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Mitsubishi Motors likely to post Y100 bln loss-report

TOKYO, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Japanese car maker Mitsubishi Motors Corp is likely to post a group operating loss of around 100 billion yen ($949.3 million) this year on poor sales of new cars in North America, a newspaper said on Saturday.

Mitsubishi's profitability was hit by stiff price competition in North America, where the Big Three U.S. car makers and others had cut prices, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

The likely 100 billion yen group operating loss for the year ending March 31 would be worse than the firm's projection for a loss of 45 billion yen, the newspaper said. The car maker posted a profit of 82.76 billion yen a year earlier, it added.

Officials at Mitsubishi Motors, 37 percent owned by DaimlerChrysler , could not immediately be reached for comment.

Nihon Keizai said Mitsubishi Motors was seeing a recovery in Europe, where its profit was being pushed up by the strong euro. Another plus was that sales had been growing in Asia outside Japan, the newspaper said.

But it said the firm's group net loss could rise from its current estimate of 11 billion yen due to the poor performance of its core business. Mitsubishi Motors posted a group net profit of 37.36 billion yen in the year to March 31, 2003.

The car maker could also incur an additional losses linked to its restructuring efforts, the newspaper said. ($1=105.34 Yen)