"Over the last three years, we aimed for stable revenue and profit growth focusing mainly on the automotive business ... but development costs and insufficient abilities to adjust to rapid battery production expansion limited our profits," Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga said. The business was also squeezed last year due to production delays for Tesla Inc's mass-market Model 3 sedan. Panasonic is Tesla's exclusive supplier of battery cells and industry watchers have said the Japanese company needs to cut its reliance on the US electric carmaker. Copyright Reuters, 2019