Honda quarterly net profit rises to $3.15 bn

TOKYO: Japan's number two car maker Honda posted a 3.15 billion dollar quarterly net profit Friday, a strong export-driven comeback from a year earlier, and boosted its forecast for the year by a third.

Honda Motor's net profit of 272.49 billion yen for the first quarter compared with 7.56 billion yen during the April-June period in 2009, when the global financial crisis hammered worldwide demand.

The Tokyo-based company revised up its annual net profit forecast by 33.8 per cent to 455.00 billion yen for the year ending March 2011.

Honda's sales for the first quarter rose to 2.36 trillion yen, up 17.9 per cent from a year go, while operating profit jumped 831.7 per cent to 234.44 billion yen.

Honda's global vehicle sales rose 17.4 per cent from a year ago, thanks to increased demand in Asia and North America, the company said in a statement.

Sales of motorcycles also jumped 28.2 per cent on year, due to robust exports to Asia and South America.