France’s Total and Norwegian rival Statoil have added to the downbeat tone from the oil industry, promising to tackle a tough environment with cost cuts as they announced big drops in third-quarter profit.

Both companies have benefited from a recovery in crude prices in recent months but Statoil said the price rise had a weak foundation.

Norway’s largest company offered little hope yesterday that natural gas prices – battered by lower demand due to the economic crisis – would recover any time soon, while Total, Europe’s largest refiner by capacity, said crude processors faced a “very difficult” environment.

“Although we see signs of improvement in the global economy, there is no firm evidence that industry investment, employment and private consumption have recovered in a sustainable way,” Statoil chief executive Helge Lund said. “This calls for cautiousness.”

Total’s adjusted third-quarter net income fell 54% to €1.87bn ($2.76bn), in line with an average forecast of 1.84bn.

Statoil’s adjusted net profit fell 40% to 9.3bn Norwegian crowns ($1.62bn) in July-September, ahead of a mean forecast of 8.4bn crowns in a Reuters poll.

Adjusted net income strips out gains or losses from one-off items such as asset sales, and unrealised gains related to changes in the value of fuel inventories. Analysts consider it the best measure of a company’s underlying performance.

The results compared with a 47% drop in underlying earnings at London-based BP and a 67% drop at Europe’s largest oil group by market value, Royal Dutch Shell.

One positive note in the companies’ statements was on oil and gas production.

Big oil companies have seen their output fall in recent years as existing fields decline and new finds become scarcer, partly because western companies face investment restrictions in many oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Statoil said production rose 10% in the quarter compared to the same period in 2008, to 1.71mn barrels of of oil equivalent per day (boepd) thanks to new field startups and reduced hurricane impacts at its Gulf of Mexico fields.

Total said its production of oil and gas rose a 0.5% in the quarter to an average 2.243mn boepd, against some predictions of a drop.

Nissan Motor

Japan’s Nissan Motor slashed its full-year net loss forecast yesterday after returning to profit in the second quarter, helped by rising sales in China and government subsidies for fuel-efficient cars.

Japan’s number three auto maker, which is axing 20,000 jobs to cope with the global economic crisis, joins rival Honda in upgrading its outlook. At the operating level, Nissan now expects to finish this year in the black.

The company logged a net profit of ¥25.5bn ($282mn) for the fiscal second quarter to September, down 65.3% from a year earlier but better than its first-quarter loss of ¥16.53bn.

Operating profit fell 25.4% year-on-year to ¥83.3bn as revenue dropped 25.9% to ¥1.87tn, according to a statement from Nissan, in which France’s Renault has a 44% stake.

Nissan cut its net loss forecast for the year to March 2010 to ¥40bn, from an earlier prediction of ¥170bn, helped by foreign exchange movements and a better than expected first-half performance.

The previous year it had plunged ¥233.7bn into the red – its first annual loss in almost a decade. It now expects an operating profit of ¥120bn this year, instead of a deficit of 100bn it predicted in May.

For the six months to September, Nissan logged a net profit of ¥9bn, down 92.9% from a year earlier. Operating profit fell by roughly half to ¥94.9bn yen as revenue slid 30.5% year-on-year to ¥3.38tn.

Nissan sold about 1.62mn vehicles in the first-half period, down 14.6% compared with last year.

Societe Generale

Societe Generale’s lower-than-expected third quarter profit has highlighted the French bank’s weakness compared to many of its rivals and its position as a possible bid target if there is a sector shake-up.

Like peers Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, SocGen’s investment banking results powered the profit line although debt provisions rose to cover an expected further rise in bad loans in 2010.

Net profit rose to €426mn ($623mn) from €183mn a year earlier, mainly due to the fact that SocGen’s investment banking arm swung to a profit from a year-earlier loss.

However, the bank missed the average estimate of €481mn in a Reuters poll of 10 analysts as group revenues were weaker-than-expected and provisions were higher. The banking group’s revenues took a hit at its international arm, affected by the Russian economic slowdown and its investment management arm, due to outflows.

France’s second-biggest and the eurozone’s No6 bank by market value has been steadily recovering since a €4.9bn trading loss in January 2008, which it blamed on unauthorised deals carried out by Jerome Kerviel, a former junior trader at the bank.

Yamaha Motor

Japan’s Yamaha Motor yesterday announced a net loss of about $1.8bn for the nine months to September due to sluggish motorcycle sales, a stronger yen and restructuring costs.

The company posted a net loss of ¥158.76bn ($1.76bn) for the first three quarters of 2009, against a year-earlier profit of ¥43.15bn.

It booked an operating loss of ¥44.97bn, against a profit of ¥64.08bn in the same period of the previous year. Revenue plunged 33.1% to ¥858.51bn.

The bottom line was hit by a one-off loss of ¥73.5bn due to restructuring costs such as asset impairment charges and early retirements.

For its full business year through December, Yamaha maintained its forecasts for a net loss of ¥182bn, an operating loss of ¥87bn and revenue of ¥1.1tn.

Yamaha had been enjoying record sales until the economic crisis hit demand for its products, which also include boat engines and all-terrain vehicles.

Marks and Spencer

British retailer Marks and Spencer yesterday said net profits rose by half a% to £224.3mn ($369mn) during the first six months of its financial year.

Marks and Spencer - a barometer of consumer sentiment in recession-hit Britain – said its profit after tax figure for the six months to the end of September compared with a net gain of £223.2mn a year earlier.

Pre-tax profits dipped slightly to £306.7mn in the first half while group revenue rose 2.8% to £4.3bn. Earlier this year, Marks and Spencer said it was cutting up to 1,230 jobs and closing 27 stores in Britain and abroad.