[Aunty]

Honda has released its second quarter financials, with the highlight (if you can call it that) being a 56.2% drop in their net income. Honda attributes this loss primarily to decreased car sales, and the currency exchange. For its part though, Honda’s motorcycle sales were down only 16.8%, with 2.4 million units sold during Q2.

With motorcycles getting hit the hardest in Indonesia and Brazil, Honda was not able to offset these losses with its continued strong sales in India.

Taking all of Honda Motors’ markets and products into account, the company made a total of $733 million (EBIT) in Q2, which works out to a 55.7% decline from Q2 of 2008. Honda has also posted a consolidated operating income of $727 million for Q1, which is a similar decrease of 56% for Q2 of 2008.

Despite this doom and gloom, these numbers are still better than what Honda was expecting, unfortunately the same cannot be said for Yamaha Motors.

According to the WSJ’s MarketWatch, Honda is likely to be the only Japanese automaker to turn a profit for the first half of the fiscal year. Earlier, MarketWatch had also said that Honda anticipated a ¥10 billion ($110 million) loss for the first half of the year.