Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. Reports its sales in the first half of the present fiscal year increased 17.9% over the same period of the previous fiscal year, to 238.3 billion yen.
Yokohama posted interim operating income of 8.3 billion yen and interim net income of 1.2 billion yen, compared with an operating deficit of 2.4 billion yen and a net deficit of 3.9 billion yen in the first half of the previous fiscal year. (These figures are for the six months to Sept. 30, 2010, the first half of the fiscal year to March 31, 2011.)
Sales in Yokohama's tire operations increased 18.5% over the first half of the previous fiscal year, to 184.9 billion yen, and interim operating income totaled 6.1 billion yen, compared with an operating deficit of 2.5 billion yen in the first half of the previous fiscal year. Business was especially robust in the United States and in China, notwithstanding the challenge posed by the strengthening yen, the company says. Yokohama also recorded sales growth in Japan, both in the original equipment market and in the replacement market.
Yokohama projects that net sales will increase 11.5% in the fiscal year to March 31, 2011, to 520 billion yen; that operating income will increase 18.9%, to 25.5 billion yen; and that net income will increase 0.1%, to 11.5 billion yen. The projection for operating income is 41.7% higher and that for net income 43.8% higher than the projections released by Yokohama on May 12, 2010.
Yokohama has retained the earlier projection for net sales, as the appreciation of the yen appears likely to offset unit sales growth. The heightened earnings expectations reflect progress in expanding sales volume and in trimming costs.
