YOKOHAMA, Japan, May 12 (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co expects a 4.1 percent rise in net profit this financial year, boosted by sales of low-priced Datsun cars in emerging markets and growth in China, the world's largest auto market, although the gain is short of analyst estimates.
Japan's second-biggest auto maker by sales volume forecast 405 billion yen ($3.98 billion) in net profit for the year ending March 2015, compared with the 425.4 billion yen mean estimate of 21 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
For the three months to March 2014, net profit rose 4.8 percent year-on-year to 114.9 billion yen, Nissan said in a statement on Monday. That exceeded the 97.1 billion yen analyst estimate.
Nissan is currently increasing manufacturing capacity in Thailand, China and Russia.
Shares of Nissan ended 0.2 percent lower before the results announcement, compared with a 0.4 percent decline in the benchmark Nikkei average. ($1 = 101.7100 Japanese Yen) (Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Edmund Klamann)