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TOKYO, July 24 (Reuters) Nissan Motor Co., Japan's third-largest automaker, posted a bigger-than-expected 3.2 percent drop in quarterly operating profit as a customer shift towards smaller, cheaper cars hit margins, and it kept its full-year forecasts unchanged despite the weaker yen.

Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of both Nissan and controlling shareholder Renault SA, warned investors last month that first-quarter results would soften due to an industry-wide decline in sales of SUVs and other light trucks in the United States, its most profitable market.

Nissan's U.S. sales of light trucks, including the Titan pickup and Pathfinder SUV, skidded 12 percent in the first half of 2007 as high pump prices hurt demand for gas guzzlers.

Passenger car sales, meanwhile, rose an adjusted 17 percent, thanks partly to the addition of the Versa subcompact.

''We knew the first quarter was going to be bad, but profits were smaller than you would have thought,'' UBS Securities analyst Tatsuo Yoshida said, adding the full-year forecasts could be tougher to achieve.

Nissan is expected to be alone among Japan's top automakers to report a quarterly drop in operating profit. Rivals Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. are seen weathering pricier commodity costs and intensifying price wars with the weaker yen, cost cuts and brisk overseas sales.

Nissan made an operating profit of 148.44 billion yen ($1.23 billion) in April-June, lagging a mean estimate of 152.6 billion yen in a survey of six brokerages by Reuters.

Operating profit should have held up better after Nissan took a hefty one-off warranty charge a year earlier for engine troubles in North America, Yoshida said.

Net profit sank 16 percent to 92.31 billion yen after an exceptionally low tax rate last year. Revenue rose 11 percent to 2.446 trillion yen.

Nissan, which has forecast a 3 percent rise in full-year operating profit, said first-quarter results were in line with expectations, and a 5.9 percent increase in global vehicle sales put it on track to meet its volume and earnings projections.

''We have new models coming out such as the Altima coupe, Rogue crossover, Infiniti G37 and a remodelled Murano, so we can count on a sales improvement,'' Corporate Vice President Joji Tagawa told a news conference on Tuesday.

CURRENCY GAINS DWARFED For the business year to March 31, 2008, Nissan kept its operating profit forecast at 800 billion yen and net forecast at 480 billion yen. It left its dollar and euro exchange rate assumptions at 117 yen and 148 yen, respectively.

The dollar is trading at a much more favourable 120.6 yen and the euro at 166.6 yen.

Nissan's Tagawa said the dollar's 6-yen rise from the year-earlier period added more than 20 billion yen to operating profit in the first quarter.

But those windfalls were dwarfed by a negative impact of more than 30 billion yen from higher-than-expected commodity costs and more than 40 billion yen from a worse model mix, Tagawa said.

''After a drag of 100 billion yen each in 2005 and 2006 from higher raw materials prices, we had expected an impact of 50 billion yen or so this year,'' he said. ''Prices have traded higher than we anticipated.'' Shares in Nissan, which was first to report quarterly results among Japanese automakers, gained 4.6 percent during the three months to June 30, compared with a 5.8 percent rise in Tokyo's transport sector subindex ITEQP.

''I don't think Nissan shares will be bought for a while,'' said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management, adding that he expected the company to cut its annual profit outlook at some point.

''At the same time, they won't suffer much since the weak figures were expected.'' Before the results on Tuesday, Nissan ended up 0.5 percent at 1,311 yen.

REUTERS KR HT1644