TOKYO, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Tokyo stock closed lower Thursday as investors offloaded firms reporting subpar earnings, while telecommunications issues weighed on the broader market amid concerns over price competition.
The 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average dropped 232.81 points, or 1.06 percent, from Wednesday to close the day at 21,687.65.
The broader Topix index of all First Section issues on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, meanwhile, lost 14.07 points, or 0.85 percent, to finish at 1,632.05.
Companies reporting worse-than-expected earnings and outlooks for the fiscal year ending March came under heavy selling, local brokers said, with firms like Yamaha Motor and Mitsui E&S Holdings losing ground after downwardly revising their earnings forecasts.
Mobile phone companies also weighed heavily on the market, investment analysts highlighted, following NTT Docomo, Japan's biggest mobile carrier, announcing it will lower its fees by up to 40 percent from the April-June quarter of 2019.
Shingo Ide, chief equity strategist at the NLI Research Institute, was quoted as saying that the Nikkei was "dragged down by a plunge in the three main mobile carriers. Uncertainty over the impact of the charge cuts on Docomo's earnings also prompted selling."
Subsequently, NTT Docomo tumbled 14.7 percent to 2,426.00 yen, while SoftBank Group dropped 8.2 percent to close at 8,310 yen.
KDDI, meanwhile, plummeted 16.1 percent to end the day at 2,360.00 yen.
By the close of play, information and communication, metal product, and oil and coal product-linked issues comprised those that declined the most, and falling issues beat rising ones by 1,108 to 937 on the First Section, while 66 ended the day unchanged.
On the main section on Thursday, 1,782.49 million shares changed hands, dropping from Wednesday's volume of 1,811.91 million shares.
The turnover on the penultimate trading day of the week came to 3,270.4 billion yen (28.96 billion U.S. dollars).
