Honda Motor Co. is likely to be the only Japanese carmaker to post operating profit for the fiscal first half thanks to brisk sales of fuel-efficient cars, a report said Thursday.
Honda is expected to report a group operating profit of 60 billion yen (660 million dollars) for the six months to September, in contrast to a loss of 10 billion yen the company earlier projected, the Nikkei business daily said.
The figure would still represent an 84 percent drop from the same period last year but no other Japanese automakers currently expect to report profit on the operating basis, the daily said without citing its sources.
Sales at the number two automaker likely fell about 30 percent from a year before to to 4.1 trillion yen, edging above the earlier forecast of 3.92 trillion yen, it said.
Domestic sales of fuel-efficient cars grew in Japan thanks in part to the government’s tax breaks for environmentally friendly vehicles while demand was also robust in emerging markets such as Brazil and Southeast Asia, it said.
Honda is likely to log an operating profit of more than 100 billion yen for the full fiscal year to March 2010, beating its earlier forecast of 70 billion yen, it said.
The report did not mention possible net profit.
