Toshiba’s chairman resigned Tuesday over the huge financial crisis stemming from the company’s troubled nuclear business.
The announcement that Shigenori Shiga is stepping down came after the struggling Japanese conglomerate missed its own deadline to report earnings.
The delayed results sent Toshiba shares plunging as much as 10% and left a cloud of uncertainty over how much trouble the company is in from a big bet on the nuclear industry that turned sour.
It had been expected to report a massive loss tied to its takeover of a U.S. nuclear construction business.
The iconic Japanese firm warned in late December that it would lose several billion dollars from having to write down the value of the nuclear unit. Unconfirmed reports in recent weeks said the hit could be north of $6 billion.
But rather than giving investors clarity on the matter, Toshiba left them hanging Tuesday. Its shares closed down 8% for the day and have almost halved in value since news of the problems at its nuclear business first emerged.
Toshiba announced later in the day that it was seeking permission to delay its earnings report by a month, citing the need to investigate the accounting process at the U.S. nuclear division.
The delayed earnings weren’t the only bit of unsettling news circulating Tuesday.
The Nikkei newspaper reported that Toshiba would warn that it may not be able to keep operating as “a going concern,” raising fears of bankruptcy.
Toshiba declined to comment on the report.
The company’s U.S. subsidiary Westinghouse acquired nuclear construction business CB&I Stone and Webster in late 2015.
The acquisition was supposed to help Westinghouse complete nuclear reactor projects in Georgia and South Carolina. But the U.S. projects are running way over budget and behind schedule. Toshiba later admitted it may have overestimated the value of CB&I Stone and Webster.
Toshiba is one of Japan’s best known multinational corporations, tracing its history back to the late 19th century.
The company made Japan’s first light bulb and manufactured the country’s first electric washing machines and refrigerators. It now makes everything from 3D TVs to memory chips, and had turned to nuclear plant construction to try to help it recover in the wake of a massive $1.2 billion accounting scandal.
There were signs of a turnaround last year, Toshiba reported earnings of 115 billion yen ($977 million) through the first six months of 2016.
But now the company is back on shaky ground, and Toshiba admits the huge investment in the nuclear business may have been another misstep.
“We may revise the positioning of nuclear business in the future if it’s needed,” CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa said in December.
CNN’s Yoko Wakatsuki and Junko Ogura contributed to this report.
