Car makers showed the impact of the Japan disaster with France's PSA Peugeot Citroen warning 2011 profits would be hit and Japan's Nissan Motor posting a 10 percent profit fall. The earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in March had a knock-on effect on the global automotive industry, as many electronics suppliers' factories were damaged, leading to disruption and parts shortages for car makers across the globe.
Peugeot, Europe's second-biggest car maker, said its cars division would take a 300 million euro hit in the second half from the disaster as well as rising costs for raw materials. Nissan, Japan's second-biggest car maker, posted an operating profit of 150.37 billion yen ($1.93 billion) for the April-June quarter, down 10.4 percent from a year earlier but still better than the average 70 billion yen consensus of eight analysts polled by Thomson Reuters IBES.
Nissan kept its forecasts for operating profit at 460 billion yen and net profit at 270 billion yen for the full year to March 2012. Thousands of kilometres away from the site of the devastating earthquake, Peugeot Chief Executive Philippe Varin told a news conference in Paris that the automobile division's recurring operating profit in 2011 would be lower than the 621 million euros achieved in 2010.
The group said its long-term productivity improvement plan, unveiled in 2009, would only partially offset the negative Japan impact and a rise in raw materials prices, is set to have a 700 million euro negative effect on the year as a whole, 200 million euros more than the group previously forecast.
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