Honda announced this Friday that its sales jumped by at least 36 percent. This was just for the October-December months. Dismissing damage done by the yen, Honda Motors managed to raise its profits for the full year.
The maker of the Odyssey raised its full fiscal profit to around 545 billion yen ($4.8 billion). That amount is a full 58 percent more than the 344 billion yen that Honda brought in about a year ago. That year Honda had expected to bring in 415 billion yen ($3.6 billion)
As for the third quarter, a series of cost cuts ended up raising the profit from 124.1 billion yen to 168.8 billion yen ($1.5 billion yen). The fact that things with airbag maker Takata Corp. who ended up paying nearly $1 billion for faulty airbags. It had turned out that when airbags were deployed shrapnel was expelled injuring passengers. It’s estimated that 16 people died because of this. The recalls Honda had to make due to the lawsuit against Takata resulted in low numbers in the second quarter.
Although the vehicle recall caused by Takata’s products slowed sales for Honda, it wasn’t the only company affected by the recall. Yet Honda was the most affected due to its close business with Takata. The recall, considered the largest auto recall in United States history, affected 69 million Takata inflators as well as 42 million cars. A total of 100 million inflators have been recalled all together.
Despite all the drama with Takata, Honda did report that sales in the United States and China were high. This, the company says, was due to the release of new vehicle models in both countries. However, sales did dip down quarterly by three percent from 3.6 trillion yen to 3.5 trillion yen ($31 billion).
Honda also says that there’s a high possibility that it will profit off the sales of 5 million cars in the upcoming fiscal year. That number will bring the automaker up from the 4.7 million it brought in last year.
