Honda Motor Company climbs 5% after robust Q2 results

Shares of Honda Motor Company (HMC) climbed by close to 5% on Nikkei stock exchange on Wednesday, taking other Japanese auto stocks with it, as investors cheered the company's better-than-expected second-quarter profit and bet that other companies in the sector will follow suit.

Its first-half net income of 61.5 billion ($672.2 million) was down 79.2% from a year ago, but much better than the operating loss of 10 billion yen the company had itself expected earlier.

Japan's second-largest automaker also raised its fiscal-year profit forecast. Honda /quotes/comstock/13*!hmc/quotes/nls/hmc (HMC) posted a net income of 54 billion yen ($586.8 million) for the second quarter, down from 123.3 billion yen for the same quarter a year ago.