"The sharp profit increases should be taken with a grain of salt," said Hironari Nozaki, an analyst at HSBC Securities in Tokyo.
Yesterday, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell reported sharp profit increases.
Roddy Davidson, an analyst at Shore Capital, said the results did not appear to contain any significant surprises, coming soon after January's warning of sharp profit falls in 2015 and 2016.
Staples Chief Executive Thomas Stemberg Thomas Stemberg and other top executives in the company will take home a nice profit when Staples repurchases the shares of Staples.com at a sharp premium from its price during the height of the Internet craze.
Higher profits at the discount retailer partly offset a sharp drop in profits at the group's sugar division due to much weaker EU sugar prices.
Manfred Zobl, the chief executive of Swiss Life, stepped down today amid investment losses that caused a sharp drop in profit last year at the company, the nation's largest life insurer.
The new formula, which calculates the American share without first subtracting the fees and taxes, resulted in a sharp reduction of profit margins at the China Film Group, which remains the clearinghouse for nearly all foreign films imported under an annual quota of 34 movies.
Since "profit" centrism still exists in business literature and practice, a sharp transition from profit orientation to environment orientation cannot exactly be mentioned.
Mr. Kim acknowledged in an interview that Kookmin Bank had just emerged from "a very tough quarter," made worse by a sharp turn from profit to loss at its credit card unit.
At the same time, Samsung, the biggest exporter in the nation, reported a sharp drop in profit, but the results topped most analysts' expectations.
