Yamaha is reporting its first quarterly loss in over 4 years, with a fourth-quarter loss of $467 million (compare that to its profit of $41 million in the fourth-quarter of 2007). Since Yamaha gets nearly 90% of its revenue outside of Japan, the strong yen doesn’t help matters much either. The yen gained 17% against the U.S. dollar in the fourth quarter, thus eroding the value of overseas sales from their usually fat margins.
It should shock few people at that is point that in 2008, Yamaha lost customers in North America and Europe as would-be buyers cut recreational toys like motorcycles out of their budgets due to the…you guessed it…credit crisis and falling home values. In response to this, Yamaha is expected to cut the salaries of its executives by as much as 20% from February to December in order to hedge cut-costs and as a sign of unification within the corporation (a common act in Japanese corporations, GM take note).
Despite this litany of bad news, Yamaha’s shares were seemingly unaffected, and closed at 880 yen at the end of trading yesterday. Also, the stock has only dropped 5.6%t so far this year. Investors are either hopefully of Yamaha’s ability to weather the financial storm or saw this coming a mile away. We’re guessing the latter.
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