Tokyo: Japan's number three automaker Nissan Motor on Thursday announced a quarterly net profit of 106.6 billion yen ($1.22 billion, Dh4.5 billion), after a 16.5 billion yen loss a year earlier.
Despite the strong quarterly result, it maintained its May forecast of a profit of 150 billion yen (Dh6.27 billion) for the fiscal year ending March 2011, with the automaker still wary of "exchange rate volatility".
Sales recovered globally in the April-June quarter led by Asia, where revenue jumped 102.5 per cent from a year earlier to 433.7 billion yen.
"First quarter results for Nissan are good and our recovery is vigorous and ahead of schedule," said Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn. "Despite uncertainty surrounding the ongoing global economic recovery, raw material costs and exchange rate volatility, we are confident to achieve our FY2010 forecast," he said.
Japanese exporters remain anxious about the recent strength of the safe-haven yen versus the euro and the dollar amid ongoing uncertainty about the Eurozone economy and doubts about the durability of a US recovery.
If sustained, a stronger yen could erode repatriated overseas profits and make goods more expensive overseas.
Nissan, which announced 20,000 job cuts at the height of the financial crisis, posted a return to the black in the financial year ended March, helped by strong emerging market demand.
For the first quarter, it posted an operating profit of 167.91 billion yen, compared with a modest 11.6 billion yen profit a year earlier, on sales of 2.05 trillion yen, up 35.3 per cent from a year earlier, when they were 1.51 trillion yen.
During the current fiscal year, Nissan plans to introduce ten new products globally, it said, including its all-electric Leaf in Japan and the United States, which has become the fulcrum of its green ambitions.
