Kyocera to drop NYSE listing

The company’s board of directors has agreed to apply to cancel the NYSE listing and deregister its ADS with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to an online statement.

It said that the trading volume of the ADS on the exchange has fallen in recent years, to the point where it has started to question the rationale behind maintaining the listing. It first listed its ADS on the NYSE in 1980.

From June through September, Kyocera will submit a formal notice of its delisting plans. It will then file Form 25 with the SEC to delist its ADS, followed by another document to end its reporting obligations.

However, it will reveal a more detailed rundown of its plans in the coming months. Its plans in the U.S. will not affect its listings on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, it said.

Separately, Kyocera’s board also announced plans to voluntarily adopt International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in its consolidated financial statements. Currently, it follows the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) used in the U.S.

This change will help it to improve managerial control of its global business, it said. It will release its consolidated financial statements for the three months to the end of June under IFRS.

In early February, the Kyoto-based company recorded a net profit of JPY 28,880 million ($261.7 million) for the third quarter of the current Japanese fiscal year, down 16.8% on the year. Kyocera’s Equipment & Systems Business — which makes PV modules, among other products — posted an operating profit of JPY 7.5 billion in the third quarter, down from JPY 12.8 billion in the preceding three-month period.

The company is still in the process of consolidating its solar manufacturing business, mainly in response to declining sales in the Japanese market. In the second half of the next Japanese fiscal year, Kyocera will shift all PV production to its factory in Yasu, in Japan’s Shiga prefecture, as well as to another plant in Tianjin, China.

Although Kyocera’s project business is increasingly focusing on small- to mid-scale systems for self-consumption, it remains committed to utility-scale PV development. In January, it revealed that it is moving forward on the development of a 480 MW solar project on an island in Japan’s Nagasaki prefecture. Plans to build the massive project were first announced several years ago.