Denso's fiscal-year net falls 5.8%; Aisin Seiki's climbs 14%

Denso Corp.’s net income fell 5.8 percent to 260.57 billion yen ($2.32 billion) in the fiscal year which ended March 31, even as revenue rose 5 percent to $40.25 billion, the parts supplier said today.

Separately, Aisin Seiki Co. said its net rose 14 percent to $1.2 billion as revenue rose 9.4 percent to $28.85 billion during the same fiscal year.

Denso, which ranks No. 4 on Automotive News’ list of the top 100 global parts suppliers to automakers, and Aisin Seiki, No. 5 on that list, are members of the Toyota Group. Toyota Motor Corp. owns about 22 percent of each company.

In the January-March quarter, Denso’s operating income tumbled 26 percent to about $621.8 million on flat revenue of about $12.53 billion.

In that same quarter, Aisin’s operating income rose 3.4 percent to $464.3 million as revenue rose 8.6 percent to $7.47 billion.

Neither company gave net income for the most recent quarter.

Volume, r&d costs up

For the full fiscal year, “Denso’s revenue increased due to an overseas production volume increase and the growth in sales in addition to the impact of the weak yen,” said CEO Koji Arima in a media statement.

“On the other hand, despite cost reduction effort and the production volume increase, operating profit decreased due to the increase in research and development cost and start-up cost for new products,” he said.

For the fiscal year that began April 1, Arima predicted that unfavorable currency rates will bring lower revenue and operating income, despite rising production volumes.

At Aisin Seiki, revenue rose on higher sales of large and luxury vehicles in North America and higher sales of automatic transmissions to European automakers, the company said in a presentation to analysts. Higher volumes, cost-cutting, a favorable exchange rate and lower raw-material costs more than offset higher depreciation and r&d spending to drive profits up.

Aisin Seiki declined to offer a forecast for the current year in light of production stoppages following the earthquakes near Kumamoto, Japan.