Yamaha Reports Q3 2012 Results

Yamaha‘s North American sales were up over the first nine months of 2012, representing the lone bright spot in the company’s third quarter report.

North American consumers purchased 51,000 Yamaha motorcycles (including scooters and ATVs), for a 13.3% increase from the 45,000 units sold in the opening nine months of 2011. North American sales translated into 30.7 million yen (US$382 million) in revenue for Yamaha, a 15.0% increase from the first three quarters of 2011.

That’s it for the good news however, as sales were down in Europe, Japan, Asia and South America. European sales were negatively affected by the weakened economies in key markets such as Italy and Spain. Sales increased in Thailand and India but those gains were erased by low sales figures in Indonesia due to an inventory adjustment. Sales in Brazil were also down due to an inventory adjustment while a slowing economy in Vietnam affected sales in that market.

Worldwide, Yamaha sold 4.5 million motorcycles and ATVs in the first nine months 0f 2012, a 15.2% decline from 5.3 million units over the same period in 2011. Sales revenue saw a similar decline, dropping 13.6% to 597.8 billion yen (US$7.44 billion) from the 691.5 billion yen reported last year. Yamaha reported an operating income of 2.8 billion yen (US$34.8 million), a year-on-year decrease of 91.6% from 33.3 billion yen.

Overall, Yamaha Motor as a company reported net sales of 909.5 billion yen (US$11.3 billion) over the opening nine months of 2012, a 7.7 drop from 985.8 billion yen. Yamaha still managed to make a profit of 14.3 billion yen (US$177.9 million), but that represents a large decline from the profit of 40.0 billion yen reported last year.

Looking ahead, Yamaha predicts sales of 6.27 million units by the end of 2012 including 72,000 units in North America.

[Source: Yamaha]

By Dennis Chung