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Honda quarterly profit jumps fourfold to $1.7 bln

TOKYO — Honda Motor said Tuesday its net profit surged more than fourfold to $1.7 billion for the three months to June, underscoring a recovery from the impact of last year’s quake-tsunami disasters.

The Japanese automaker posted a net profit of 131.7 billion yen ($1.7 billion) for the April-June quarter, up from 31.8 billion yen for the same period last year.

Sales soared 42.1 percent to 2.44 trillion yen while operating profit jumped to 176.0 billion yen from 22.6 billion yen a year earlier, the company said.

The sales and profit gains were “due primarily to increased revenue in automobile business operations as production recovered from the effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake”, it said in a statement.

Honda left unchanged its full-year forecast, still projecting net profit at 470 billion yen and operating profit at 620 billion yen on sales of 10.3 trillion yen for the fiscal year to March 2013.

Japanese automakers saw extensive damage to their supply chains as a result of last year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan and flooding in Thailand in the autumn.

A high yen also ate into exporters’ sales and profits.

Japanese automakers have come under pressure from the value of the currency, which last year hit record highs against the dollar, making exports relatively more expensive overseas and cutting the value of repatriated earnings.