Japanese car manufacturer Nissan has announced that profits for the third quarter were down by 15.6 per cent compared with the same period last year.
Worldwide sales for the company totalled of 795,000 vehicles in the three-month period, a drop of three per cent.
The manufacturing group pointed towards the increasing costs of raw materials as the culprit for the loss of 104.4 billion yen (£4.3 billion) consolidated net income after tax, down 22.6 per cent from last year.
"Against an environment of high raw material and energy prices, no pricing power and continuing weakness in mature markets, our industry faced many headwinds," said Nissan president and chief executive officer, Carlos Ghosn.
Mr Ghosn added: "This unfavourable and adverse external environment combined with internal factors to create a challenging period for our company. For the first time since 1999 risks outweighed opportunities."
During the third quarter of 2006, Nissan launched six new models including the Altima, Livina Geniss and Infiniti G35.
As a result of the performance in quarter three, Nissan has revised its net income forecast for the full year of 2006 to 460 billion yen (£1.9 billion).
Digg 
Delicious 
Reddit 
StumbleUpon 
Google 
Technorati 
Netvouz