Mitsubishi says it will break even in the second half

Releasing its results for the half-year to 30 September, the Japanese firm sold a total of 659,000 vehicles, an increase of 13,000 on a year earlier.

Yet revenues at the firm, which is continuing efforts to recover from a defect scandal, dropped 7% year-on-year due in part to rising marketing costs.

Losses were reduced, although last year's figure included one-off charges.

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Mitsubishi's revenues for the half-year were 991.3bn yen ($8.4bn; �4.8bn), down from 1.07 trillion yen a year earlier.

Net losses totalled 63.8bn yen, compared to 178.8bn yen a year previously, when they were hit by the one-off cost of a free vehicle inspection programme designed to win back customer trust after the defect scandal.

At the time Mitsubishi was forced to admit that it had previously covered up a number of faults to avoid bad publicity.

The company's half-year sales in Japan totalled 108,000 vehicles, an increase of 12,000 on the same period last year.

Sales in North American were down 11,000 to 81,000, while those in Europe were up 19,000 to 131,000.

The company now expects to break even during the second half of its financial year, although it says it will remain in the red for the year to 31 March 2006 as a whole.

Its results were broadly in line with market expectations.