Japanese auto giant Toyota Motor Corp yesterday reported a rise in first-half net profit and raised its forecast for the whole year, citing a cheaper yen and cost-cutting efforts.
Japan’s No. 1 automaker said net profit rose 13.2 percent to ¥1.07 trillion (US$9.4 billion) for the six months to September on sales of ¥14.2 trillion, up 8.6 percent.
The Prius maker now expects to bank a net profit of ¥1.95 trillion for the fiscal year to March next year, up from an earlier estimate of ¥1.75 trillion.
In the previous fiscal year, Toyota suffered its first drop in annual profit in five years, which it blamed on the cost of customer incentives in the key US market.
Toyota said operating profit from its domestic and European markets showed moderate gains for the first half, but operating profit from North America more than halved due to a decline in sales and swelling incentives.
“Toyota has benefited from a weak yen, but growing incentives in North America have pressured its profit,” said Satoru Takada, an analyst at TIW, a Tokyo-based research and consulting firm.
“Foreign exchange will remain a decisive factor for the second half,” Takada told reporters before the announcement.
The level of Japan’s currency against the US dollar and other units is a key factor in Toyota’s competitiveness abroad and in the value of profits it earns abroad.
The yen has moved sharply in recent years, surging after Britain’s shock vote to exit the EU boosted demand for the safe-haven currency.
The trend briefly reversed course in November last year when then US-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s election victory boosted the dollar against the yen and other currencies.
Japan’s auto industry is facing uncertainty over Trump’s drive to support US firms over foreign imports, a stance that has raised fears of a global trade war.
Trump has targeted Toyota with strong criticism of its ongoing project to build a new factory in Mexico, threatening it with painful tariffs.
The US leader, who left Japan for South Korea earlier yesterday after winding up the first leg of his Asian tour, lashed out at the US trade relationship with Japan while in Tokyo.
“We want fair and open trade, but right now, our trade with Japan is not fair and open,” Trump told Japanese business leaders on Monday.
Last week, Honda Motor Co Ltd revved up its annual profit outlook on strong motorcycle sales and a lower yen, but the more upbeat figures still represented a drop from the previous year.
Nissan is scheduled to report its first-half results today after it suspended all domestic production due to an inspection scandal.
The firm yesterday restarted production after apologizing to its customers.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by