Toyota Motor Corp.'s truck arm Hino Motors Ltd. said Thursday that its net profit for the six months ending September slumped 70.4 percent from a year earlier to 3.48 billion yen ($24 million), as domestic sales were hit by a fraudulent emissions data reporting scandal.
The repercussions of the data fraud are expected to spread beyond Japan, with two class action lawsuits filed in recent months in the United States and Australia. The origins of the scandal are said to go back some 20 years.
President Satoshi Ogiso told a press conference that the company cannot currently estimate the true impact of the lawsuits at the moment, saying only that it would "handle individual cases carefully."
The operating profits of the truck maker, which had suspended its domestic shipments of vehicles that have improperly inspected engines, fell 47.8 percent to 16.6 billion yen in six months, while sales rose 6.4 percent to 733.4 billion yen, due to a weaker yen boosting overseas revenue when repatriated.
The fraud prompted domestic sales of trucks and buses to fall 33.0 percent to 19,160 units for the period. The company still remains unable to ship about 40 percent of its vehicles for the Japanese market, after the transport ministry said only some of the engines met appropriate standards.
For the current fiscal year, which ends in March, the truck maker forecasts it will post operating profits of 6 billion yen, down 82.3 percent from a year earlier, on sales of 1.53 trillion yen, up 4.8 percent. The company did not provide their outlook for net profit, saying it cannot yet determine the full impact of the data scandal.
Hino admitted in March that it had submitted fabricated emissions and fuel economy data to transport authorities. The government subsequently revoked type approval for Hino's engines, which had been put to market using falsified data, leaving it unable to mass-produce them.
The company earlier this month vowed to prevent a similar scandal happening again by strengthening compliance, and announced a series of measures to revamp its management, alongside the resignation of four executives.
