Honda in record quarterly profit on rising sales

Honda reported a record quarterly profit of 272.4 billion yen ($3.2 billion) as auto sales grew in North America, Japan and the rest of Asia.

Honda Motor Co. said Friday its profit for April-to-June increased 36-fold from 7.5 billion yen a year earlier when Japanese automakers were slammed by the financial crisis and the global market slump.

Honda, which makes the Insight hybrid, Fit subcompact and Odyssey minivan, was one of the few Japanese automakers that avoided losses during the global recession, partly because it focuses on smaller models that don’t deliver hefty profit margins per vehicle but whose sales held up.

Quarterly sales jumped 17.9 percent to 2.361 trillion yen ($27.5 billion) for the fifth straight quarter of year-on-year growth.

Tokyo-based Honda also got a perk from its booming motorcycle division, where sales surged 28 percent to 2.89 motorcycles. Honda’s auto sales for the quarter posted robust growth of 23 percent at 1.44 million vehicles.

Source: AP