GMO Internet, Inc. an IT giant in Japan and a former big player in the cryptocurrency mining manufacturing industry, has announced its consolidated financial results for its 2018 fiscal year ended December 31, 2018.
According to the results, the firm managed to achieve an overall solid year, despite large losses for its cryptocurrency mining business in 2018. In fact, operating profit for the company was ¥21.79 billion ($196.99 million) during the year. This represents an increase of 23.5 percent when measured against 2017, which in turn only reported a 3.7 percent growth year-on-year.
Ordinary profit also climbed year-over-year, rising by 10.5 percent from ¥17.32 billion in 2017 up to ¥19.14 billion in 2018. Net profit per share, however, was actually a loss for the year of ¥179.92, the statement said.
When looking to the future, GMO Internet remained tight-lipped and didn’t give any indication as to how it believes it will perform during 2019. Instead, it deferred to its subsidiary, GMO Financial Holdings, which discloses monthly sales indicators such as foreign exchange margin trading volume, stock brokerage trading price, customer account number and operating revenue.
“The Group's business ‘Internet finance business’, ‘Cryptocurrency business’ and ‘Incubation business’ are affected by economic conditions and financial markets, cryptocurrency and other market conditions, it is difficult to predict business performance, so we will not disclose consolidated business results and dividend forecast for the fiscal year ending December 31,” the company said.
GMO is Scaling Down its Crypto Mining Business
As Finance Magnates reported, during 2018, GMO’s cryptocurrency mining business took a hit. This lead to the firm announcing via a regulatory filing in December that it was exiting the industry at a huge loss.
“After taking into consideration changes in the current business environment, the Company expects that it is difficult to recover the carrying amounts of the in-house-mining-related business assets, and therefore, it has been decided to record an extraordinary loss,” the filing at the time stated.
Furthermore, the company expects its cryptocurrency mining division to post an extraordinary loss of ¥35.5 billion ($318 million), the filing said. Because there are no signs that the mining industry is improving, GMO will no longer “develop, manufacture, and sell mining machines.”
However, the company will continue in-house mining operations within GMO Internet but will relocate the mining center to another region to secure less expensive power supply.
