MAINICHI



 

 
Honda Motor Co. said Thursday its net profit for the fiscal year ended March fell 1.7 percent from a year earlier to 695.27 billion yen ($5.2 billion), hurt by a fall in vehicle sales in China and the United States.

But for the current business year through next March, the Japanese automaker forecast a 15.1 percent rise in net profit to 800 billion yen as it plans to expand sales volume globally.

Honda said due to the impact of the end of a tax reduction policy for cars in China, sales of automobiles in the major market fell by nearly 20 percent in fiscal 2022 from the previous year to 1.24 million units. It said sales in the United States decreased by 28 percent to 1 million units.

It said the negative impact of the coronavirus lockdown in China and a semiconductor supply shortage has also dented net profit for fiscal 2022. The automaker cited higher raw material costs and inflation as factors.

The weaker yen versus the U.S. dollar, which boosts Japanese automakers' overseas profits when repatriated, could not make up for the losses, Honda said.

In the business year just ended, Honda saw its operating profit fall 3.7 percent from a year earlier to 839.40 billion yen. Sales, however, rose 16.2 percent to 16.91 trillion yen, thanks to robust sales of motorcycles.

For fiscal 2023, Honda said it expects to sell 4.35 million units of automobiles, up from 3.69 million units in fiscal 2022, with a forecast to hit a record-high operating profit of 1 trillion yen.

"The supply of semiconductors is expected to gradually recover from the first half of fiscal 2023 to the second half and is expected to normalize in fiscal 2024 or later," Executive Vice President Shinji Aoyama told an online press briefing.

As Honda accelerates the expansion of its electric vehicle business in the face of rising global competition, it also said it has signed with battery maker GS Yuasa International Ltd. to establish a joint venture company to research and develop lithium-ion batteries and battery production methods.

The joint venture, Honda GS Yuasa EV Battery R&D Co., to be based in Kyoto in western Japan, is slated to start operations before the end of this year. The move comes as the two firms said in January they are collaborating on EV batteries.

Honda also said it will acquire up to 64 billion shares, or 3.8 percent of the total number of issued shares excluding treasury stock, for up to 200 billion yen from Friday to March 31, 2024.