Bill Gillespie

THE financial outlook for Hino Australia has improved dramatically since the last financial year, when earnings plunged from $4.35 million to just $84,000 even though revenues climbed from $312 million to $321 million.

A dividend of $2.18 million was paid out of the 2016 profit, but no decision has been made on whether a dividend will be paid for year ended March 2017.

Hino Australia general manager of brand and franchise development, Bill Gillespie, said Hino Australia had been hit by a “three-way whammy” in 2016-17.

“The yen moved downwards for us and we had to pay more for our trucks, and we had to pass that cost on to the marketplace. We had three price rises in 2016,” he said.

“The competition did not have any price increases, neither Isuzu or Fuso. We passed on about a third of that increase in costs of buying product from Japan. The other two thirds, probably a third we cut out of overheads in the business and then we took the rest to the bottom line.”

Mr Gillespie said Hino Australia always buys from its head office in Australian dollars, and so changes in the foreign exchange rate with the yen have an immediate impact on the company’s accounts.

“This year, fortunately, the yen is running pretty well for us, around 86-87 to the dollar, so that’s the sort of territory where we can sustain the current price structure we have, so we are in good shape for a change.”

The arrival of the new 300 Series and a revised 500 series next year have brightened the company’s sales outlook and Mr Gillespie said he felt as though he had “lucked in”.

“In our world, new product takes a long time. We work in 10- or 12-year cycles in trucks but right now we are in a cycle where Hino has new models coming out over the next four years.

Apart from the Australia-only 300 4×4, Hino will be releasing the revised medium duty 500 Series early in 2019, particularly the FE, FC and FD models.

“Those three represent 25 per cent of our total volume.

“By bringing new models of the 500 Series, and a new auto version of that, we think we are going to have higher sales in that area as well.”

By Ian Porter