Toyota suffers sharp drop in quarterly profits

Toyota suffers sharp drop in quarterly profits

TOKYO, Feb 8 - Toyota Motor Corp reported a 47.6 per cent drop in quarterly profits, hit by slumping Japanese car sales and a firm yen, highlighting its damaging exposure to the loss-making export business.

Nissan and Honda are also seen suffering a drop in third-quarter profits due to the stronger yen and falling demand in Japan, but the decline at Toyota is set to be the deepest given its heavier exposure to unprofitable exports from Japan.

Toyota exported more than half of its Japan-made vehicles last year, making a loss on many of them with the dollar well below the rate of 90 yen that President Akio Toyoda has said is the minimum to keep Japan’s manufacturing sector competitive.

For the full year to March 31, the world’s biggest automaker lifted its forecast for annual operating profit to Y550bn ($6.68bn) from a cautious Y380bn, after profits for the first nine months exceeded that figure.

A survey of 23 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S forecast annual operating profit of Y489bn for Toyota, trailing expected earnings at smaller rivals Nissan Motor Co and Honda Motor Co.

The carmaker also nudged up its global sales forecast to 7.48m vehicles from 7.41m, with domestic sales expected to reach 2.02m vehicles compared with an earlier prediction of 1.99m. It kept its US forecasts unchanged at 2.09m units.

Toyota’s October-December operating profit was Y99.07bn, down from Y189.1bn in the same period a year earlier, while net profit fell 38.9 per cent to Y93.63bn.

Wide-ranging estimates from nine analysts surveyed by Reuters put Toyota’s third-quarter operating profit at an average Y70.6bn. Profits made in China are not counted on the operating level at Toyota, which reports under US accounting rules.

Toyota, which stayed ahead of General Motors Co as the world’s biggest automaker by a thinner margin last year, built 3.28m vehicles in Japan last year, compared with 992,000 for Honda and 1.13m for Nissan.

Toyota shares have risen 18 per cent in the past three months versus a 13 per cent gain in Tokyo’s broad TOPIX index. Honda gained 22 per cent and Nissan rose 13 per cent. Before the results were announced on Tuesday, Toyota ended trading unchanged from the previous day at Y3,490, while the TOPIX gained 0.4 per cent.