Toyota said yesterday that its half-year net profit soared 82.5 percent while it raised its annual earnings forecast as a weak yen and improving sales in North America boosted its bottom line.
The world’s biggest carmaker said it earned ¥1 trillion (US$10.14 billion) on revenue of ¥12.53 trillion, up 14.9 percent year-on-year.
The maker of the Camry sedan and Prius hybrid also raised its fiscal year to March profit forecast to ¥1.67 trillion, up from ¥1.48 trillion previously.
Toyota has ramped up its bid to tap emerging markets while key US demand has also been on the upswing, helping the firm book ever-increasing profits.
The automaker tripled its net profit in the past fiscal year with a slump in the yen helping Japanese manufacturers’ bottom line by making them more competitive overseas and inflating repatriated foreign earnings.
Toyota acknowledged that cost cuts and the weaker currency helped boost its profit as global unit sales slipped about 1 percent to 4.46 million units.
“In addition to the impact of the weaker yen, operating income increased due to our efforts with our suppliers and distributors for profit improvement through cost reduction and marketing activities, such as enhancement of the model mix,” Toyota vice president Nobuyori Kodaira said in a statement.
The company added that it still expects to sell 9.1 million vehicles in the year to March next year.
Toyota was the last of Japan’s major automakers to report its financial results in the latest earnings season.
Honda earlier said net profit soared nearly 47 percent in the three months to September as Japan’s third-largest carmaker also benefited from a weaker yen and stronger North American sales — while smaller rivals Suzuki and Mitsubishi Motors also reported upbeat results.
However, Nissan shares plunged more than 10 percent on Tuesday after the Japan’s No. 2 carmaker slashed its full-year profit forecast, blaming a sluggish European market and expensive product recalls.
Nissan said sales to China, which accounts for about one-quarter of its sales, also fell in the wake of a Tokyo-Beijing territorial spat, which sparked a damaging consumer boycott of Japanese brands in the world’s biggest vehicle market. Toyota did not specifically address China in its statement yesterday.
Toyota shares closed 0.47 percent higher to ¥6,350 in Tokyo yesterday before its results were released.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts