Nissan Motor Co <7201.T> posted a 7.2 percent rise in quarterly operating profit but offered no guidance for the new financial year on Thursday, citing uncertainties over the pace of recovery after the March 11 earthquake disrupted the industry's supply chain.

January-March operating profit at Japan's No.2 automaker was 88.6 billion yen ($1.1 billion) better than an average forecast of 78.9 billion yen in a survey of analysts who revised their numbers after the quake, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

It swung to a quarterly net profit of 30.8 billion yen from a loss of 11.6 billion yen a year earlier. Nissan, unlike Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> and Honda Motor Co <7267.T>, reports under Japanese accounting rules and its profits from China are included at the operating level.

A resolution to the parts bottleneck could be closer than it appeared just one week ago, with Toyota announcing on Wednesday that production would gradually begin to normalize in June, as much as two months earlier than expected.

Renesas Electronics Corp <6723.T>, the chipmaker at the heart of the disruption and a major supplier of microcontrollers to Nissan, also said on Wednesday shipments would fully recover by the end of October.

For the new business year to March 2012, a consensus of 16 analysts put Nissan's operating profit at 280.0 billion yen. The forecasts ranged from 34 billion yen to 638 billion yen.

Nissan's shares have held up relatively well since the quake, losing 3.9 percent as of Wednesday, compared with falls of 10.4 percent for Toyota and 7.9 percent for Honda. ($1 = 81.065 Japanese Yen)

(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Michael Watson) (The following story was corrected in the third paragraph to show Nissan had booked a net loss a year earlier)

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