Tokyo  - Hitachi Ltd on Tuesday forecast that it would return to the black after two years of losses as its fellow Japanese electronics company Pioneer Corp reported its fourth annual loss in a row.

Profit in its disk-drive division would help it achieve net income of 40 billion yen (385 million dollars) in the current fiscal year, which ends in March, Tokyo-based Hitachi said.

In the most recent fiscal year, it lost 58.1 billion yen, it said, better than the 70-billion-yen loss it had predicted.

Tokyo-based Pioneeer, meanwhile, said it expected its losses to widen this fiscal year. After it reported a 17.99-billion-yen loss in the year that just ended in March, up from a loss of 6.76 billion yen the year before, it forecast a loss of 19 billion yen for the current fiscal year.

Both companies have been hit by losses in their plasma-screen businesses amid sluggish plasma-television sales and increasing price competition in the flat-panel industry.

Some of Pioneer's losses stemmed from a restructuring it is undergoing as it withdraws from plasma-television production.

The Nikkei financial newspaper reported Tuesday that Pioneer planned to cut 2,000 jobs in Japan and abroad and close three domestic plasma-display factories by the end of March.

Instead of producing the diplays, it plans to buy them from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, which agreed to form a partnership with Pioneer last month.

Pioneer also plans to transfer about 200 researchers and engineers in its plasma-display operations to Matsushita.

While Hitachi said it still expected its plasma and liquid-crystal diplay unit to see a loss this year, it said it would shrink.

It turned around its disk-drive unit, however, by cutting jobs and closing factories.

It said it expected this year's operating profits - which are a company's earning minus interest payments and taxes and which are seen as a measure of its earnings power from ongoing operations - to rise 10 per cent to 380 billion yen while sales were expected to fall 1.1 per cent to 11.1 trillion yen.

Pioneer said its sales in the past fiscal year dropped 2.8 per cent to 774.48 billion yen but predicted a rise to 780 billion yen in the current year.

The company already cut 780 domestic workers in fiscal 2005 amid sluggish plasma-TV sales. (dpa)