Panasonic said its quarterly profit jumped more than threefold to the highest level in five quarters as it cut costs and enjoyed robust TV sales, and the Japanese electronics maker lifted its outlook to beat market expectations.

The maker of Lumix digital cameras and Viera TVs benefited from growing demand for LCD televisions as consumerscontinued to trade in bulky box TVs for flat-screen models, prompted in part by government incentive programmes.

But uncertainty about consumer demand in overseas markets, particularly the US, is likely to remain a challenge for Panasonic and rivals Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics Inc and Sony.

'We saw higher sales and profits for the third quarter,' Panasonic director Makoto Uenoyama said.

'Earnings are steadily getting better as we move from one quarter to the next.'

The company raised its operating profit forecast for the year to March to 150 billion yen ($1.68 billion) from 120 billion yen.

The new outlook compares with a 72.87 billion yen profit a year earlier and is just above a consensus for a 146.7 billion yen profit in a poll of 16 analysts by Thomson Reuters.

But the revised target still represents less than a third of the 519.48 billion yen profit it posted two years ago, ahead of the global downturn.

'Consumer spending in markets such as the US and Europe remains moribund, constrained by high levels of personal debt and uncertainty in the labour market,' said Marc Desmidt, chief operating officer of Asian equities at BlackRock in Hong Kong.

'Japanese exporters will continue to face obvious headwinds in this respect.'

The results were likely to be neutral for the stock, according to analyst Yuji Fujimori at Barclays Capital in Tokyo.

Panasonic in December bought a majority stake in Sanyo Electric, the world's largest rechargeable battery maker, in a move to establish a new growth driver.

Operating profit totalled 101 billion yen in October-December, up from a 26.4 billion yen profit a year earlier and compared with a market consensus of a 92.4 billion yen profit.

Quarterly sales totalled 1.89 trillion yen, little changed from the previous year's 1.88 trillion yen.-Reuters