Japan's Toshiba logs Q1 profit, keeps outlook

TOKYO, July 29 (Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp (6502.T) posted a fourth consecutive quarterly profit on Thursday on robust sales of memory chips and kept its full-year outlook for a doubling of operating profit.

Toshiba, the world's No.2 maker of NAND-type flash memory after Samsung Electronics Co (005930.KS), logged a 29.5 billion yen ($337.2 million) operating profit for April-June, beating the average profit estimate from three analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S of 24.2 billion yen.

It recorded a 37.6 billion yen operating loss a year earlier.

Toshiba stuck to its operating profit forecast of 250 billion yen for the year to March, slightly below a consensus figure of 256 billion yen profit by 17 analysts.

Toshiba and its rival NAND chipmakers are seeing surging demand for the flash memory used in smartphones and other mobile devices, thanks to the growing popularity for devices such as Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone and iPad.

Shares in Toshiba have fallen about 9 percent this year, underperforming a 3 percent slide in the electrical machinery subindex .IELEC.T during the same period. ($1=87.47 Yen) (Reporting by Sachi Izumi; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)