Honda revs up annual profit forecast

Honda Motor on Friday nearly doubled its annual net-profit forecasts, citing strong growth in the sales of its cars and motorcycles, as well as US corporate tax cuts.

Japan's third-largest automaker now expects net profit to hit one trillion yen ($9 billion) for the fiscal year ending in March, up from 585 billion yen projected three months earlier.

For the nine months to December, Honda's net profit jumped 82.8 percent from a year earlier to 951.6 billion yen.

The upgrade was the third upward revision to the profit forecasts this business year.

The company also said increased car and motorcycle sales volume and a lower yen enabled it to raise its operating-profit forecast to 775 billion yen from 745 billion yen, and the sales projection to 15.2 trillion yen from 15.05 trillion yen.