Japanese high-tech firm Hitachi said Tuesday it will buy British atomic power generation company Horizon to expand its nuclear business overseas, with wariness over the technology in Japan still high.
The company said it had agreed with Horizon's German owners E.ON and RWE, to buy all the firm's shares from them in November.
A release issued by RWE said the purchase price was 696 pounds ($1.12 billion).
News of the deal, which had been reported over the weekend, came as Hitachi said its group net profit in the six months to September tumbled 40.9 percent from a year earlier to 30 billion yen ($376 million).
Horizon plans to build two or three reactors each at two nuclear power stations in Britain, and Hitachi will take over the task, the company said.
The first reactor is expected to start operation in the first half of the next decade, it added.
Hitachi is reportedly seeking to expand its nuclear power business overseas after the Fukushima nuclear accident last year effectively wiped out demand for new reactors in Japan.
In its half-year earnings report, Hitachi said its operating profit dropped 4.1 percent to 164 billion yen in a fallback reflecting a gain from its sell-off of a hard disk drive division a year earlier.
Hitachi's consolidated revenue fell 4.7 percent to 4.36 trillion yen.
For the full year to March 2013, the company forecast a 42.4-percent drop in its net profit to 200 billion yen as earlier expected.