Marque’s first loss in 31 years
Daihatsu has reported its first annual loss in 31 years after a number of certification breaches led to a temporary shutdown of all four of its manufacturing plants in Japan.
The Japanese carmaker posted an operating loss of ¥5 billion (about NZ$52.3 million) for the year to the end of March 2024.
The results for the 2023 fiscal year are the first operating loss for the subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation since fiscal 1992.
Daihatsu was forced to halt the shipment of its models after a third-party committee discovered 174 instances of regulatory non-compliance in relation to safety tests last December, reports XinhuaNet.
As a result, production of its vehicles was halted and only fully resumed in early May.
This impacted its financial performance and sales revenue for the fiscal year was ¥1.18 trillion, a drop of 20.9 per cent from the previous year. It also booked a special loss of ¥70b to compensate affected parts manufacturers.
The company specialises in the manufacture of small cars but sales of its new mini-vehicles in Japan fell 21.6 per cent to about 443,000 units in fiscal 2023.
