Panasonic Corporation, the world's largest plasma TV maker, faced with an expected $4.2 billion annual loss, said it would close 27 manufacturing units and cut about 15,000 jobs as it grapples with a stronger yen and slowing demand.

Panasonic, formerly known as Matsushita Electric, said it plans to announce another round of plant closures of a similar scale in the next business year.

Half the cuts, which would include both full-time regular employees and contract workers, will be in Japan and half overseas, the company said in a statement.

Panasonic has a global workforce of about 300,000 regular workers.

The company, posted a net loss of 63.1 billion yen for the October-December quarter versus a year-earlier profit of 115.2 billion yen. Quarterly operating profit tumbled 84 per cent to 26.4 billion yen.

The company cut its sales forecast from 8.50 trillion yen to 7.75 trillion yen and said it expects to register a pretax loss of 380 million yen against the earlier estimate of 100 million yen.

It expects to end the financial year with a net loss of 380 million yen against the earlier expectations of a 30 million net profit.

Panasonic, the maker of Viera flat TVs and Lumix digital cameras, is among the growing list of electronics makers restructuring operations to beat the global slump.

Japanese electronics like Sony Corp, Toshiba Corp and Hitachi Ltd are all facing huge losses amidst falling sales and a strong Japanese currency that makes their products less competitive against goods from South Korean rivals such as Samsung Electronics, which are benefiting from a softer won.

Panasonic, which lags far behind Samsung, Sony and Sharp Corp in LCD TVs, said it would delay the start-up of its new LCD panel plant in western Japan by six months, to July 2010.