Top-selling automaker Toyota Motor Corp yesterday said that its full-year net profit beat expectations, and projected better sales and revenue for the year ahead as supply chain disruptions ease.
The Japanese firm reported ￥2.45 trillion (US$18.12 billion) in net profit for the fiscal year ended March, down 14 percent from a year earlier, but better than its projections of ￥2.36 trillion.
It said it expects full-year net profit to increase 5 percent for this fiscal year to ￥2.58 trillion on “improvements in semiconductor supply and the efforts of production sites.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
The auto titan retained its top-selling crown for the third year in a row last year, but like much of the industry, has battled COVID-19 pandemic headwinds and the effects of a global chip shortage.
“In a word, it was a very tough year for us to produce and deliver vehicles to our customers,” Toyota CEO Koji Sato told reporters.
The company cited everything from natural disasters to the chip crisis for production constraints over the past fiscal year and acknowledged “soaring materials prices” had weighed on the bottom line.
It said it managed to beat its forecast in part due to foreign exchange rates, but also thanks to the efforts of production sites and dealers, which helped increase year-on-year sales volume across all Toyota’s regions.
Toyota sold more than 10.5 million vehicles worldwide in the past fiscal year, including those made by its subsidiaries, such as Hino Motors Ltd and Daihatsu Motor Co, and is projecting a massive jump to 11.4 million for this fiscal year.
“We expect growth in all regions,” Toyota chief financial officer Yoichi Miyazaki said. “For the immediate term, it is not all normal yet, but our ability to manage semiconductor [supply] has significantly improved.”
This year Toyota unveiled a surprise shake-up of its leadership, replacing Akio Toyoda, whose grandfather founded the company, with 53-year-old Sato as CEO.
Sato has vowed to “accelerate” the development of battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs) through a “new approach,” including the invention of “next-generation” Lexus vehicles by 2026.
Toyota has set a target of boosting annual EV sales to 1.5 million units by 2026 — a huge jump from just more than 20,000 last year.
However, the delayed focus on EVs by Toyota and other Japanese automakers has left them “unable to assert their presence at all” in the burgeoning market of China, Takada said.
China is one of the world’s largest auto markets, with about 30 million vehicles sold annually, and it is pivoting rapidly to EVs.
That means the question of how Japanese automakers, including Toyota, would “retake their competitive lead in China” is of “paramount importance,” Takada said.
Sato said that Toyota is committed to China’s EV market, while insisting hybrid demand would remain strong.
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