Toyota third-quarter profit jumps, sees "tough race" in N. America
02-07-12, 07:05 AM
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Toyota third-quarter profit jumps, sees "tough race" in N. America
Nice work Toyota!
TOKYO (Reuters) -- Toyota reported a stronger-than-expected quarterly operating profit and raised its annual forecast on cost cuts and Japanese government subsidies, though this is still some way below analysts' expectations.
October-December operating profit jumped 51.1 percent to 149.7 billion yen ($1.95 billion) from a year earlier, well ahead of the average estimate of a small decline to 93.9 billion yen in a poll of nine analysts by Reuters.
Quarterly net profit slid 13.5 percent to 80.9 billion yen.
Toyota now expects operating profit -- earnings from its core operations -- for the year to end-March of 270 billion yen ($3.5 billion), up from a previous 200 billion yen. Consensus forecasts from 23 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are for 331 billion yen. Operating profit last year was 468 billion yen.
Toshiyuki Kanayama, senior market analyst at Monex Securities, said the revised profit guidance was a bit of a disappointment. "But the market is looking at the next financial year. The key for Toyota shares will be whether profit (next year) will rise to around 800 billion yen."
Widespread floods in Thailand late last year battered Toyota just as it was recovering from production lost to the earthquake in Japan in March. The floods cost Toyota 240,000 vehicles in lost output worldwide, dragging 2011 global sales down by 6 percent and allowing General Motors and Volkswagen to overtake it in global vehicle sales.
Toyota, which has a market value of $135 billion -- more than rivals Honda, Nissan and Suzuki combined -- now sees annual net profit, which includes earnings made in China, of 200 billion yen, up from the 180 billion yen it projected in early December.
Tougher U.S. market
Takahiko Ijichi, senior managing officer, told a news conference Toyota aimed to sell at least 1 million vehicles in China this year, up from 800,000 in 2011.
Asked about intensifying competition in North America, where Toyota reaffirmed its forecast for annual sales of 1.9 million vehicles, Ijichi later told reporters: "The Big Three (Ford, General Motors and Chrysler Group) have improved their financial standing quite a bit, partly thanks to support from the government.''
"Their cars are also getting better, and in that sense the competitive landscape has gotten a lot tougher... Korean brands are also pushing hard, so, for Toyota and Japanese brands, it's a very tough race," Ijichi said.
"But that's why we're gearing up with new models, particularly fuel-efficient ones, to recover lost ground," he added, noting Toyota plans to launch 19 new or refreshed models in the United States this year.
Yen's strength
The yen's prolonged strength is weighing on Toyota, which last year built 2.76 million cars in Japan, one third of Japan's total vehicle production. It exported 57 percent of that output, much of it at a loss.
At home, Toyota should benefit from the re-instatement of cash-for-clunkers subsidies and the extension of tax incentives on fuel-efficient cars, especially on hybrids and other cars that use new technologies. Its newest Aqua hybrid received orders equivalent to 10 times the sales target in its first month.
Toyota has forecast a 21 percent jump in sales this calendar year to a record 9.58 million vehicles, including subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor and Hino Motors. All its production plants, bar Thailand, are back in action.
"It's premature to talk about any (sales) trends by looking only at our performance from last year when we had all those natural disasters," Toyota President Akio Toyoda told reporters last week. "I would want Toyota to be measured on how we do this year, provided it's a peaceful one."
Last week, Honda said its profits fell sharply, hit in part by a 6 yen fall in the dollar for the quarter. Nissan, Japan's No.2 automaker, reports on Wednesday.
With the dollar trading at 76-77 yen, Toyota's Achilles' heel remains its heavy exposure to Japan. It is scrambling to make its domestic factories more efficient to keep its promise of building at least 3 million vehicles a year at home.
A plan to return its Japan-based parent operations to break-even assumes a dollar rate of 85 yen.
Toyota shares have risen 28 percent since late-November and on Monday touched a 6-month high.
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/article/2012...#ixzz1lhyVhkU1
October-December operating profit jumped 51.1 percent to 149.7 billion yen ($1.95 billion) from a year earlier, well ahead of the average estimate of a small decline to 93.9 billion yen in a poll of nine analysts by Reuters.
Quarterly net profit slid 13.5 percent to 80.9 billion yen.
Toyota now expects operating profit -- earnings from its core operations -- for the year to end-March of 270 billion yen ($3.5 billion), up from a previous 200 billion yen. Consensus forecasts from 23 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are for 331 billion yen. Operating profit last year was 468 billion yen.
Toshiyuki Kanayama, senior market analyst at Monex Securities, said the revised profit guidance was a bit of a disappointment. "But the market is looking at the next financial year. The key for Toyota shares will be whether profit (next year) will rise to around 800 billion yen."
Widespread floods in Thailand late last year battered Toyota just as it was recovering from production lost to the earthquake in Japan in March. The floods cost Toyota 240,000 vehicles in lost output worldwide, dragging 2011 global sales down by 6 percent and allowing General Motors and Volkswagen to overtake it in global vehicle sales.
Toyota, which has a market value of $135 billion -- more than rivals Honda, Nissan and Suzuki combined -- now sees annual net profit, which includes earnings made in China, of 200 billion yen, up from the 180 billion yen it projected in early December.
Tougher U.S. market
Takahiko Ijichi, senior managing officer, told a news conference Toyota aimed to sell at least 1 million vehicles in China this year, up from 800,000 in 2011.
Asked about intensifying competition in North America, where Toyota reaffirmed its forecast for annual sales of 1.9 million vehicles, Ijichi later told reporters: "The Big Three (Ford, General Motors and Chrysler Group) have improved their financial standing quite a bit, partly thanks to support from the government.''
"Their cars are also getting better, and in that sense the competitive landscape has gotten a lot tougher... Korean brands are also pushing hard, so, for Toyota and Japanese brands, it's a very tough race," Ijichi said.
"But that's why we're gearing up with new models, particularly fuel-efficient ones, to recover lost ground," he added, noting Toyota plans to launch 19 new or refreshed models in the United States this year.
Yen's strength
The yen's prolonged strength is weighing on Toyota, which last year built 2.76 million cars in Japan, one third of Japan's total vehicle production. It exported 57 percent of that output, much of it at a loss.
At home, Toyota should benefit from the re-instatement of cash-for-clunkers subsidies and the extension of tax incentives on fuel-efficient cars, especially on hybrids and other cars that use new technologies. Its newest Aqua hybrid received orders equivalent to 10 times the sales target in its first month.
Toyota has forecast a 21 percent jump in sales this calendar year to a record 9.58 million vehicles, including subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor and Hino Motors. All its production plants, bar Thailand, are back in action.
"It's premature to talk about any (sales) trends by looking only at our performance from last year when we had all those natural disasters," Toyota President Akio Toyoda told reporters last week. "I would want Toyota to be measured on how we do this year, provided it's a peaceful one."
Last week, Honda said its profits fell sharply, hit in part by a 6 yen fall in the dollar for the quarter. Nissan, Japan's No.2 automaker, reports on Wednesday.
With the dollar trading at 76-77 yen, Toyota's Achilles' heel remains its heavy exposure to Japan. It is scrambling to make its domestic factories more efficient to keep its promise of building at least 3 million vehicles a year at home.
A plan to return its Japan-based parent operations to break-even assumes a dollar rate of 85 yen.
Toyota shares have risen 28 percent since late-November and on Monday touched a 6-month high.
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/article/2012...#ixzz1lhyVhkU1
!
08-03-12, 11:11 AM
#5
Quarterly Update
Toyota Motor Corp. reported a big increase in 1st-quarter profit and raised its vehicle sales forecast on demand for its cars in North America and Japan.
Toyota's net income increased to 290.3 billion yen ($3.7 billion) in the 3 months ended June 30, from 1.16 billion yen a year earlier, the company said today in a statement. Profit climbed to the highest level in 4 years.
The automaker said vehicle sales at its Toyota, Daihatsu and Hino brands would increase to 9.76 million from January to December, raising an earlier target of 9.58 million. Toyota, plagued by natural disasters in 2011, has outsold General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG to lead the industry for 2 straight quarters. The company also projected production of 10.05 million units for the period.
Operating profit from North America quadrupled to 117.6 billion yen from 28.9 billion yen a year earlier.
The company, led by President Akio Toyoda, is now counting on the Prius and Camry to sustain earnings growth in the United States as analysts project demand to slow in Japan.
"Toyota's business results for the 1st quarter were strong but we should keep in mind that the sales surge was aided by domestic subsidies and new cars like the Camry in the U.S.," said Koichi Sugimoto, a Tokyo-based auto analyst at BNP Paribas SA. "For the 1 quarters left this fiscal year, the biggest concern for Toyota should be currency rate."
Beating estimates
Toyota has gained 19 percent in Tokyo trading in 2012 and last closed at 3,065 yen before the latest earnings announcement. Still, the stock has surrendered about half of its gains since the end of March after the yen turned into the best-performing major currency from the worst performer within a quarter.
Overall operating profit, or sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative expenses, was 353.1 billion yen, beating the 316.2 billion yen average estimate. Revenue rose 60 percent to 5.5 trillion yen, compared with the 5.48 trillion yen average analyst estimate.
In the United States, April-to-June deliveries increased 48 percent to 558,812 vehicles, helped by sales of the best-selling Camry sedans, Corolla compact sedans and Prius hybrids as Toyota led the Japanese auto industry's recovery from last year's production disruptions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
In July, Toyota's U.S. sales rose 26 percent and the company is ahead of its full-year target of 15 percent growth. Industrywide sales of light vehicles in July grew 8.9 percent to 1.15 million units, according to researcher Autodata Corp.
The improvement, buoyed by gains at Japanese carmakers, means the industry is headed for its biggest number of annual deliveries in 5 years.
Toyota expects industrywide deliveries to reach about 14.3 million in the United States this year, and for "the momentum that was generated through the 1st 6 or 7 months" to continue through the rest of this year, Bill Fay, group vice president of U.S. Toyota-brand sales, said this month.
Europe deliveries up
In Europe, where the region's main auto association is predicting the market to shrink to the lowest since 1995, deliveries rose 20 percent last quarter. The company posted an operating profit of 3.4 billion yen from the region, compared with the average analyst projection for profit of 4.18 billion yen.
The region caused losses of 7.55 billion yen a year earlier. Still, Toyota is less reliant on European demand than companies such as PSA/Peugeot-Citroen and GM, making the Japanese carmaker less vulnerable to the region's debt crisis.
Toyota, which estimates its European market share to have been about 4 percent in 2011, accounted for about 10 percent of global sales last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
GM, struggling to turn around its money-losing Opel unit, reported yesterday that second-quarter profit slid 38 percent as losses widened in Europe where the auto market is heading toward its fifth year of sales declines.
Japan doubles
In July, Toyota led full-line automakers by reducing spending on discounts and promotions in the U.S. by 24 percent to $1,849 per vehicle, according to Autodata estimates.
For the quarter ended June 30, it increased incentive spending 4.2 percent, according to Autodata.
In Japan, Toyota's deliveries almost doubled last quarter, led by the Prius hybrid, as pent-up demand and government subsidies for fuel-efficient cars helped spur demand.
The Japanese market expanded 54 percent in the 1st 6 months of 2012, the fastest growth among the world's biggest automobile markets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Toyota generated profit from Japan for a 2nd-straight quarter after posting 8 consecutive quarters of losses. Operating profit at home was 107.1 billion yen, versus the 47.3 billion yen average analyst estimate.
Growth in Japan may slow after the budget for government subsidies runs out as soon as this month, according to Sugimoto at BNP Paribas.
That means Japanese carmakers will be under pressure to introduce new models and spend more on marketing the models to sustain demand, he said.
Outside Japan
Asian markets outside of Japan, including China and India, contributed 101.5 billion yen in operating income, compared with the 104.1 billion yen average analyst estimate.
Total wholesale deliveries of passenger vehicles in China may rise 11 percent to 16.09 million units in 2012, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
Toyota kept its exchange-rate assumptions of 80 yen to the dollar, though it revised its assumption for the euro to 101 yen from an earlier 105 yen estimate.
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