Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Mazda, Japan’s fifth biggest automaker, returned to profitability in the latest fiscal year with help from a favorable currency rate and cost cutting.
Mazda says it had a group net profit of $69 million for the fiscal year that ended in March, on a 4 percent increase in sales, to $16 billion.
A favorable exchange rate accounted for $62 million of the profit, while cost reductions added $352 million.
Currency fluctuations especially affect Mazda which sold 288,000 vehicles in Japan and nearly 350,000 in North America.
“Mazda is back in the black,” Mazda president Mark Fields says. “We are meeting all our performance targets.” Mazda is controlled by Ford Motor Co., which owns about a third of Mazda.
