Yokohama enjoys a record 2012
Last year was a new high water mark for Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., with the 2012 fiscal year delivering record net sales, operating income and net income. The company says these results reflect the strong growth of original equipment sales to Japanese vehicle manufacturers, a business recovery in industrial products, success in securing market acceptance for price increases, a decline in raw material costs, continuing progress in reducing costs, and the weakening of the yen toward the end of the year.
The 2012 fiscal year was Yokohama’s first 12-month fiscal period since the company shifted to calendar-year accounting in 2011, from April-to-March accounting. For this reason, Yokohama Rubber states that formal year-on-year comparisons are impossible. Instead, the percentage changes it gives refer to arbitrary, 12-month sums of the figures for January to March 2011 (the fourth quarter of the fiscal year ended March 2011) and April to December 2011 (the irregular, nine-month fiscal term that resulted from the shift in fiscal accounting periods).
Using this means of calculation, Yokohama states that its net income increased 187.3 per cent over the previous year to 32.6 billion yen (£223.6 million), on an 85.7 per cent increase in operating income, to 49.7 billion yen (£340.8 million), and a 0.3 per cent increase in net sales, to 559.7 billion yen (£3.8 billion). With these results, Yokohama bettered its projections of 30.0 billion yen for net income and 49.0 billion yen for operating income, though the total for net sales was lower than the company’s projection of 576.0 billion yen. Yokohama management intends to increase the annual dividend by two yen above the amount announced in November 2012, to 20 yen – an interim dividend of eight yen and a year-end dividend of 12 yen.
In Yokohama’s tyre operations, operating income increased 91.9 per cent to 43.4 billion yen (£297.6 million), despite a 0.6 per cent decline in sales, to 444.6 billion yen (£3.0 billion). Sales to vehicle manufacturers in Japan increased strongly, as noted above; sales in Japan’s replacement market were described as solid, led by winter tyre sales; and success in securing market acceptance for price increases partly offset a decline in demand in overseas markets.
Yokohama’s fiscal projections for 2013 call for another year of record sales and earnings. The company projects that net income will reach 36.0 billion yen (£246.9 million) on operating income of 59.0 billion yen (£404.6 million) and net sales of 630.0 billion yen (£4.3 billion).
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