"The sales environment is changing faster than we were able to predict," Honda executive vice president Koichi Kondo told a news conference, noting that four profit warnings in a single year was probably unprecedented in Honda's history.
"We don't expect conditions in the U.S. to improve in the first half of next year, and we can only hope they will start to recover in the second half," he added.
One of Honda's UK factories is expected to close in February for an unprecedented 4 months.
Honda said it now sees losses from soured credit and falling residual values of used cars to total almost 100-billion yen this year, double what it had foreseen three months ago.
"Honda is relatively better positioned than Toyota because it has focused on smaller cars and hasn't aggressively expanded its global operations like Toyota. It also helped that the Chinese market fared relatively well," said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments.