Honda Motor Company, Ltd. (HMC) Q4 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Thank you for your attendance today, despite such a short notice. Now, I would like to – we would like to hold a press conference regarding the timely disclosure and the press release announced today at 3.30. First, we would like to introduce attendants today. Director, President, and Representative Executive Officer Toshihiro Mibe. Director Executive Vice President and Representative Executive Officer Noria Kaihara. Director Managing Executive Officer Eiji Fujimura. First, Mibe will walk you through the background that led to the management decision this time, followed by Kaihara's explanation of the future direction towards reconstruction of Honda's automobile business in the long term. Now, the floor is yours, Mibe-san. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Mibe speaking. Thank you for taking time to join us despite the short notice. As you may have come to know through sources such as our news release today, we announced our forecast revision in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026. Though challenging, we will explain the background of this decision and future direction for rebuilding the mid- to long-term automobile strategy. Honda has been working to realize carbon neutrality by 2050. To this end, led by small-sized mobility products including passenger cars, Honda shifted strategic direction toward EV popularization based on a belief that EVs will be the optimal long-term solution. In this journey, we anticipated increasingly stringent environmental regulations would come into full effect in various countries in the latter half of the 2020s. For example, under the U.S. ACC2 automotive environmental regulation, penalties up to $20,000 per vehicle would be imposed on non-compliant vehicles. On this premise, we spent the last several years steadily prepa...