Rival Sony Corp rose, however, and Panasonic Corp's shares steadied after a slide to their lowest in more than 30 years, as investors look for signs that Japan's tech firms are finally moving to cope with tough overseas competition and a sluggish global economy.

"Sharp and Panasonic look miserable," said Yasuo Sakuma, portfolio manager at Bayview Asset Management.

"Investors are hesitant to buy them even though their share prices look relatively cheap. Nobody can say all the bad news has been discounted."

Sharp shares, which have lost three-quarters of their value since the start of the year, fell 4.1 percent to 162 yen after a warning the day before it was seeing a "serious negative operating cash flow".

The shares remained above a more than three-decade low of 142 yen hit last month, buoyed in part by hopes it can forge an alliance with a high-tech company interested in its display technology, but traders also noted it had become very expensive and difficult for short-sellers to borrow more shares to sell.

The company, whose displays are used in Apple Inc's iPads and iPhones, foundered as the strong yen made Japanese manufacturing more expensive and as it faced nimbler, better funded foreign rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co, forcing it to seek a bailout from its banks.

SHUNNED BY DEBT MARKETS

Effectively shunned by the debt capital markets because of its massive losses and falling market share, Sharp received a guarantee in late September for 360 billion yen ($4.5 billion) in loans from its two main lenders, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and Mizuho Corporate Bank.

The loans are enough to sustain the company through its next financial year to March 2014, which includes the redemption of 200 billion yen in convertible bonds next September, Sharp Chief Financial Officer Tetsuo Onishi told a briefing on Thursday.

Worries about its cash liquidity have mounted in the credit markets, where the cost of insuring Sharp's debt has jumped more than 30-fold since the start of the year and is now more than 10 times the cost for Sony and Panasonic.

Osaka-based Sharp nearly doubled its forecast full-year net loss to 450 billion yen ($5.62 billion) after booking a $1.1 billion restructuring charge in July-September. The agreement with its banks requires it to return to the black on an operating basis in the second half of the year to March.

"Sharp expects major earnings improvement in the second half as it posted greater inventory and capital write-downs in the first half than planned, and plans to cut personnel and other fixed costs," Goldman Sachs said in a research note.

"However, sales guidance for small/midsize LCDs and solar cells looks optimistic, and we think second half guidance looks difficult."

The Aquos TV maker has been in talks for months with Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, which is considering becoming the century-old Japanese firm's biggest shareholder, but said it is looking at other alliances as well.

The company has denied Japanese media reports, however, saying it is in talks on financial tie-ups with U.S. technology companies such as Apple, Intel Corp, Microsoft Corp and Google Inc.

Sony eeked out a small quarterly operating profit, helped by the sale of a non-core chemicals business, and kept its forecast for a full-year operating profit of 130 billion yen, sending its shares up 3 percent to 943 yen on Friday.

Panasonic Corp started off the latest round of bad news for Japan's big consumer electronics makers on Wednesday, saying it will lose 765 billion yen this business year as it writes down goodwill and assets and plans more restructuring. That would boost Panasonic's cumulative loss over five years to nearly $25 billion.

Panasonic shares dipped 0.5 percent, steadying after a 20 percent tumble on Thursday. Japan's benchmark Nikkei average rose 1.3 percent.

($1 = 80.1400 Japanese yen)

(Additional reporting by Dominic Lau and Taiga Uranaka in Tokyo; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

• A Permanent Economic Emergency