November 18, 2003
Japan - Yamaha Motor Co. says group net profit for the April-September first half jumped 67.1% from a year earlier to 19.18 billion yen, or 80.60 yen per share. While the manufacturer says the steep rise in first-half net profit was largely in reaction to a one-time charge in the same period of last fiscal year of 9.5 billion yen, its sales improved slightly, up 0.8% to 530.04 billion yen.
Domestic sales decreased 5.9 percent to 79.48 billion yen, but Yamaha said foreign sales posted a 2.1 percent gain to 450.56 billion yen due to growth in Asian countries such as Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand. Foreign sales accounted for 85.0% of Yamaha’s total sales by value. The company said it also benefited from a lower yen against the euro in key European markets where the company's revenue rose strongly despite lower sales numbers.
Pretax profit dropped 5.4 percent to 36.21 billion yen and operating profit declined 9.0 percent to 37.29 billion yen as the company curtailed shipments for North America because of the need to make inventory adjustments.
The company said it is on course for record profit figures for the full year to next March 31, and raised its forecasts from 32 billion yen to 40 billion yen in net profit and from 68 billion yen to 71 billion yen in pretax profit. The sales projection was revised downward to 1.02 trillion yen from 1.03 trillion yen, which still would make a full-year record.
