Tokyo: Hitachi, Japan's largest electronics maker, will focus investments on infrastructure-related businesses such as power plants as it seeks to more than double its profit over the next three years.

Hitachi, a sprawling conglomerate of 900 group firms, has been trying to narrow its focus to give it a better chance of competing globally with more profitable rivals such as Germany's Siemens and General Electric.

Over the next three years, Hitachi said it would allocate about 70 per cent of its 1.4 trillion yen (Dh56 billion) budget for capital spending and strategic investments to businesses such as power plants, smart grids, cloud computing, batteries and railway systems.

Hitachi said it would look to mergers and acquisitions to bolster these operations, President Hiroaki Nakanishi said, in a sign the company is becoming more aggressive toward expansion after years of cost-cutting.

"We are clearly stating that we will be changing to offence from defence," Nakanishi, a 40-year Hitachi veteran, who took the helm in April, told a news conference.

"Sales growth is not everything, but profit growth won't come without an increase in sales."

Hitachi, which makes everything from nuclear power plants to rice cookers, also said it planned to further shed non-core businesses.

Nakanishi said he expected the number of its major business units to be reduced from the current 40 in the next few years.

Hitachi said it would aim for an operating profit margin of more than five per cent in the financial year to March 2013 on sales of 10.5 trillion yen.

That would produce a profit of at least 525 billion yen, up from 202 billion yen in the year just ended.

"Unless something really goes wrong, this profit figure is reachable," said Yukihiko Shimada, a senior analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

The average forecast of six analysts is for Hitachi to report an operating profit of 469 billion yen for the year to March 2013.

Hitachi aims to boost the ratio of sales generated in overseas markets to more than half the total, up from 41 per cent in the year ended in March, as it makes a push into emerging markets.

It also aims to lower its debt-equity ratio to 0.8 times or below, from 1.04 times at the end of last financial year.

The global economic downturn forced Hitachi to focus on stability and spin off what it called "commodity products" such as chips, to become less vulnerable to price volatility.