TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese electric motor maker Nidec posted a 35% rise in first-quarter operating profit on Thursday, helped by a recovery in global automobile production volumes, and maintained its full-year forecast.
The results come after the Kyoto-based manufacturer, which is betting big on components for electric vehicles, reported a rare quarterly loss in the previous three months.
Operating profit totalled 60.2 billion yen ($432 million), compared with 44.7 billion yen a year earlier.
That was higher than a 43.17 billion yen average profit in a survey of eight analysts by Refinitiv.
“The business environment surrounding Nidec was highly uneven (across) divisions,” the company said in a statement.
The result was helped by the weak yen boosting the value of overseas sales, higher demand for industrial and infrastructure-related services and lower fixed costs from a restructuring the previous financial year.
Nidec stuck to its full-year forecast for an operating profit of 220 billion yen for the year to March.
It has invested heavily in production and development of its e-axle traction motor, which combines an EV’s gear, motor and power-control electronics, seeing opportunities for rapid growth in China and parts of Europe.
Nidec said its battery EV-related business was profitable in the first quarter, even as it reported a decline in unit growth rate in the Chinese EV market.
“Sales of EVs that Nidec supplies to peaked out in June,” analysts at Jefferies wrote in a research note ahead of the earnings release.
“We expect EV sales to see muted month-on-month growth in next months, followed by demand spike end-2023.”
Nidec in March put forward five contenders to eventually take over as chairman from its straight-talking, 78-year-old billionaire founder, Shigenobu Nagamori, who set up the company with three others 50 years ago.
One of the five will be selected to serve as president from April 2024.
In April this year it reported its first quarterly operating loss in a decade, hit by hefty restructuring costs and difficulty in purchasing semiconductors and other components.
($1 = 139.4600 yen)
(Reporting by Daniel Leussink; Editing by David Dolan and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
