Honda revises last year earnings due to airbag recall

Japanese car giant Honda revised down its annual earnings for the last fiscal year on Friday, blaming the expanding recalls of faulty airbags made by Takata, which have been linked with eight deaths.

The nation's third biggest automaker said its net profit for the year to March this year was 493 billion yen, or $4 billion, falling 14.1 percent from the previous year.

The level compared with the originally announced 522.7 billion yen that would have marked an 8.9 percent annual slide.

Updated operating profit came to 606.9 billion yen, which would register as an annual fall of 19.1 percent, lower than the earlier stated 651.6 billion yen, Honda said.

The company kept its annual sales figure at 12.6 trillion yen, up 6.8 percent from the previous year.

Honda's bottom line and its brand have faced a battering in the crisis, with Takata still struggling to find out what is wrong with its airbags.

Eight people are known to have died after Takata-made airbags deployed with excessive explosive power, spraying shrapnel into the vehicle.

Tokyo-based Takata last month agreed to double a US recall to a record of more than 30 million vehicles made by some of the world's biggest automakers.

Officials at the firm have said they are yet to find out exactly what was wrong, although studies suggest that humidity and climate are associated with the malfunctions.

Takata chairman and CEO Shigehisa Takada on Thursday apologised for the crisis in his first public appearance since it began.

Chronically weak auto sales at home in Japan as well as sliding demand in China, the world's biggest vehicle market, also weighed on Honda's earnings.

The company kept its outlook for the ongoing year to March 2016: a net profit of 525 billion yen on sales of 14.5 trillion yen.