Japanese brands ratchet down full-year sales goals

Japanese carmakers recently adjusted their full-year sales and revenue targets after their China businesses continued to stagnate in the wake of anti-Japanese protests over territorial disputes that peaked in September.

Honda Motor Corp announced on Oct 29 it would cut its sales target in China for the fiscal year ending March 2013 by 17 percent to 620,000 units. Its previous plan was to sell 750,000 vehicles.

As result the carmaker lowered its global goal in the same period by 4 percent to 4.12 million.

It also adjusted its forecast for net income in the fiscal year to 375 billion yen ($4.68 billion), a 20 percent decrease from the previous projection of 470 billion yen ($5.87 billion).

According to foreign media reports, the company said its joint venture plants in China will continue to work a single shift to the middle of November and full production will not be likely resume until February at the earliest.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp recently cut its sales target in China as well. It more than halved its full-year goal to only 20,000 vehicles, down from the original projection of 47,500 units.

"We feel hard pressed to be optimistic about the sales in China until next March," the company's president Osamu Masuko was quoted saying in recent media reports.

Fuji Heavy Industries slashed the sales goal in China for its Subaru brand by almost two-third the previous outlook of 34,000 units to 13,700 vehicles.

In September Subaru's sales on the Chinese mainland dropped by 64.5 percent from a year earlier to just 1,857 vehicles.

Unlike other major Japanese car brands that all have local production facilities, Subaru only imports to China now.

It proposed establishing a joint venture with domestic carmaker Chery to produce vehicles locally, but has not received government approval.

Due to its sales drop in China, Mazda Motor Corp also cut the forecast for operating profit in the 2012 fiscal year by 17 percent to 25 billion yen ($312 million).

To date, Toyota is the only Japanese carmaker to disclose its October tally in China.

It reported a year-on-year decline of 44 percent in sales last month to 45,600 vehicles. In the first 10 months, the carmaker's sales in the country totaled 685,900 units, a decrease of 1 percent from the same period last year.

After a 49 percent dive in sales in September, the carmaker admitted that it might fail to meet the original target to deliver 1 million vehicles in China this year.

hantianyang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/05/2012 page18)