Toyota, Honda May Report Higher Profits After Nissan Leads The Way For Japanese Carmakers

Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., two of Japan's big three carmakers, may report rising earnings this week, following the lead of Nissan Motor Co., which announced its quarterly earnings Monday. Honda reports fiscal second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and Toyota on Thursday.

All three were helped by rising sales in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported, before Nissan released its earnings and cited North America as a key reason. Nissan's fiscal first-half profit was up 37 percent to 325.6 billion yen ($2.7 billion).

“Nissan has delivered solid revenue growth and improved profitability in the first-half of the fiscal year, driven by encouraging demand for our vehicles in North America and a rebound in Western Europe, which compensated for market volatility elsewhere,” Carlos Ghosn, Nissan's president and CEO, said in the statement.

Toyota and Honda may do even better overall because they've performed better than Nissan, the Journal reported, adding that aside from strong U.S. sales, especially of sport utility vehicles, the weak yen is also helping.

Nissan, in a statement Monday, announced it was raising its forecast to 535 billion yen ($4.44 billion), from an earlier projected 485 billion yen ($4.02 billion).

And Toyota could raise its full-year profit forecast, heading to a third straight record, the Journal reported. Toyota quarterly profit is expected to have risen 14 percent to 614 billion yen ($5.09 billion) while Honda's is projected to have risen 7 percent to 129 billion yen ($1.07 billion).

Nissan's operating profit margin for the quarter was 6.7 percent, below Ghosn's 8 percent target for 2017. He indicated job cuts and other cost reduction measures would come if the target isn't met, Automotive News reported Monday, citing a Tokyo Motor Show interview from last week. His other target is a 8 percent global market share by 2018.