Japan's Mitsubishi Motors back in profit

ME - Japan's Mitsubishi Motors said that cost cuts and a better product line-up enabled it to reverse a year-before loss and post a net profit in the nine months to December.

Mitsubishi, the fourth-largest automaker in Japan, reported a 13.6 billion yen ($179 million) net profit for the April-December term, turning around a loss of 2.2 billion yen in the same period in 2010.

Operating profit tripled to 38.5 billion yen, said the maker of the i-MiEV, the world's first commercially produced electric car.

"The increase was made possible mainly due to improvements in the model mix, together with other factors such as reductions in materials and other costs," the company said in a statement.

Sales slipped 1.4 per cent to 1.29 trillion yen despite rises in Russia, Brazil and other emerging markets.

The drop in revenue was mainly due to "a temporary halt of production in Thailand affected by the massive flooding in the country, as well as the negative impact of further strengthening of the yen," the company said.

The yen rose to its highest level since World War II against the dollar in the last quarter, reducing the value of repatriated export income and making Japanese products more expensive overseas.

Mitsubishi left unchanged its earnings forecast for the full year to March while lowering a sales volume estimate by 19,000 units to 1.01 million units.

It expects 20 billion yen in net profit and 50 billion yen in operating profit on sales of 1.82 trillion yen.

In the October-December quarter alone, net profit fell to 3.0 billion yen from 6.3 billion yen in the preceding quarter.

Quarterly operating profit tumbled to 4.3 billion yen from 22 billion yen in July-September.