Alpine Raises Forecasts for the Year

Alpine Electronics announced US aftermarket sales for the recent quarter ended in December and revised upward its forecast for the full year.

Aftermarket products account for about 16 percent of Alpine’s total sales.   Or at least they did in the quarter ended in December, as well as the same quarter a year ago.

Total US sales, aftermarket and OEM, were $574 million (64.5 billion yen), compared to $698 million a year ago.  So by our calculations, US aftermarket sales for the quarter fell by about 17 percent to $92 million, compared to $111.7 million last year.

Total sales for Alpine worldwide for the quarter were $1.6 billion (181.3 billion yen) compared to $1.8 billion a year ago.  Total profits were $70.2 million compared to 98.7 million a year ago.

But Alpine raised its forecasts for sales and profits for the full year 2016 which ends March 31, 2017.

The company changed its forecasts mainly due to changes to currency exchange rates and cost cutting.

Japanese companies have been struggling with a strong yen in relation to the dollar and the euro, which has hurt sales and profits. Because of the strong yen, when a Japanese company exports goods to other countries, their products are less competitive and when they re-exchange their earnings back into yen, they lose some of the value.

Toyota said in past years that every time the dollar loses 1 yen in value, Toyota loses about 30 billion yen in earnings per quarter.

For Alpine, under its revised forecast, it now expects much higher profits of $57.8 million (6.5 billion yen) compared to its earlier forecast in December of $18.7 million.  Sales are now expected to hit $2.2 billion (245 billion yen) compared to its earlier forecast of $2.1 billion.

Sales for the full year are still expected to fall below last year’s levels of $2.4 billion in sales with profits of $95.2 million.

Alpine said it assumed a yen to dollar ratio for its fourth quarter of 110 yen to the dollar or 117 yen to the euro.  This compares to last July, for example, when the yen was even higher at 103 yen to the dollar.