Tokyo - Sanyo Electric Co Ltd, the world's biggest maker of rechargeable batteries, on Thursday reported a quarterly loss and a loss for the first six months of its fiscal year because of a strengthening yen, lower demand and restructuring costs.

Its loss for the July-to-September quarter was 19 billion yen (210 million dollars), compared with a profit of 4.4 billion year in the same period a year earlier.

Sales fell 20 per cent to 422.7 billion yen.

The Osaka-based company said that from April to September, it suffered a loss of 37.4 billion yen, compared with profit of 32.7 billion yen a year earlier.

Sales for the half-year fell 22.1 per cent to 784 billion yen.

Sanyo is being hit not only with falling demand for such products as digital cameras during the world economic downturn, but it is also suffering from the rising yen, which makes its products more expensive abroad. Its bottom line has also been hit by the costs of job cuts and a recall of washing machines.

Sanyo is being taken over by the world's largest consumer electronics maker, Panasonic Corp, and is seeking to lower its expenditures.

For the entire fiscal year, Sanyo said it expected to incur a loss of 30 billion yen, substantially better than the 93-billion-yen loss is recorded in the past financial year.

It expected its annual sales to fall 6.2 per cent to 1.66 trillion yen. (dpa)