Honda Motor Co said first-quarter profit rose a less-than-expected 20 percent as Japanese consumers bought less expensive cars. Japan's second-largest automaker left full-year forecasts unchanged.
Group net income for the three months ended June 30 rose to a record for any quarter of Japanese yen 107.5 billion (US$903 million), or Japanese yen 110.4 a share, from Japanese yen 89.4 billion, or Japanese yen 91.7 a share, a year earlier. The result fell short of the average Japanese yen 121 billion profit estimate from six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
"That's a disappointing number. I was expecting about a 30 percent increase" in profit, said Nobuaki Murayama who manages Y60 billion in assets at Cigna International Investment Advisors KK and holds Honda shares. "I may have to reduce my Honda position."
The maker of Odyssey minivans is the most reliant among Japanese automakers on the US market for its profit, leaving it vulnerable to a tumbling dollar. Honda's increased share of the home market may also fail to translate into rising profit as customers opt for smaller, cheaper compact cars rather than sedans, analysts said.
The company left its full-year forecasts unchanged. Honda said in April net income for the business year ending March 31, 2003 would rise 27 percent to Japanese yen 460 billion, a second year of record earnings. Sales will rise 10 percent to Japanese yen 8.1 trillion, the company said then.
First-quarter group sales rose 10 percent to Japanese yen 1.94 trillion.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mindanao in the Philippines at 7:38am today, prompting the US Tsunami Warning System to issue an alert for neighboring countries, including Taiwan. The system issued a purple alert indicating a "tsunami threat." The potential threat zone includes Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Yap and Palau. Philippine authorities were assessing the damage from the quake, with the office of civil defense seeking to verifying initial reports that 15 people had been killed and 129 injured in the region, mostly from falling debris. Arlene Hollero, disaster chief of Maasim town in the Philippines' Sarangani Province,
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The National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology yesterday showcased its locally developed variants of the Vision 60 robotic patrol dog, which it plans to deploy on the nation’s outlying territories in the South China Sea. The variants were produced under the Joint Lab project — created by the institute and domestic companies — and assembled with domestically produced motors, lenses and artificial intelligence (AI) systems alongside licensed tech from the US, Missile and Rocket Systems Research Division deputy director Jen Kuo-kang (任國光) told the media event at a military base in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) area. Taiwan has built up its strengths
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