen ($1.53 billion), versus an earlier forecast of 230 billion yen and an average analyst view of 246.9 billion yen.

Operating profit for the April-June quarter totalled 60.3 billion yen, largely in line with 60.2 billion yen in the same period a year earlier and compared with the average estimate of 58.4 billion yen in a survey of four analysts by LSEG.

"Nidec expects rapid demand expansion of power generators which are essential to data centres," the company said in a statement.

It said it saw demand for hard drive disk motors recovering and that for water-cooling modules for artificial intelligence expanding rapidly.

The company said last month its business in water-cooling modules for generative AI data centres could expand to 1 trillion yen in sales in the future.

Nidec separately announced it signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday with Tata Elxsi, an Indian technology service provider, to develop software programs for India and other markets.

Previously, the company made a big bet on components for electric vehicles, but has been facing headwinds in that market in recent months due to demand uncertainty and heavy price competition in China.

Nidec reported the results after it revised down its operating profit for the financial year ended in March 2024 and the one before that after determining that some sales were "recorded in an inflated manner" at a subsidiary. ($1 = 156.4100 yen)

(Reporting by Daniel Leussink; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Neil Fullick)