Japanese carmaker Suzuki on Monday said it managed to post a profit in the fiscal year to March as robust sales in India and cost-saving offset sluggish demand in Western markets and Japan.
While the company defied the recession, maintaining its record of posting profits for more than 40 consecutive years, its revenue was undermined by a strong yen that made its exports more expensive and a fragile global recovery.
Suzuki -- Japan's second largest compact car maker and the world's third biggest motorcycle builder -- said that net profit rose 5.4 percent to 28.9 billion yen (312 million dollars) in the last financial year.
Operating profit increased 3.2 percent to 79.37 billion yen on revenue that was down 17.8 percent to 2.47 trillion yen, the company said.
Sales in overseas markets dropped 25.6 percent from the previous year, but sales in Asia rose 3.7 percent and operating profit in the region surged 59.0 percent, mostly due to robust sales of four-wheel vehicles in India.
"Maruti in India accounts for 67 percent of our operating profit," said Suzuki's chairman Osamu Suzuki, referring to its Indian unit Maruti Suzuki, which last year achieved annual production of one million vehicles.
"This means we are one-legged, and our operation is unbalanced. We need to have three or four legs -- for example in Asia, Europe and Japan," he said.
The stronger yen against the euro and the dollar cut profit by 46.9 billion yen, the company said.
"We take the Greek debt crisis very seriously, as the cheaper euro against the yen will have a bigger impact on us than on our rivals as the weight of sales in Europe in our revenue is relatively high," the Suzuki chairman said.
He said the impact of the crisis on the global economy is worrying as well.
For the current year to March 2011, the company expects net profit to rise 3.8 percent to 30 billion yen, operating profit to rise 0.8 percent to 80 billion yen and sales to pick up 1.3 percent to 2.5 trillion yen.
"It's hard to predict the global economic outlook given the Greek crisis, but we are determined to maintain the sales at the current level, at least at 2.5 trillion yen," the chairman said.
Referring to the alliance with Volkswagen AG announced in December, Suzuki said: "It'll take a year for us to announce concrete plans on our alliance."
"It is more difficult to coordinate our operation and Volkswagen's than us and GM, as we are both producing small cars," he said, referring to Suzuki's former business partner General Motors.
Copyright 2010  AFP Asian Edition
