GS Yuasa Corp., the battery maker at the center of the probe on fires that grounded Boeing Co.’s Dreamliner fleet, said it will maintain its production plan for car and aircraft lithium-ion cells even as the plane maker seeks approval for test flights.
GS Yuasa said Tuesday it doesn’t expect any significant impact on sales from the global grounding of Boeing’s 787s and that the firm is cooperating with investigators, Toshiyuki Nakagawa, one of its directors, said in Kyoto.
The firm, also a supplier to Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Honda Motor Co., has kept its annual profit and sales forecast unchanged.
Last month, Boeing said it was moving forward with plans to boost output and develop two new versions of its marquee jet even as the regulatory probe continues. The Chicago-based manufacturer has sought the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s approval to resume test flights of the Dreamliner, which would let the company study the 787′s lithium-ion power packs in operation. Some 50 Dreamliners have been parked worldwide for the last three weeks.
“We see no major concerns,” Jun Yamaguchi, an analyst at Credit Suisse AG in Tokyo, wrote in a report Wednesday. “Performance at domestic automobile batteries, domestic industrial batteries and power supplies, and overseas segments was largely in line with expectations.”
GS Yuasa also reported that net income in the nine months that ended Dec. 31 dropped to ¥5.52 billion, compared with ¥5.73 billion in the same period a year earlier. Revenue fell 4.6 percent to ¥196 billion.
“We’re cooperating with the investigation,” Nakagawa said. “We haven’t sensed any damage to our reputation at this point.”
GS Yuasa reiterated full-year sales of ¥288 billion and a net income of ¥8 billion. Its sales of lithium-ion batteries for aircraft total several hundred million yen, Nakagawa said.
U.S. and Japanese authorities are investigating GS Yuasa’s lithium-ion batteries after one caught fire on a Japan Airlines Corp. 787 last month and another emitted smoke on an All Nippon Airways Co. 787 a week later, causing an emergency landing.
ANA said Wednesday it is extending cancellations of 787 flights through the end of February, with a total of 1,206 flights pulled and about 100,720 passengers affected. Last week, the carrier said cancellations had cut sales by ¥1.4 billion in January.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the GS Yuasa batteries together with Boeing, last week said it found “no anomalies” with the JAL battery. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government also ended on-site inspections of GS Yuasa last month.
The firm, which also makes lead-acid batteries, is aiming to build lithium-ion batteries into a core business and currently supplies them to MMC for its electric cars. All four plants where GS Yuasa builds lithium-ion batteries are domestic and the batteries supplied to the Dreamliners are made at a factory at its Kyoto headquarters.
GS Yuasa hasn’t made a profit on the technology yet. In the year that ended last March, its lithium-ion battery business saw an operating loss of ¥3.26 billion, compared with a ¥1.27 billion loss a year earlier. The company spent ¥30 billion — or 75 percent of its total capital investments, on the segment last fiscal year — according to its website.
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